Daily Meditation for October 31, 2024

Reflections from Minnesota writer Garrison Keillor in a September 2024 online column. Many people have become weary of angry, hateful speeches and comments about the United States being in decline, becoming a failed state, and promising apocalyptic times to come.

“That is not for America. God has blessed this country lavishly. Brilliant immigrants have come for freedom from the fevers of Europe and the grinding poverty of leftover colonial empires, and their ingenuity and spirit and wit and their adoration of this New World have enriched us each and every one. Diversity, schmiversity, we simply are a diverse and fascinating assemblage of wonders and oddities, dreamers and floaters, 4-H-ers, bellyachers, Unitarians, contrarians, librarians, egalitarians, and Wagnerians—a person walks through town and never lacks for entertainment. God bless America. He has done so before. We need it now.”