From Tadpoles to Frogs…the Alchemists

 

     “In a moment, the twinkling of the eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.” 1 Corinthians 15:52.

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Life throbs with alchemy. Look around, see the transformation from moment to moment. Even you and I have already alchemized from what we were to what we are. More will come.

There was a time in the small towns and backyards of our youth when the cares of this world and the turbulent passions of life had yet to arrive. But they would, and on that day our child-like curiosity and amazement would be changed.

But until then, it was a time when we played in small streams and creeks and explored the mysterious alchemy of nature. These are distant memories now. Alas, the age of innocence is short-lived.

A small tributary flowed through the edge of our schoolyard, meandering down to some swampy bog off in the distance. It was mostly a wet-weather stream, but with the Spring and Summer rains it flowed wild and free, not unlike 10-year old boys on bikes, moving fast but not really going very far.

The stream was our babysitter, keeping us off the streets as we passed the days in exploration, playing among the vines and thorns of wild blackberries, strawberries and plums that lined the embankments. We captured lizards, small snakes, salamanders, crawfish and tadpoles. It was a young boy’s dream.

We only kept the tadpoles, housing them in quart mason jars, hoping to see nature alchemize them into frogs.  The term ‘alchemy’ had not entered our lexicon. Sadly, it was only an experiment without success. Apparently, tadpoles don’t morph into frogs in mason jars. We soon deposited them back where we found them. While we never saw the transition, we heard the frogs singing a few weeks later.

We’re living in a world where alchemy is a regular occurrence that’s reminiscent of the Yukon Gold Rush. Charlatans hawking mystic panaceas, political palliatives and messianic hokum like ‘quantum imaginations’ line the streets and clutter the digital universe with promises of salvation, wealth, healing and everything else that is designed to separate fools from their money. The laying on of hands these days has the distinct feel of somebody snatching your wallet.

But this is a cynic’s view of the street-corner variety. Successful alchemists are much slicker than this. They shroud themselves in mystery and double-speak. All counterfeiting is done covertly, in back rooms under the cover of darkness. They create an aura of power and invincibility while pandering to the basic instincts of fear, greed and the other deadly sins.  Some have degrees from Yale, others from mail order from the Maharajah Gupta.

Elijah, while not an imposter, created his own legacy. He was said to have transcended in a whirlwind.  Nobody saw him do this, but the story lives on after him, so who’s to say it didn’t happen? Some actually achieve this concept by manipulation of ‘fake news.’ I think it’s called illusions of grandeur.

Alchemists experiment with admixtures cooked up in sociopolitical labs with petri dishes teeming with statistical polling analyses. Psychological gurus mix concepts, like chaos with order, insanity with sanity, diatribe with dialogue to discover recipes to confuse the most logical minds. Dictionaries are sliced and diced; words are jumbled in a giant lottery bin that spits out new definitions of claptrap designed to form the basis of ‘woke’ new-speak.

The elites prefer the stasis of status quo to the turbid tides of the times. Their latest alchemistic craze is the ‘elixir of immortality,’ a snake oil concoction consisting mostly of self-delusion chased with an aged Grand Cru while dining on a cliff-side balcony overlooking the Pacific.    

Then there is the alchemy of rage, a stupefying brew cooked up by the PC editorial staffs of the nightly news, symbolized by a brick sailing through a window. The alchemistic genius in this admixture is the transformation of emotional rage into votes. Hooray for our side.  

Who can say what alchemy will prevail after November 3^rd? But be assured that financial voodoo is still alive and well. Gold will be created from thin air.

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Is there an alchemy that can transform anger to praise, hate to love? As far as we know only One can achieve this alchemy, and He is not a fraud.

Tadpoles to frogs…some alchemy is inexplicable.    

 

 Bud Hearn

August 17, 2020