Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Friday, December 29, 2017

In the Twinkling of an Eye


“In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall all be changed.” 1 Corinthians 15:52

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Strange title, I admit. Like a New Year’s Eve kiss, where will it go? Forget the part about the dead showing back up. Just to get changed is exciting enough.

Christmas is history. The frenetic shopping, the oohs and ahs of unwrapping, all that’s over in the twinkling of an eye. The remains include a desiccated and needle-dropping Christmas tree, volumes of ‘re-gift’ opportunities and a prodigious quantity of sugar sufficient to anesthetize an elephant.

News reports that $90 billion of merchandise will be returned or exchanged. The binge balloons, credit card fast-draw holsters proliferate, e-bay is overloaded, and common sense has collapsed. We’re left with an assortment of odds and ends to tidy up before 2018 will even consider showing up. Yet the cycle continues.

This week’s lull is prologue for the buildup to, or the letdown from, the final stroke of midnight on Sunday. Because in the twinkling of an eye, friends, 2017 will vanish like the exhalation of your last breath.

The ‘twinkling eye’ theme has been hijacked from Scripture by the songs of Dylan and Cash, two greedy grave robbers who exhume literary bones from the Good Book for filthy lucre. They ‘borrowed’ from the brain of St. Paul on the discourse of the dead rising and the part about changing.

Now, Brother Paul was not a pundit who promoted some political prophesy when mentioning “the last trump” (note: the ‘t’ is lower case). He might have foreseen, however, that many would be hopeful this particular ‘trump’ will be the last flash in the pan. He cleaned up the misnomer quickly by referencing “trumpet” in the next breath.

I once played a trumpet in a military band. And from personal testimony I can promise you that my notes would have raised the dead. I was soon ‘changed’ to a rifle platoon, and my golden trumpet given to someone who could ‘taps’ the dead to rest. Oh, well.

Now I’m all about change, hard as it is to accept. Not the kind that affects me, of course. I like things the way they are. But, the harshest thing about change is to accept that my mind has lied to me. No, my financial ship has not arrived; and No, all women don’t find me appealing.

This hint was obvious when my Christmas stocking was stuffed with enormous quantities of magical emollients guaranteed to erase wrinkles. Nothing has changed here except money from one pocket to another. Blemishes generate big bucks.

Before long the trumpet of 2017 will draw its last breath, blow its last note and leave its ghost to history. And in the twinkling of an eye, a millisecond in time, 2018 will become a living and breathing epoch.

Before the carcass of 2017 is rolled away, maybe it’s a good time to take a deep breath and assess our own ‘there-go-I’ situation. Now me, I like breathing and do it often. It’s healthy. A good breath will go a long way, so don’t take it lightly. Those who do may not like the change they’ll get.

Some friends lament the days of heavy breathing. Not me. I confess it’s been a long time since I’ve experienced it, much less even given thought to it. No need to visit the cemetery of the deceased. The slow-paced gasping group is sufficient; let the blowhards bellow on by chanting yogic oms.

Our culture measures time in years, not in moments. We give scant attention to the tides of our breath. Maybe we’re afraid of connecting with the rhythms of nature. For as the breath goes, so go the years.

This intervening week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is a good time to reflect on our deeds and thoughts. Turmoil is always waiting. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our eyes would reveal our love, and our smiles wipe out our wrinkles?

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In the twinkling of an eye 2017 will end its journey. But let’s remember, with every new breath, a New Year’s Day can begin anew. Happy New Year.


Bud Hearn
December 29, 2017

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Trusting in Stars


“…and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.” Matthew 2:9


Over 2000 years ago some wise men showed up in Jerusalem looking for the Messiah. They inquired, “Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.”

Nothing happens in Jerusalem without Herod hearing about it. He ‘invited’ these wise guys over under the pretense of learning about celestial horoscopes. His invitations weren’t always for a banquet. Ancient manuscripts hint he had gallows installed next to his throne for entertainment value. The Magi found out that following stars has risks. After the interrogation they ease out the back door to return home.

Last Christmas I show up in a village gift shop looking for a gift. Some small hand towels hang limply on a wire rack by the door. They are engraved with a variety of witticisms and epigrams. One, obviously prophetic, reads: “Three wise men? Really?” In today’s supercharged culture, who would disagree?

The Greek word for ‘wise men’ is magoi, a derivation of a Persian word for “men expert in the study of the stars.” Curiously, there is no feminine gender for this word. In English, the transliteration of ‘magi’ means ‘a sorcerer.’ Its proximity to the word magic or magician can’t be ignored.

Consider the wisdom of these caravan sorcerers following a star looking for anything, much less a coming King. Can our imagination reach into the heavens? If so, then imagine an American President summoning some itinerant, camel-riding star-gazers to the West Wing to inquire about anything. Once there was a star-gazing former First Lady. Astrology has strange disciples. Which might tend to support the idea of ‘wise men.’ Whatever.

Stars are pinholes of light in the primordial eternal blackness. Some resemble recognizable patterns of constellations like bears, dogs and dippers. They circle in the black sky and have been reliable guidance systems for centuries. Sadly, celestial navigation has pretty much gone the way of slide rules and flip phones.

