Blessings Unawares

Blessings Unawares January 8, 2012

I’m feeling very blessed today. Many amazing things have come together for me this month, and although I know I have a lot of hard work ahead, I’m feeling very hopeful. I truly believe 2012 will be an amazing year.

Old poems keep calling back to me lately, and this morning this verse by Emerson demanded my attention:

Worship

THIS is he, who, felled by foes,
Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows
He to captivity was sold,
But him no prison-bars would hold:
Though they sealed him in a rock,
Mountain chains he can unlock:
Thrown to lions for their meat,
The crouching lion kissed his feet:
Bound to the stake, no flames appalled,
But arched o’er him an honouring vault.
This is he men miscall Fate,
Threading dark ways, arriving late,
But ever coming in time to crown
The truth, and hurl wrong-doers down.
He is the oldest, and best known,
More near than aught thou call’st thy own,
Yet, greeted in another’s eyes,
Disconcerts with glad surprise.
This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers,
Floods with blessings unawares.
Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line
Severing rightly his from thine,
Which is human, which divine.

Ralph Waldo Emerson


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