CHAPTER 1
Rules, Roots, and Branches
When I was a small child, I knew a song from my grandparents' days: "Schooldays, school days, dear old golden rule days; reading and writing and 'rithmetictaught to the tune of a hickory stick." I liked it and disliked itsimultaneously. The tune was lilting, and the severe pedagogic regimen safely inthe past, yet the linking of the Golden Rule and that stick was too close forcomfort.
In our four-room school desks were clamped to the floor in neat rows, fastenedto sturdy metal strips like miniature railroad tracks. Window shades wereimpeccably aligned—woe to the teacher whose blinds were out of sync. No talkingunless you held up your hand, no whispering, no gum-chewing, no getting up fromyour seat without permission: pencil sharpening was an exciting diversion, andan authorized trip to the basement bathroom a high point in the day. You formeda neat line to go to the playground, where boys played on one side of the squatbrick building and girls on the other. I once had to carry a message to theteacher on duty on the boys' side and felt as if I were doing somethingdangerously illicit. Would I be praised for efficient delivery of the message,or reproached for being in forbidden territory?
This was not a harsh environment. The children were not struck or shouted at.All the rules were in fact reassuring, probably like the rules of a benevolentprison: you knew exactly where you were supposed to be and what you were to bedoing at any given moment. But the rules were not freely chosen by the smallinmates: they were a given, handed down by remote authorities. Spontaneity hadno place, nor did exuberant creativity. Who knows what might have happened ifsome rampaging free spirit had tried to blossom among us docile children in the1930s in the neighborhood called Rosedale?
Rules—they structure and punctuate our lives. There is the rule of the road andthe rule of law. There are rules of grammar, happily ignored by many. Somerulers are heads of state; some are twelve-inch strips of wood or plastic tuckedin the middle desk drawer. There are even three saints named "Rule." My favoriteis St. Regula, martyred in 302 and now remembered as one of the patrons ofhyper-Protestant Zurich. Beheaded, she carried her severed head to an ancientchurch on the riverbank, where she deposited it to mark one of the futurecornerstones. St. Rule was an obscure fourth-century Scottish saint reputed tohave brought relics of St. Andrew to Scotland. He is not to be confused with St.Regulus of Senlis—I haven't managed to find out who he was. Nor have I found anyindication of how these saints got their names. Were they sticklers for doingthings decently and in order, or did they compose rules for their communities?Or were they stragglers and underachievers who needed the structure of a rule tohold them up?
Not long ago, looking for something else, I found a folder labeled "Rule" in mycomputer directory. It is not a folder that I had created, but lies buried amongthose innumerable indecipherable items on the hard drive. It contains seventeenforbidding-looking files that obviously have something to do with the continuedhealthy functioning of my desktop. Like my three enigmatic saints, I haven't aclue how it got its name, nor can I fathom what its purpose might be. Now that Iknow it's there, I will continue to keep my distance and treat it with a healthyrespect.
* Contemporary Rules
In the freedom-loving twenty-first century I find myself wanting to write a bookabout rules. Not just those ordinary practical rules that help us get throughthe day—stand to the right and walk on the left on an escalator, put the trashout Tuesday night, take your laptop out of the case before going throughsecurity while juggling your shoes. And not those rules that restrict andoppress us, that compel us to plod when we really want to dance. I am convincedthat, even as we celebrate freedom, we yearn for rules. It is frightening anddisorienting to be adrift. Any parent of small children knows that structure isessential. Children find it liberating to know when they will eat and when theywill sleep, to know clearly which behaviors are acceptable and which are not, toknow that they are protected from danger. There are times when life itself maydepend on knowing and observing the rules. At the very least, there is freedomand security when our days are shaped and held by a supportive structure.Further, any terrorist—international, domestic, or household—knows thatuncertainty is the most powerful weapon.
Even as we might resist rules imposed by others as blighting our promise andhampering our creativity, we seek them out and cling to them like drowningswimmers to a lifeline. In our well-fed society, many of these rules currentlyconstellate around the intake of food. In simpler times counting calories couldbecome an obsession; then in the 1980s came the promise of eating more andweighing less. For fruit and vegetable-lovers this permissive approach wasalmost too easy, so fat was banished, then "bad" carbohydrates, then seeminglyall carbohydrates. Current dietary rules have come to rival the precepts setforth in the book of Leviticus. So now when I share a meal with Atkins dietaficionados, I am reproached by my own lack of self-discipline. As I drop alittle balsamic vinegar on my salad, I envy their clarity, their understandingof the acceptable and the forbidden.
Our very identities seem determined by our dietary regimens. I may not know whois Episcopalian or Presbyterian, Conservative or Reformed, Democrat orRepublican, but even short and relatively casual acquaintance can make clear whois Atkins or South Beach, low carb or no carb, organic or conventional, vegan orlacto-ovarian. I cannot resist pondering the roots of such dedicated asceticism.People of faith who are casual in their religious observance and neglectful ofthe spiritual disciplines can become rigorous to the point of zealotry abouttheir carbs or workouts. Rigid observance of a rule, not imposed but freelychosen, can provide a feeling of safety. I find myself remembering a childhoodrule, faithfully observed and passed on by oral tradition: "Don't step on acrack or you'll break your mother's back." Did we avoid the cracks in thesidewalk because we loved our mothers and feared what would happen to us withoutthem? Or did we feel power over the most powerful person in our lives, powerthat we resisted even as we contemplated it? Or were we just having fun, addingshape to the repetitive work of walking to and from school every day?
