‘How about the jabs, Humpty?’ I asked.
‘Still waiting for the second one,’ he replied.
The second jab completes the job – for the time being. It may be the case that we shall have an annual routine of jab or jab jab. But like aircraft carriers (of our modest UK variety) once is not enough. We have to make assurance doubly sure. Most of us would agree that that is on the whole a sensible way of going about things, even if we have our doubts about HS2 and independence referendums.
Which opens up the question of repetition. Nowadays we scorn the idea of rote learning. Chanting multiplication tables and what Richard of York did is regarded as dreary mental parade ground stuff, a close neighbour of indoctrination. But it can hardly be denied that if we wish to know more about prayer, we can do worse than learn collects by heart and lift ourselves up from shopping-lists to a closer acquaintance with the Giver and his gifts. We have the General Thanksgiving, the prayer for all conditions of men and the Litany to guide us.
As a general rule, repetition is a valuable means of adding to our personal resources. We remember things from our early days more than we remember things we endeavour to store in our memory bank later in life. Repetition is an effective way of enhancing that memory bank.
But repetition can be overdone. It is overdone by writers of worship-songs who use it as a crutch to support vacuous lyrics. It is overdone by preachers failing to open up new seams. ‘Argument weak here; shout and stamp.’
To take a leaf out of a north American book, we have all witnessed the rhetorical and choreographic techniques of the popular evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. He deploys undoubted skills to hold the attention of an audience. At the same time as we recognise those skills, we may prefer the mature compositions familiar to us in the prayer book collects and those by Augustine..
Humpty is being patient. I must remind him that repetition can be good or bad. It depends on what is being repeated – and how much imagination is brought to the task. The second jab is one of the good things.
‘Did you hear that, Humpty?’ No reply. I had to repeat my call. As I say, some things are worth repeating. I hope so.
BISHOP EMILY
Emily Onyango has become the first woman bishop in the Anglican Church of Kenya. She will become assistant bishop in the diocese of Bondo. Dr Onyango studied at St Paul’s College, Limuru and completed a Ph.D. with the centre for mission studies, Oxford in 2006. She is married to a retired school-teacher and has two children.
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