The Church Bells

My own views on religion are documented in a number of posts. The bottom line is, while I find religion generally, and the monothesic religions in particular, at best, "gobbledegook", I don't normally have a problem with the mad Muslims, cocky Christians and idiotic Israelites as long as they remain only moderatly mad, cautiously cocky and interestingly idiotic. The problem, of course, is that they facilitate the real madness without quite understanding what they are doing. Before moving on it is worth reminding everyone that it was the French and Industrial Revolutions that gave us the necessary kick up the arse, that got us our secular socieities, our tolerance and, it is that tolerance, that forces me to say, "live and let live" and, while we are where we are not because of the "gobbledegookers" but despite them, if you want to go to your synagogue, your church or your mosque, please do, but don't, don't try to drag me in there with you.
Anyway, I live in a little Bavarian town and I live down at a river and across the river there is a church. Now, this church seems to be lagging behind my tolerance and "Weltoffenheit" and there it is at seven o'clock in the mornng, "ding, dong, ding, dong" and I suppose it is difficult to ding and dong quietly and, indeed, the our naricistic, selfish, little church wouldn't see the point in dinging and donging quietly, but this is ridiculously noisy, so noisy, in fact, that I complained this morning to the Turkish guy who runs a shop in front of my house and he being a Muslim seems to understand the need for the dinging and donging and the couple of Germans hanging around in front of the shop? Well, like a lot of Germans, and a lot of people elsewhere too, they like to get their nonsensical tupence worth in and there was one of them saying to me, "Kirche ist Kirche" ..... mmmm, the church is the church so if it wants to disturb the peace it can and I am sure when they were burning people that was alright too because, "Kirche ist Kirche".
So what is the point? Well, the point is, this thing called "tolerance" is a two way street and when we we let these "gobbledegookers" practice their "gobbledegook" we want them to be a wee bit tolerant in return and when we are sleeping we don't expect the "ding, dong, ding, dong"turned up at a volume that just makes sure we cannot get to sleep. Next, thing you know they will be murdering us again but then there are places where they are still doing that anyway. Of course, if the "Kirche ist Kirche" people didn't have their "gobbledegook" they would probably invent a variation of the theme and I really am beginning to understand Jean Paul Satre when he said, "hell is other people", well it is, some of them anyway, that, however, is another story.
The picture above is of the little church with the loud bells that is across the river from my house