10th in a series of posts on Ron Yoshida’s pilgrimage
Gadfly lives near the Moravian College main campus.
There’s a clock on the campus that tolls the hours.
Gadfly loves that.
And he’s not really sure why.
Outside in the summer, it’s like a friend who periodically comes to the fence to chat, causing you to pause in the gardening or to look up from your reading.
It softens, charms, even though it definitively marks the passage of time.
Hmmm, looks like maybe he does know why.
Gadfly was thinking of his friendly neighborhood timekeeper when he heard Ron Yoshida mention that in 20 or 30 rural villages he traveled through on his henro, music played at 7AM, noon, and 5PM — and 5PM in many of those villages was Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”
Wow!
Think of that.
Who knows the cumulative effect on the quality of life that pausing daily for a 3-minute ode to joy might have.
And what would we play if we had such a ritual in Bethlehem?