“Count your blessings…

…name them one by one.”  Does anyone remember singing that old hymn? I do.  I couldn’t find it in the new red United Methodist Hymnal, nor was it in the old purple one, so it might not have been a standard around UMC circles, but it was certainly sung pretty often in the churches that I attended growing up.  I remember as a youngster in the early ’70s that this hymn, to me, seemed ancient.  Its simple, plodding melody was characteristic of so many of our congregational selections and wasn’t cool like the hip new tunes that were making the rounds in the young folks gatherings — you know, those groovy, guitarry ones that the high school age youth group got to sing like Pass It On, Kum Ba Yah and Let Us Break Bread Together.  I was too young and immature to appreciate the meaning of the words woven into the antique sing-songy tune and I couldn’t get through the familiar refrain pounded out on our church’s warbley, out-of-tune upright piano without just a little eye rolling.

Of course time and maturity change lots of things.  I now understand what the writer was trying to convey.  I also have a greater appreciation for the generation that embraced the song and the hard times they went through — a time in our history when material things were a little more scarce and the reminder to look for unseen blessing may have made the difficult lives of some easier to bear.  And like the antique out-of-tune upright piano that now graces my own home, the familiarity and simplicity of this (and many other) old time favorites has the power to bring  me a measure of comfort and peace.

I thought about the words to this song last Sunday when a group of folks hung out after the worship service to take part in kind of a mini-workshop.  The activity we took part in is called Asset Mapping and its a staple activity for Asset Based Community Development folks.  But I think it could have been called the Count Your Blessings Game because that’s really what it was.   And I call it a game because it was really fun!  How do I know?  Well, because everyone got in on the action!  Kids as young as 6 to folks well past 60!

 

The object of the “game” was to name the assets we have in and around Broadway — our blessings, if you will — and identify them by general categories and keep them accessible.  So we took big sticky post-it notes and wrote down each asset in the category called out to us and stuck them on a bigger sheet of poster sized paper to keep track.  Some of the categories we used were physical assets, individual assets, associations, and economic assets. 

 

The number of assets called out were amazing!  It was fascinating to see how many treasures we could come up with connected to Broadway — gifts, talents, associations, connections, spaces and places!   It was terrific.  But the creative part came next, for we were then charged with taking several disparate gifts from several categories and trying to find ways to put them together — to connect the dots.  As you can imagine, the possible combinations are endless and so the challenge was to find assets that work together and still try to think out of the box for new ideas. 

Putting together all these ideas in creative (and sometimes zany) ways was fun.  But most of all it was eye opening to the innumerable ways we can share in the abundance we are surrounded by.  It was wonderful to be reminded that there are so many gifts and talents among us that are just waiting to be discovered.  What an enjoyable afternoon it was and a fabulous way to celebrate God’s generosity — kind of like counting our blessings and naming them one by one, sung to a hip new tune!