Christopher Hitchens and Garrison Keillor

Two things happened this week.

I finished Christopher Hitchens’ (aka Sir Hitch) book, God is Not Great, and I saw Garrison Keillor live on stage.

Weird juxtaposition, at first blush, I know, but let's go a little deeper.

The subtitle of Hitch's book (RIP, by the way) is How Religion Spoils Everything. It's a volume that Hitch himself says that he wrote over the course of a lifetime living with and then apart from religious circles. For the last few decades, he became a devout atheist--another weird juxtapostion--essayist, and, well, alcoholic.

Garrison Keillor, on the other hand, is the nationally (internationally?) famous host of A Prairie Home Companion on NPR since, well, since before I was aware of either PHC or NPR. The radio show typically combines mild social commentary with humor--Lutherans vs. Unitarians, for example--and adds in a good measure of music, radio soap opera-like skits, and, of course, updates from Lake Wobegone.

I saw Garrison this week live on stage for the first time ever, and was it ever a memorable event. He told stories of Lake Wobegone, sang duets with Heather Masse, told jokes, and reflected on love in honor of Valentine’s Day. It was everything I expected, and more.

The “more” came by way of my thoughts comparing what Garrison was saying to what I had only so recently read in Hitch’s book. Garrison talked about how small we are when we look at ourselves in the grand scope of things. Sitting there in a rowboat in the middle of a lake with his uncle, he pondered how we live on a tiny planet that revolves around a sun that makes up the majority of our solar system’s mass and another planet, Jupiter, makes up almost all of the rest. And then, he mused, think about how our solar system is one of billions in a galaxy among billions in the universe. Yet, there he was in a rowboat with his uncle in the middle of lake, a mircoscopic speck of dust on an only slightly larger speck of dust floating around in the ether.

It’s a humbling thought...

Garrison’s message, couched in this cosmological context, was simple: live today. Live every day, and never wish a day away. Growing up in a severe Lutheran household, he said, people had high expectations for him and they all had to do with the second coming... Fine and dandy, but what to do until then? The answer: concentrate not on the second coming, but on the coming of each day, each beautiful day.

I left positively inspired.

So where does Hitch come into this? Surely, you might say, the atheistic (read here: cynical, vitriolic, [insert alternative platitude here]) can’t be compared to the poetic, profoundly touching craft of Garrison Keillor?

First of all, both are masters of the English language. They have mastered different registers and discursive genres, yes, but they each can turn a phrase like no other. I wish I could write like Hitch and speak like Garrison.

And then, each urges us to live our lives not for what may transpire for tomorrow, but for today. They each urge us to do so, moreover, not for reasons that stem from negative consequences like hell or expulsion from the faithful, but for reasons that find their being in the best that humanity has to offer.

For Hitch, humans are reasonable, logical, and capable of astounding feats of science, technology, civility, and polity, if only we can keep ourselves from being distracted by hatred, bigotry, and prejudice.

For Garrison, humans can create art, music, and poetry that bespeak the wonderfully profound depths of the human spirit. Why spend timing hating when we can spend that time loving?

Live well, my friends, and live today.