Osler's Razor

Yesterday, I stumbled across this-- a blistering critique (with even harsher comments) of something I wrote for CNN, coming from an academic subculture I don't know much about. Frankly, I did not understand it. My first thought, in trying to get a handle on it, was to ask my friend Katherine Darmer, whose clear-eyed intelligence and compassion would cut through the bullshit-- both theirs and mine-- and lead me to a place of greater knowledge. That is what she did, wonderfully, for thousands of students at Chapman Law School and for the many of us who in our own ways were her followers.

She was fortunate to be born from brilliance. Her parents, Bob and Alice Baird, are legends of the best kind at Baylor, where Bob is a philosophy professor. I remember once having dinner with the philosopher Dallas Willard, and despite my best efforts to raise other topics, Willard kept bringing the conversation back to Bob, because of his deep respect for Professor Baird. It was Bob who first introduced me to his daughter.

One reason that Katherine provided such good advice to me was that our professional lives tracked one another nearly identically. She went to Princeton undergrad, and graduated from Columbia Law (as a Harlan Fisk Stone scholar) about the same time I graduated from Yale Law. Then we both clerked in federal court, worked for a big firm for three years, served as federal prosecutors from 1995-2000, and entered the academy in 2000. We both wrote about sentencing and (later) the civil rights of gay men and lesbians. It was easy for her to see things through my eyes, and vice-versa.

When I wrote articles, I would send them to her and she would respond with a thicket of insights that I had not thought of. Sometimes, if I was in California or she was in Texas, we would linger in the kitchen after others had drifted off somewhere, talking about ideas. Those conversations had a profound effect on me.

In 2008 and 2009, she told me about her work against Proposition 8 in California, which would bar same-sex marriage there. She was a passionate advocate on the issue, and she was one of the people-- perhaps even the most important-- in shaping my own evolution on that issue, and her challenge required me to first confront my own personal history. Later, she counseled me, wisely, on the decision to write and speak about Baylor's policies regarding gay men and lesbians.

Katherine's advise was always astute, in areas large and small. When I was planning a conference at Baylor, I called her. When I was to give the commencement address at her alma mater, Vanguard High in Waco, I called her. She told me to talk about "love" a lot, and I did. When I was considering the move to St. Thomas, I sought her counsel again, and everything she said was right. By then, I had learned to do what she advised.

What was it like to talk to Katherine Darmer, to seek out her counsel?

First, she had a trait that I see in the very best trial lawyers, the very best teachers, and the very best parents. She was a wonderful listener. She would lower her head a little bit, lean against a counter, and do nothing else but take in what you were saying. She was comfortable with being quiet as she listened, which is a rare and wonderful trait. If she wanted to clarify something, or ask a question, her hand would come up, palm out, to signal that, the gentlest of signs.

Then she would nod. If she nodded hard, her hair would bounce, and sometimes she did nod hard. She understood, and she did-- her intelligence could be sharp and fierce or soft-spoken, but it underlaid everything. She was, as we say in law, a "quick read," a talent that takes equal measures of intelligence, empathy, and critical thinking.

It was those traits-- intelligence, empathy, and critical thinking-- that would frame her response. One did not go to Katherine Darmer if you wanted a simple "yes" or affirmation; she was too smart and honest for that.

I cannot ask her about the piece I am pondering, because she is gone. We miss those who have died when we stumble on the hole that they leave, and for Katherine that will be different for different people; she left many very large holes.

For me, the rest of my life, there will be a repetition of the same moment... I am thinking about writing something, or doing something, and it is her counsel I need. That is when I will stumble into that hole and remember her as she was-- a woman who worked most hard for people who were not like her, who turned her mind and energy to justice, and who so often used her prodigious gifts in the ways that were best for God's creation, this world.