Repeats

Regulars among you will know that one of my interests is performing magic illusions*. I started over 30 years ago, buying a handful of illusions that I thought might be useful in my work as a youth minister, and I discovered an aptitude for it.

Now I have a wide repertoire of illusions and put on a termly show at the church I serve, freely available to the wider community. Part of the problem with performing regularly to some of the same people is that you need to keep changing the material you perform. Unlike singers and bands for whom there is an expectation that they will perform from their back catalogue in a concert, magicians don’t often perform the same illusions. One of the main reasons for this is that the ‘wow’ factor diminishes considerably when you have seen an illusion and know what is happening.

I think it is a bit like comedians. Material is funniest when you hear it for the first time because the surprise element is still there. But many of us have favourite routines that comedians perform which we like to see again and again and I think there are some illusions that are a bit like that. Perhaps they involve a volunteer because there is an element of novelty and uncertainty with a new element in the illusion (the volunteer’s reaction, for example). There are also some illusions that are so strong that they are worth seeing again and again: for many magicians the late great Paul Daniels’ Chop Cup routine is a good example of such a performance.

We listen to the same song over and over again because we enjoy it and it makes us feel good. We have ‘favourites’ in our playlists for that reason – video or audio.

Many people also have favourite verses or parts of the Bible. Those passages may remind them of an encounter with God, or of a special moment in their life, or a promise they hold onto.

I wonder what your favourite Bible passage is, and why?

Be blessed, be a blessing

*If you’d like to check out some videos of my performances with my partner in magic, Stew the Rabbit, you can see some of them here: during Covid Lockdown I filmed a series of them to entertain and perhaps help people cope with some of the emotions they felt. Here you can also see the BBC News report of some magic I performed with 2 local Councillors in aid of Comic Relief.