Evening Bells

There is an old song by the Irish poet/singer Thomas Moore called "Those Evening Bells" that tells of a melancholy yearning for ones youth and how the chiming of those bells brings back the memory of happier times, and how when one is in the grave, you will never hear them again.  A Russian translation (phonetically translated "Vechernii Zvon") is a well known folk song; not a Russian person I have ever met has been unable to sing it.  I have been thinking of this song and how it affects me and my path on Orthodoxy lately.
I have been out of a major city for almost two months now.  Being a country boy at heart, I find the city life rather draining and hostile to my spirit.  There, I hear many more trains, trucks, loud music and other distractions, but it wasn't until I was out of the city and in the small town I currently am in before I realized that there had been something else missing in my life; church bells.
Where I currently am, I can hear the bells of a neighborhood church ring out three times a day; at 8:00 am, at noon, and at 6:00 pm every day.  This does not include other churches, including the Orthodox Church I currently attend, ringing the bells to signal the start of the service.  While I noticed how those bells rang out almost immediately, I had never understood how they were lacking in a big city nowadays until just a few days ago; in fact, the parish I attend in the city does not even have a bell to ring right now.
When I hear these bells every day now, I find myself giving a little prayer of thanks to God every time.  Not only have I found a peace and quiet that one can rarely find in a big city, but the lack of those bells had an effect on me I never understood; I didn't even realize I missed them.  I do not know whether the daily bells are meant to be a call to prayer, but I think that the fact they they do call me to a little prayer of thanks now can only be helpful in my stumbling, as I find that every little prayer I say, even just a quip of "Thank you, Jesus" brings me closer to where I want my soul to be.
Perhaps, also, these bells remind me of my Earthly mortality.  I honestly have not thought about that aspect yet, as I have been too busy enjoying the sound of church bells again to worry about such a matter.  Even if they do on a subconscious level, I am not preoccupied with that eventual happening.  I am not even thinking of my childhood when I hear them (as a child I was so far out in the country that I never heard church bells unless I went to the village, so I made a point of being in the village at the time they rang out quite often).  What I am thinking of is the silence time away from the city brings; how silence, a devotional gift from God, allows the Holy Spirit to penetrate your thoughts if you allow it to do so.  I also think of a simpler, less hurried, more joyful existence and the way this existence allows me more ease of devotion and prayer, of spirtual reading, and even more importantly, how God works in that silence because we don't static Him out.
While I feel my soul more at ease at the moment, I know I need to guard myself from complacency, and perhaps those bells can help.  Not only can they remind me to pray, but because they emanate from God's house, they can remind me how ever present He truly is, everywhere, at all times.  I can't say they stop my sinning, but I do reflect on the damage those sins I commit have done more now than I did just a few short weeks ago.   Let those morning, noon, and evening bells ring, and let them remind me how He truly blesses me, and how much I owe Him, and how much I need Him.  As dense as I can be, I need all the reminders of God I can get.
God Bless.