Article February 17, 2003 Issue

To be a healer, I had to learn to listen

By Ruth Elizabeth Jenks

I've always been very comforted by law—that is, I know that when law is obeyed, everyone is blessed. Of course there are laws that seem unjust, prejudicial, and subject to unending interpretation. But as a law professor once told me, every human law has its origin in the Mosaic Decalogue, or Ten Commandments. And it can be intriguing to try to trace whatever ill a particular law is trying to address back to the original intent of those Commandments.

A person can quote the law, know the law, and yet miss the art of applying the law. The law appears to be fixed, but its application is always individual and unique. Take music, for instance. Ten music students can study all of the rudiments of music, and the science underlying those rudiments, and yet one student may express it in jazz, another in the tradition of the baroque, another with some entirely new approach. Yet underlying the art of individual application is the same fixed set of principles. Even if all of those ten students expressed it in jazz, no two would express it the same way.

This has been one of the most important discoveries in my spiritual journey—a discovery that I liken to the realization that science and art are linked. You need the letter and the spirit. The foundation and the superstructure.

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