I once knew a fellow who lived in a high rise condo in Atlanta. With his telescope he developed an intense interest in stars. Unfortunately, the bright city lights tended to block out most of them. Frustrated, he took to studying heavenly bodies in the windows of neighboring condo towers. His study of celestial shapes ended abruptly one evening by a knock on his door. It remains a low point in his study of stars.

Circumnavigating the globe by dead reckoning or by celestial navigation has fallen out of favor. Notwithstanding the lack of utilization, their accuracy is no less diminished. The sky is now full of new stars: satellites. GPS is the star for guidance as much as tweets are the stars of confusion.

Stars are everywhere. There are movie stars, sports stars, rock stars, rising political stars, financial stars…you-name-it. Heck, even you might be a star in your own constellation. We follow these stars too, searching for something to worship. Sooner or later we follow them to their funerals. They shine briefly like beacons, then dim and finally fade into the blackness of night like burned-out supernovas.

Today it would be a sign of lunacy to admit that a star is leading us to some undisclosed important destination. Many have faith in the Lottery star, the one promising the illusionary pot of gold. Some of these people are even Dawg fans.

The Sages of Scripture had an uncommon faith, the kind that trusted a star to lead them to the Messiah. It begs question as to the guidance system of our faith in these troubled times. Which stars are we following?

Tonight in the moonless sky the brilliant stars sparkle in a vast canopy of ebony. I marvel at the mystery of the stars, an enigma no less awesome than the faith of the Magi.

Inside, our Christmas tree illuminates the ever-encroaching darkness with hundreds tiny points of light. An angel observes from its lofty perch. In times like this it’s possible to unite with the Magi in their mission: “When they saw the star they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy.”

Do stars still guide us to places where profound happenings are being born? I ponder this question, even as I already know the answer….Jesus is just not that hard to find. Joy to the world!


Merry Christmas

Bud Hearn
December 21, 2017






Friday, December 8, 2017

Sorting It All Out


You, who are on the road, must have a code that you can live by…” Graham Nash

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Lately the news has been a smorgasbord of strange happenings, some of which seems to have been cooked up in an asylum by a host of weirdos, nutcases and crackpots. It’s hard to get a sense of direction.

Life is complicated. Diverse opinions swarm like green flies on a batch of French-fried chitterlings. The compass needle of public opinion and political correction spins in wild gyrations. Direction is playing hide and seek. The North Star of Truth hovers dangerously near the vortex of a black hole.

It’s times like these when it’s helpful to resort to the flawless wisdom of the St. Paul, Minnesota philosopher, Larry B. Larry. He narrowed everything down in his timeless thesis: If life weren’t so serious, it would be a joke. The fact that he had this strange fetish of walking his fingers up the bare backs of ladies in no way diminishes the theory.

Stop and ponder the profundity of it. Ambiguity is squeezed out into two choices: serious or joke. No middle ground here: black/white, up/down, night/day. No more vacillating on the question, “What do you think about …?” Solid rock replaces shifting sand.

Just yesterday we hear that Jerusalem is becoming the site of the new American embassy sometime in the future. The turmoil that ensues would be about the same as if Judge Roy Moore suggested Selma become the capitol of Alabama.

Now, what are we to make of the Hermit Kingdom’s ‘Rocket Man,’ the poster boy of bad haircuts. Is there a message in his madness of firing blank ICBM missiles off into the ocean? He is lately being treated for pyrotechnic delusions of grandeur. But not to be outdone, America has its own Rocket man, a former limo driver who actually has a message.

What message, you ask? Why, he intends to strap himself to the tip of a garage-built rocket and blast himself into what he calls the ‘flatmosphere.’ Huh? That’s right, he intends to debunk the theory that the world is round and prove that it’s flat. Right or wrong, one thing’s for sure: it’s flat where we stand.

The Supreme Court Justices are fiddling around in the kitchen. They’re straining at gnats and swallowing camels over the issue of baking cakes in Colorado. Like the blind, they’re groping (oops, not to be taken literally) for the wall for direction out of this half-baked dilemma. Some things are too weird for words.

Meanwhile, the National Debt Clock has replaced its blown circuits and is back in Times Square to remind us of the $20 trillion debt we’ve run up. Where did all that money go? I’m confused. Some of it to the Congressional slush fund, of course. Buying silence for politicians is a time-honored tradition. But not to worry, your family’s share is only $172,560. Let the good times roll.

Well, old Joe McCarthy’s ghost got loose and is opening the books of judgment. Heads are rolling. Congressional inquisitions are stoking a national, come-clean catharsis of repentance. Mea culpas clog Twitter and lamentations of apology are flowing in the gutters of Main Street.

Like pigs, tort lawyers, formerly ambulance chasers, are lining up at the trough for the big paydays when ‘inappropriate behavior’ is clearly defined. The #MeTwo generation is in merger mode with the #KissOffCreep crowd. Reparations will be real. It’s so insidiously draconian that even the Witches of Salem are scratching their heads.

There’s a wailing in the Heart of Dixie. The mighty have fallen. History is being hauled off, one statue at a time, being dumped in weed-choked fields and picked-over cotton patches on the back side of oblivion. Meanwhile, a gilded and gloating Sherman rides smugly atop his steed at the entrance to Central Park. I find no humor in this!

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And so it goes, day by day, news filters in. Whether we laugh or moan depends on perspective.

But one thing’s absolute: The Pool of Narcissus is crowded.


Bud Hearn
December 8, 2017