Osler's Razor

I have been away from Minnesota for a week. I flew down to Texas and returned on a memorable trip which included three days of raging fever, St. Augustine, the Charcoal Oven's divine onion rings, two wonderfully likable television stars, my favorite trip to the grocery store in Waco ever, the strength and joy of an elderly Miata, sitting in the presence of grace, and Iowa's worst "Welcome Center." There is too much to describe in one post, but I will strive for a brief description of four moments.

Scene One: Waco

There are colors I don't know the name of, but I know those colors. There are emotions, too, that I love or detest; but they don't fall neatly into the strictures of our discourse.

After communion, I sit in an unfamiliar church. The people there, nearly all of them, do not know me. It is still Easter, though... and perhaps that is the name for this emotion, Easter, one of joy and calm and certainty. I did not see that coming, but it is like seeing a new color in an old palette.

Scene Two: Norman

Moving north from Waco, I gave a presentation at the 6th Annual Conference of Catholic Legal Scholars, which this year focused on the work of St. Augustine. My own panel was wonderful, featuring my friend/hero Susan Stabile and Meghan Ryan of SMU. Though my sharp-eyed colleague Lisa Schiltz kindly left this out of her description of the panel discussion, I did take the opportunity to answer a question by taking Prof. Stabile on cross-examination... and it was excellent.

Scene Three: Oklahoma City

The offices of the church were remarkable, and so were the works of the place-- a prison ministry, a health clinic, a shocking array of spiritual opportunities, and the governor, DA, Mayor, and hundreds of lawyers as members. The Minister walked me over to the sanctuary, built to hold the 6,000 people who attend services there every Sunday. It was an overwhelming, outlandish, wonderful space.

"This is where we would do it," he said.

I met his eyes, crossed my arms and smiled. "Perfect."

Scene Four: Cottonwood Falls, Kansas

There is a white stone courthouse, fourteen decades old, at the end of the brick street. A man in a red ball cap, jeans, and boots walks down the sidewalk, lean and shirtless. He passes the newspaper, the municipal building, the newpaper office, the paint store, the western wear store, the lawyer's office, and strides to the Coke machine by the filling station. He buys a Coke, pops it, drinks deeply, and looks back down that dusty street: bricks and sun and trucks and justice.