Repetition

You know how you start to resemble your parents?

Well, my spiritual father in Christ is Phillip Jensen, and what he does is repeat sermon illustrations. Endlessly. Ongoingly. Moebius strippingly. He is the tape loop of sermon illustrations.

At one stage I was hatching a plot to number his illustrations so that to save time, he would simply need to say "#17", and like the prisoners in the old joke, everyone would burst out laughing. They would know that #17 referred to the chicken crossing the road, they would remember the punchline, and they would respond accordingly.

Alas. Last night, short of time, I found myself rehashing Phillip Jensen #34, the failure of astrology, in which due to changes in calendars and inaccurate original measurements, we are all born under a different zodiac sign than the one supposedly ascribed to us at birth. Hence, we are all at least one out, and the predictions set out for us in the relevant bit of the women's magazine really apply to our neighbour born in the next month.

I added in my own little winkles about only reading horoscopes after the event, in doctors' waiting rooms, but I felt deep within me the shame of my plagiarism.