Fifteen hundred years ago, a young man studying in Rome was awakened to see his life and the lives of those around him as mere illusion. He, like so many others, was actively passive—unwittingly and uncritically being carried along by the flotsam of a society going essentially nowhere. Benedict, freshly aroused by a desire for a different way of life, took up residence in a cave outside the city.

He wasn’t the first to put legs on his fantasy of a holy life, but he was the most influential. And his famous guide for daily life—the Rule of Saint Benedict—has given rebels in every generation a way to stand in the midst of the river, facing upstream, cross through it, and walk the land aware of the wonder of God, present to Mystery.

Rule comes from the Latin word, regula, and is related to words like regulation, regular, rectangle, rectitude, rules and ruler (both kinds: ruler-as-leader and ruler-as-straight edge).

To be who you wish to be---who you were made to be---will require that you too recognize how passive you are to the forces that want to pull you along.

A guide or rule of life is a sturdy walking stick to help you ford the river and go where you wish to go, be who you need to be.

Here's The Daily Guide I, and many others, pray each day.