San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
COVID-19 deaths recalled with vigils, services
The Rev. Dwight LeeWolter, pastor of the historic Congregational Church of Patchogue, N.Y., had been trying to come up with the most appropriate way to mark All Saints’ Day this year as the country copes with the continuing coronavirus pandemic.
A couple of weeks ago, he woke up in the middle of the night and thought, “Oh, my God, we have a bell,” thinking of his church’s 19th-century sandstone, five-story bell tower.
“It was like, ‘Ring the bell once for each life lost in America.’ ”
Since Oct. 18, a recording of the 160-year-old, 850-pound bell atWolter’s Long Island church has tolled every six seconds to remember more than 217,000 COVID-19 deaths that had occurred by mid-October. It continued through All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1.
After Wolter calculated the length of each chime, he worked with sound engineers to record the bell’s sound. A digital recording was played through speakers at the height of the actual bell, at normal volume during the day and a reduced level at night.
The church’s remembrance echoed other vigils and services planned around All Saints’ Day, the traditional Christian day of remembrance. The various services are remembering people who have died in the past year for any number of reasons and people who have died from COVID-19 whether they are from their congregation or beyond it.
First United Methodist Church of Beaumont delivered candles to the families of the six congregants who died in the last year and invited members to submit names of people they wanted to remember, said the Rev. Julius
Wardley, the church’s pastor of discipleship.
Wardley sees the church’s remembrances as a way for the church to meet its congregants’ need for community in a time when social distancing has made grieving particularly challenging for clergy and their flocks.
For that reason, First United Methodist wants to recognize the
difficulties beyond its congregation and beyond the pandemic. Lighting candles, tolling a large bell and ringing smaller handbells at the prerecorded 11 o’clock service was streamed on Facebook and YouTube to honor those who have died in the global pandemic.
“The church’s job is to be relevant, and so this is an issue
that affects us all,” he said of working to keep people connected and encouraged during the pandemic. “We have to be talking about those relevant issues that are happening to our community.”
While All Saints’ Day has become a focus of remembrance, some churches had already been recognizing the extraordinary frequency of deaths during the pandemic. Washington National Cathedral in the District of Columbia has held virtual Saturday services since Memorial Day to honor victims of the pandemic, including more than 2,000 names submitted via a webpage.
“We will continue the services for as long as people keep sending us names,” said Kevin Eckstrom, chief communications officer of the cathedral, which livestreamed its All Saints’ Day prayer service that included the pandemic among its petitions for healing. “It’s part of our effort to be a place for the nation to mourn the lives lost to the pandemic since there has been no real nationwide effort to express the loss from the pandemic.”
In September, the cathedral tolled its largest bell 200 times — once for each 1,000 COVID-19 deaths in the United States at the time. There are tentative plans to similarly mark 300,000, Eckstrom said.
In recent weeks, 31 Christian, Jewish and Muslim houses of worship joined an initiative called Mourning Into Unity, holding online vigils and in-person processions focused on “naming our loss” and “naming our hope,” said one organizer, the Rev. Russell Meyer. Though originally planned only for October, other vigils are expected to take place beyond Election Day.
Wolter, the Long Island pastor, said he was thinking of All Saints’ Day and not the election when he felt inspired to start the ringing of his church’s bell for two weeks. But as news of his plans spread, he faced deep divisions over them.
Though there were “vastly” more positive responses, Wolter said, he received a physical threat from someone who wanted to “ring the neck of the bell ringer.”