King David and other ancient Semitic poets, at least those I know of from inclusion in the Bible (some of the Semitic poetry in various works was non-Hebraic), would use repetition in various ways, not always exact duplication of the lines but perhaps providing more examples or even saying the opposite in an ironic tone. The book of Job is largely made up of three cycles of poetic conversation amongst Job, Eliaphaz, Bildad, and Zophar; it’s far from clear that a modern writer, in perhaps the way of Hemingway at his worst, would have provided more than one cycle of a few points organized in the way of a high school textbook summarizing the U.S. Constitution.
The psalms, as I noted, are often made up of ascending or descending examples of God’s greatness as a creator and the corresponding greatness of the Davidic monarchy. The lesser accomplishments of God or David are followed by to the greater and the greater are followed by the lesser. God is in the big picture and in the details as well. It’s not clear such writings would make it past the review of a professor at a famous writing school, or perhaps another such place.
I find that I am also repetitive, sometimes cycling around in the way of a song dominated by its refrain. The theologian Stanley Hauerwas had told me my writing was repetitive at times and said it was maybe appropriate for someone teaching new ideas. I think it to be even more appropriate for one who’s reshaping his own mind by his writing and is asking — or daring — his readers to do something similar. I don’t expect anyone else, wouldn’t want anyone else, to reshape their minds to be the same as my moving-target mind. I do hope they will respond to my writings, to their own experiences, to the other material they decide to study or read, so that they can reshape their minds in a way appropriate to Creation as we modern men are coming to know it — in light of the still valid traditional knowledge and exclusive of the now invalid traditional knowledge.
Rhythms. Let the thoughts ascend to some point and then maybe descend to the valley again, maybe jump down at once, and re-ascend.
I suspect this sort of a teaching technique would better allow learning even in highly technical fields such as mathematics or computer science or chemical engineering. It may be one of the reasons behind the advice a mathematics professor once gave in one of my undergraduate classes. “I chose two textbooks of different styles for the bookstore to order, but I think you’d be better off reading each at different times and also reading other textbooks along with some of the original papers underlying this subject.” I believe it was a course in abstract algebra. Anyway, the use of multiple and varying styles of presentation and varying selections of what’s most important would lead to a rhythmic way of shaping a mind to encapsulate this sort of material. Move back and forth between different presentations. For all the various presentations of material, move between active learning and contemplation.
Get into a rhythm of thinking and learning that will allow a fairly rapid yet gentle reshaping of your mind, not a reshaping to someone else’s needs or desires but rather a reshaping to encapsulate some plausible understanding of God’s Creation.