Delighting in the Bells

Wesley Bell Ringers, Salt Lake City

The Wesley Bell Ringers from Salt Lake City put on a rousing show Saturday night.   The bell choir has 33 United Methodist teenagers banded together to make music, bonded by their minority status in a Mormon state that for many seems a foreign country.  Christ UMC sponsors these kids on a multi-state tour every summer with their director, Terry Waite and chaperones, 33 kids and eight adults on a bus.  For two weeks.  More boys than girls.

My daughter Abi played the bells for a year with this director at Hilltop UMC in Sandy, Utah when she was a teenager.   Now at Christ UMC Terry directs three bell choirs in addition to the Wesley Bell Ringers, adults, teens and a seventh and eight grade preparatory bell choir.

Ringers

Listening to their CD "Blazing Bronze" is great, for example the bell variations on "Jesus Love Me," that is playing as I write. At Saturday night's performance, though, we could watch the kids and speculate on their individual stories, conflicts, passions, adventures.  The big boys in the back row, young men really, wrangled the expensive 20 lb bells without dropping them or injuring each other. In the course of the concert the kids handle over 300 bells of brass, silver, and bronze.

I was taken with the atttention they focused on the director, their feeling for the music, the grace and humor with which they interacted with the audience.  They all wore blue t-shirts and beige pants, and there were no noticeable piercings or tattoos. The  boys particularly sported a variety of hair styles including bushy tight perms, one with waist-length red hair, a blond with dreadlocks.  The girls mostly wore their hair long and pulled back, slightly severe in comparison.  At the end of the concert each bellringer moved with assurance and the packing of their instruments, tables and uniforms was handled with dispatch.

Jesse and I were happy to host four of the boys (an F, Soph, Jr, Sr) and to ply them with popcorn, clean sheets and in the morningscrambled eggs, returning them to the church for departure at 7:15.  Jesse enjoyed visiting with them about their interests, their futures, their dreams:  music, architecture, medicine, military intelligence (China).  One of the boys graduated a few weeks ago from West High School in SLC, where my daughter Abi scandalized the faculty with her paintings of nudes.  I gave each of the boys a copy of "Friendly Fire:  The ACLU of Utah" by Linda Sillitoe before they climbed on the bus.  Perhaps more than  high school students in other parts of the country, these boys are familiar with the desirability of Separation of Church and State.

www.wesleybellringers.org