Playing Taps

With so many people needing military funerals these days there is a shortage of buglers to play Taps.

Possible solutions:

1) Skip that part of the ceremony,

2) mount an expensive campaign to train more horn players,

3) buy a bunch of "ceremonial bugles" which have "a small speaker and amplifier placed in the bugle's bell and a tiny computer chip that plays a version of taps recorded at Arlington National Cemetery."

Currently #3 is the favored solution. The reviews are mixed.

My personal preference is #1. Just after I've proclaimed the power, hope, and even the joy of the resurrection, it's as though the military always wants to cancel out everything I've said by blowing the pensive Taps and shooting off a bunch of guns. But if we're going to be consistent with what we say we believe, Reveille needs to be the final word. In a Christian funeral we are celebrating what is to come.

Perhaps we could hack into those computerized bugles.