Reconnecting with the Chimes Within

One of my favorite Christmas stories when I was growing up was Raymond Macdonald Alden’s “Why the Chimes Rang.”  I write today to figure out why.  You can click here to read it. 

The story is about a church with a tower so high that no one can see the top.  It is reputed to house the most beautiful-sounding chimes in the world, chimes that sound like “angels far up in the sky” or “strange winds swinging through the trees.” 

But no one living has ever heard them.  The story explains, “It was said that people had been growing less careful of their gifts for the Christ-child, and that no offering was brought, great enough to deserve the music of the chimes.” Nevertheless, each Christmas the rich and famous gather at the church in hopes of bestowing the gift will set off the chimes.

Pedro and Little Brother are on their way to the service, where they plan to lay a silver coin on the altar. On the way, however, they come across a woman who has fallen in the snow.  Pedro decides to stay with her to care for her and sends Little Brother on to the church.  The decision is hard:

In this way he hurried Little Brother off to the city, and winked hard to keep back the tears, as he heard the crunching footsteps sounding farther and farther away in the twilight. It was pretty hard to lose the music and splendor of the Christmas celebration that he had been planning for so long, and spend the time instead in that lonely place in the snow.

Of course, it is their gift that sets the chimes playing.  Here’s how the story ends:

But still only the cold old wind was heard in the tower, and the people shook their heads; and some of them said, as they had before, that they never really believed the story of the chimes, and doubted if they ever rang at all.

The procession was over, and the choir began the closing hymn. Suddenly the organist stopped playing as though he had been shot, and every one looked at the old minister, who was standing by the altar, holding up his hand for silence. Not a sound could be heard from any one in the church, but as all the people strained their ears to listen, there came softly, but distinctly, swinging through the air, the sound of the chimes in the tower. So far away, and yet so clear the music seemed—so much sweeter were the notes than anything that had been heard before, rising and falling away up there in the sky, that the people in the church sat for a moment as still as though something held each of them by the shoulders. Then they all stood up together and stared straight at the altar, to see what great gift had awakened the long-silent bells.

But all that the nearest of them saw was the childish figure of Little Brother, who had crept softly down the aisle when no one was looking, and had laid Pedro’s little piece of silver on the altar.

Tears come to my eyes every time I read this story.  The reason, I think, is that it reminds me that each of us has chimes buried deeply within us.  I’m referring here to our inner divinity.  This is the vision articulated by Jesus, who both discovered the God within and promised his disciples—and whomever else would listen—that we all have access to this inner God. 

We need reminding, however, because we get sidetracked when the winter wind is howling. The world is too much with us, as Wordsworth put it, and we cannot hear the chimes.  Or to put it another way, the chimes may always be ringing but we do not open ourselves to them. “He who has ears let him hear,” Jesus tells us.

Jesus also says, “unless you become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Pedro and Little Brother remind me of the child I once was.  I recall how my heart used to swell as Pedro sacrifices what he wants for something more important. It still does. In the grip of the story, I become an innocent again. It doesn’t matter that no one sees me, that no one acknowledges me, as I lay my coin quietly on the altar. I am in touch with the chimes.

Reading “Why the Chimes Rang,” in short, opens a door to the spiritual realm, which is why I incorporate it into my yearly Christmas rituals. Books truly are chariots that bear the human soul, as Emily Dickinson puts it.