Osler's Razor

So... this wonderful thing happened on Friday in the atrium at the University of St. Thomas. We had a symposium on the topic of clemency, and it all kind of... worked. We started with two political scientists who described the decay of the pardon as a principled power of the executive, and ended with a woman who had received a commutation sitting with the prosecutor who had tried the case against her and the judge who had sentenced her. Within that frame, we heard from a Governor, a young federal judge, several academics, a former U.S. Pardon Attorney, two students, and a journalist. It was all of a whole, despite the mix of people, disciplines, and ideologies.

I'm still processing it all-- trying to figure out what it was that made it work. I wish that I could claim that I made it happen, but that isn't true; others (including our students) had much more to do with that. Of course, too, the presenters (and I was not a presenter) were unusually good-- they were passionate, informed, and engaging. The full room (150+ people) seemed rapt from 8:30 in the morning until 5 pm, which is... unusual.

What it had was a sense of purpose. We long for purpose in our lives; conflict can give us purpose, and even war, but so can faith. Sometimes, though, faith leads us to a purpose that is not just faith itself, but faith plus an engagement with the world, with loving our neighbors and caring for the whole.

So, yes, Friday had purpose. I need to figure out how that happened, because I want some more of it in my life. I'm hungry for it, and so are a lot of other people.