It’s that
time of year. It began with the faint ding of my cell phone indicating a text
message had arrived. “Waaaayyyy too early for kettles,” wrote my sister from a
suburban Buffalo store on the first day of November. She had heard a bell
ringing as she walked towards the entrance and she knew it was “that time of
year.”
In the 1942
film “For Me and My Gal,” a great question is raised: “Do you hear the bells go
ding dong, do you know why they’re ringing?” Gene Kelly answers his own query in
the first line of the familiar refrain. “The bells are ringing for me and my
gal.” They were wedding bells!
Unlike
Kelly’s answer, the constant ringing we will begin to hear on our weekly trek
to the supermarket doesn’t come from wedding bells, nor does their echo signify
the end of war as church bells did at the conclusion of the Civil War. No,
these ordinary and sometimes annoying bells clang throughout our land to
signify that the war isn’t over and an Army continues to do battle in that war.
The
Salvation Army’s care for the poor is not a new concept for people of faith.
Historically, the Hebrew people declared a Year of Jubilee every fifty years as
slaves and prisoners were freed and debts forgiven. In the last century, Catholic
social teaching introduced the ‘preferential option for the poor,’ explaining
that God gives preference to the poor and powerless, and so should God’s people.
And in our century, new approaches to address poverty continue to spring up in
faith communities around the world.
Government has
also tried to stem the tide of poverty. Early approaches included auctioning
off the poor, the development of Poorhouses, and the twentieth century answers,
the advent of social security and welfare payments. Even with these
adjustments, the poor remained with us, so President Lyndon Johnson declared war
on poverty in 1965, to be followed by the welfare reform of the 90s.
Yet despite
all these well-meaning interventions, still the bells must ring. Some see it as
a quaint custom, like the child’s rhyme. “Christmas is coming, the goose is
getting fat, please put a penny in the old man’s hat.” Others pass by unaware,
engrossed in conversation or checking cell phones for urgent messages. Some
respond to the bell with irritation, tired of hearing it, while others hear the
bell and remember that lives can be transformed as a community pools together
the spare change in its pockets.
This
Christmas, local Salvation Army units are kicking off their bell-ringing
campaigns with events designed to create excitement in the community,
celebrating the hundreds of volunteers and staff who keep the bells ringing
between now and December 24th. The festive Jingle All the Way 5K is
this morning, giving the Ashland bells a running start at 8:30 a.m. For those
of us who would jiggle rather than jingle if we attempted a 5K run, there’s a
pancake breakfast after the race, followed by the annual Red Kettle Bazaar from
10 a.m. to 3 p.m., a great way to get a jump start on Christmas shopping.
In Richland
County, the bells will ring at a traditional breakfast gathering at the
Mid-Ohio Conference Center on November 19. And for the music lovers among us,
the Salvation Army in Wooster will welcome its Ring a Bell, Change a Life
campaign with the holiday music of Ashland’s own Kroc Center Big Band on Monday
at 6:30 p.m. I’m looking forward to my first taste of Christmas cookies during
that event.
I do hope
the Kroc Center Big Band plays “My Grown-up Christmas List” on Monday night,
because its writer, Linda Thompson-Jenner, communicates better than I can. “As children we believed the grandest sight to see was
something lovely wrapped beneath our tree.” Now, as adults, we recognize the rest
of the picture, for “heaven only knows that packages and bows can never heal a
hurting human soul.” I wish the kettle bells didn’t have to ring this year. But
until the war on poverty is truly won, the Salvation Army bells will keep
ringing their message of hope.
