Sacred sounds.

We sit down for dinner. Food is on the table. Glasses are full. Anticipation is high. A bell rings, a small brass bell from Tibet with a clear light sound that permeates the air and melds with the delicious smells wafting up from our plates. A prayer is offered. It speaks of thanksgiving and joy. We eat. We laugh. We enjoy each other's company.

When I was a young boy, I would visit the country parsonage where my grandfather and grandmother lived. Next door was the church and on Saturday nights, my Opa would offer up the enormous privilege of ringing the church bells announcing the next morning's service. Thick, heavy ropes that promised to inflict terrible damage on tiny six year old hands if not held securely. I pulled and the rope barely budged. Again and again, until the rhythm of my puny pulling began to reach the bells in the belfry. Slowly they began to sing. Opa with two ropes and me with mine and together we filled the Saturday night sky with wondrous noise.

I've spent a good deal of my life singing hymns and, to tell the truth, a good deal of them aren't worth singing. But there are some so precious that tears commence along with the opening chords. Lately, I've been drawn more and more to hymns with fewer and fewer words. Ten years ago, I discovered there were some monks in France who felt the same way. For decades, these gentle men had been experimenting with ways of reducing worship from its reliance on words to the wonders of music. Simple chants are intoned in that community called Taize, chants of hope and peace and firm commitment. The beauty of such sacred sound is how welcoming it is. Void of complex doctrine or daunting theological demands, these gentle chants invite us who hold differing opinions to hold to only the same simple tune.

This time of year brings a very different sacred sound to memory. It is certainly anything but melodic but it is music to many. It is the sound of hide on leather, of ball and mitt and bat. My son is moving away from the cherished years of comfort when father and child could wile the hours playing catch and listening to that holy sound of tarnished sphere smacking into the worn web of a treasured Wilson. Of all the sounds that I will miss the most from the years of past parenting, it will be that, that sacred and incessant smack.

The phone rings. It is a moment that holds potential for irritation or adoration. Instantly, a voice is recognized. Wife, child, mother, brother. It is a sacred sound, this familiar lilt, this remembered resonance. I wonder if I appreciate it as I should. How much longer will I be privileged by its presence.

It is sanctity discovered in sound.