I also enjoy the words you quote from John Donne. Can you place his words in context? I assume they are taken from an essay, do you know which one?

I had never read the Donne quote before, and this part I loved: “God never sayes you should have come yesterday, he never sayes you must again to morrow, but to day if you will heare his voice, to day he will heare you.”

Granted, we have some real duds in the hymn book and many choristers and accompanists that do further dmage to otherwise fairly good hymns. But when led well and op to tempo, they can come alive and inspire more to sing.

Kristine touched me with her sentiments on November. It’s been my favorite month for many years for many of the same reasons she eloquently described. Thoughtful post.

In my home country the first days of November are the days people go to the cemeteries to put flowers on the graves of their beloved ones. No American Halloween around (except for the commercial push to get it into the culture). And so indeed, as you mention, “All Saints’ Day is observed by many Christian churches as a day to remember the lives of virtuous people and rededicate onesself to following their example.” But then America has (moreover) its Thanksgiving, which we do not have in Europe. It is, to me, gratitude for the present, for family, for the living, and the expression of hope for the future. I am grateful both for the Catholic All Saints’ Day and for Thanksgiving.

November, indeed, is a special month.

I must admit, however, that I also am a fan of “Count Your Many Blessings.” I think you’re right to note where it lacks in a deeper moral sense; it suggests that a remembrance of God’s grace should come through positive thinking, though a listing all of one’s goodies, through a kind of elision of one’s present circumstance, rather than properly expecting us to exercise remembrance in the midst of the fulness of our discomfort, worries, and pain. Hence, as a hymn that seeks to put our souls in a right relationship it Gods, it’s not all that impressive. Nonetheless, I like it. I like it because it has a tutelary, school-marmish tone; in singing it, you replicate a rather intimate, perhaps stultifying, but also humbling relationship, in which we all are children who need still have a lot to learn. Which, of course, is true. If all our hymns partook of such subtle authoritarianism it’d be terrible, but I think it is no little blessing to belong to community that recognizes the need to sit itself down and give itself a talking to every once in a while. (This same applies to “In Our Lovely Deseret,” “Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel,” “Have I Done Any Good?” and “Today, While the Sun Shines”–though I wish they had left in “there is not tomorrow, but only today.”)