No one listens to the sound of a wooden bell

If you visit my office you’ll find a small wooden table inside the door. On the table is a little wooden bell. I planted it there after my wife, daughters, and grand-daughters brought it to me after they participated in a Haitian work mission. “I picked it up from a vendor’s blanket spread out on the street, and I couldn’t put it back down,” my wife said.

Burned into the side of the wooden bell are these words: No one listens to the cries of the poor or the sound of a wooden bell.

It’s not that the bell is silent that no one listens. If you pick up the bell and shake it, the clapper will yield a dull rattle. You won’t hear it, though, if the TV is on, or the radio is blaring, or your cell phone is ringing.

The rattle of the wooden bell is unpleasant. If you listen very closely, you might hear the last wimper of a dying child, the final gasps of a dying victim of HIV/AIDS, or the scratching of a wooden hoe in parched soil.I pick up the wooden bell and occasionally rattle it and . . .
listen . . .
listen . . .
listen.

And I invite you, if you stop by my office, to pick up the wooden bell, shake it and . . .
listen . . .
listen . . .
listen . . .
and remember that today, like any other day, thirty thousand children will starve to death, and more than five thousand will die from HIV/AIDS.

Glad we could get together.

JW