A labor of vision

This morning, I read of Christopher Hitchens’ passing and felt very sad.

I did not know the man personally, of
course, nor did I share many of his convictions about the world.
 Indeed, Hitchens spent a good deal of time and energy (articulately and
entertainingly) attacking some of the things most important to me.  But
today’s news really hit me.  It was kind of like hearing that a friend
had died—or at least a distant cousin that you once stayed up late into
the night having an intense conversation where you both got really
worked up and ended up simply having to agree to disagree!  

I suppose the one thing that I came to
most appreciate about Hitchens over the course of my time spent with his
work during the writing of my thesis a few years back was the strong
element of moral protest that characterized his atheism.  He expected
better—from God, from religious institutions, and from those who claimed
to have some divinely inspired insight into the nature and purpose of
the cosmos.  Very often, after reading another of his scathing passages,
I would think, “yeah, you know he’s right about that… that shouldn’t be…. that doesn’t make sense… that is profoundly screwed up… why do we
say/do that?”  He held up an uncomfortable mirror to the religious, and
in this sense he functioned, however ironically or unintentionally, as a
prophet.