Background Notes:

In this song, we aimed to identify the multitude of ways we experience blessing.  Many, we think, understand “blessing” as events (e.g., birth of a child) or conditions (e.g., good health) – a type of good fortune that is bestowed on some, but not others, for reasons that are largely not understood.  With this hymn, however, we broadened the concept of blessing to include the many ways in which our hearts and minds are changed by a power that exceeds our own human capacity.  We identify as blessing new ways of seeing, hearing, giving, and growing despite the seemingly unchanging nature of a given situation or our own human limitations.  In this manner then, each phrase or sentence juxtaposes such opposites (e.g., we take action despite our fear, we learn though we’d previously been close-minded). By including so many pairings of powerful yet common-day blessings in this hymn, we hope to illustrate the abundance of God’s blessings to all in ways that extend beyond positive life circumstances or outcomes. The melodic line of this hymn transitions repeatedly between major and minor shifts, pulling the piece harmonically in very different directions – a musical indication of the spirit changing our hearts with each new realization of blessing.