Osler's Razor

I am a very lucky advocate, in that I often get to speak to the exact groups of people who can put into action the ideas that I have. This past Friday, I got to address over a thousand people at the US Sentencing Commission's conference-- an audience that included over 100 judges, and hundreds of probation officers, defense attorneys, and (of course) the sentencing commissioners. On Thursday of this week, I get to talk to the federal defense bar of Nebraska at their annual gathering.  Then, on Friday, I will be debated Judge Richard Sullivan (SDNY) about narcotics policy back at St. Thomas. I will also get to teach this week, about all of this and more.

These are opportunities at wholesale advocacy: To affect, in some way, those who have the power to then make discrete decisions that matter.

Wholesale advocacy, though, never feels complete to me.  There is no human narrative there, no single life in being, no soul who cries out for justice.  I need some retail, too.  I'll get that this afternoon, when I go up to Sandstone Prison here in Minnesota to meet with someone who has been incarcerated for too long.

The two things, wholesale and retail, need one another.  Retail work compels us to change an unjust system, and that usually happens through wholesale work. But it is the retail that is real.  They feed off one another, reify and ennoble each other.

Jesus did both, and that is an example to us. He gave truth to huge crowds, performed public miracles for them, but then turned to one person: The woman at the well, the Centurian, the leper.  I fail to meet that example, or to come close. None of us do.  But there is a deep integrity in doing both. When Jesus talked to a crowd about the poor, he knew who they were, because he fed them and healed them.  He alternated between the teaching (to the crowds, or the learned) and the healing, and both seemed important.  Shouldn't they be for us-- even us professors?