A regula serves not only as a sturdy walking stick while fording a rushing river, facing upstream and against the current; it can also give shape to the particular kind of life that knows holiness intimately, a life that harried people like you and me are otherwise powerless to create. A Guide or Rule is both difficult and liberating.

Difficult, because the life envisioned requires hard work if we’re to avoid simply being carried along with the masses. A Guide does inhibit—it limits choices, it teaches us to say “no” as well as “yes”.

But it’s also liberating. By choosing a way of life, knowing what options we will choose and which we will not, embracing certain values and not others, we’re free from captivity to a passive life. We’re no longer being driven along with the masses. We’ve determined the course our life will take. We live with fewer illusions. And we learn how to spot those illusions when they blind us to what is truly real and good and holy.

Click here to read my Daily Guide.