The prevailing rule of our time finds its roots in Ohio, where AlcoholicsAnonymous, the parent of all the twelve-step programs, was born in 1935. Theseprograms have burgeoned in the decades since: a cursory surfing of the Internetyields dozens of self-help programs based on the principles of AA, revealing thewide range of addictive behaviors in our addicted society. Could we be addictedto addiction? Or might addiction simply be a new way of looking at idolatry, andthe deceptively simple twelve steps be a new articulation of ancient spiritualtruths?
Is it merely graced coincidence that in his rule for monastic communitiesBenedict describes the twelve degrees of humility? Twelve is, after all, asignificant if not mystical number: there are twelve days of Christmas, twelvetribes of Israel, twelve apostles, and twelve months in a year. Why not twelvesteps on the path to wholeness? The steps themselves have a decidedly monasticring, succinct and deceptively simple: I admit my need of God, I choose tobelieve that God is able to restore me to sanity, and I turn my life over toGod's care. As an ongoing spiritual discipline I make a searching "moralinventory" of my life and confess my wrongdoings, asking for forgiveness andrestoration, and making restitution where possible. I seek to know God throughprayer and meditation, asking for the power to carry out God's will in everypart of my life and making an effort to share my experience of God with others.
I found it an illuminating exercise to read an Alcoholics Anonymous publicationfrom 1952 simultaneously with the Rule of St. Benedict and the even older Ruleof St Augustine. The similarities were striking: the twelve steps, a deeplypersonal confession of sin, repentance, and commitment, are articulated in thefirst-person plural: it is "we" not "I" who acknowledge powerlessness and theneed to change. The hard work of conversion, which is the drastic redirection ofone's life, is not to be undertaken alone. Whether in a medieval monastery or atwelve-step group meeting in the church basement, the rule is read and rereadconstantly in the gathered community. The seeker after God is always on the way;the addict is always recovering, not yet recovered. Even the ideal of monasticpoverty is foundational in the twelve-step ethos, where the extraneous has beenstripped away in anonymity and admission of powerlessness is the great leveler.
The founders of the twelve-step programs were concerned quite literally withsaving lives: only God—the higher Power—could restore them to sanity. Weassociate this word primarily with mental or emotional health, but its roots aremuch deeper. Sanity is wholeness, health, salvation, which is the goal of thegreat monastic rules. Even when attention is given to the most detailed matters,the vision is expansive and life-giving.
* Traditional Rules
The Rule of St. Benedict is a bestseller today. Monasteries offer "Benedictineexperiences," retreats in which participants live for a few days according tothe rhythm of the Rule. A number of business and management websites promise topresent Benedictine principles in "a fresh and original way that is applicableto any manager or organization today"; some promote the Rule as a source of"classic management secrets you can use today." I tried to imagine a fast-foodrestaurant or a used car dealership run on Benedictine principles. As one monk Iknow, himself a Benedictine, remarked to me wryly, "We could even sell laundrydetergent if we labeled it 'Benedictine.'" Yet Benedict's Rule deserves itspopularity, especially among those of us who are trying to find our way in acomplex and overstimulated world.
Antedating the Benedict's Rule by two centuries, Augustine's Rule is presumed tohave been written shortly after he became bishop of Hippo. When he had to leavethe monastery that he had established to assume his episcopal duties, Augustineset down in writing the advice that he could no longer give personally. LikeBenedict's, his Rule was written for a group of diverse men living a life ofprayer in community. It is very brief, offering precepts to be observed ratherthan particular rules for specific situations. Indeed, the word "rule" (regula)does not appear in the document. Not so well-known as Benedict's, it tooprovides insight into monastic life of long ago and offers equally importantguidance for the rest of us.
Not all the traditional rules are directed at large communities of men. One ofmy favorite books from the high Middle Ages is the Ancrene Wisse, written in theearly decades of the thirteenth century in Middle English, the language ofChaucer and Julian of Norwich. The author, an anonymous priest, wrote it as aguide for three anchorites, women who lived as solitaries in cells attached toparish churches. In some ways they were the spiritual descendants of the holy—ifbizarre—fathers of the Egyptian desert, deliberately cutting themselves off fromthe world and living in great austerity. But there were significant differences:the anchoress lived right in the heart of the town in a little room attached tothe parish church, dead to the world yet very much a part of it. The ritual ofher entry into the anchorhold was in part a burial liturgy. Once she entered hercell, the door was barred on the outside, and she never returned to "the world"—eventhough it was only a few feet away.
Her dwelling, more like a modest efficiency apartment than a stark cell, hadthree windows: one into the church, so that she could observe the celebration ofthe Eucharist and receive the sacrament; one into her garden—yes, she had agarden and a servant to tend it; and one opening onto the street. This was thevulnerable window, a vital link to others and at the same time a dangeroustemptation. Through it she could speak to women who sought her spiritual counseland to priests who would hear her confession, but she had to be careful to keepher hands inside and not to show her face.
I come back to that odd, fascinating old book again and again because thoseanchorites have something to teach the rest of us about the discipline offollowing a rule. They lived their lives of prayer and work without bells tocall them to the chapel at the appointed hours, without the support and exampleof a community, and—this might have been hardest of all—without the benevolentand sometimes ominous oversight of an abbess. Similarly, for most of us most ofthe time, the inner journey is a solitary one.
The anchorite's rule was twofold: an inner and an outer rule. Not really a ruleper se, it was more a set of guidelines. The aim of the anchoritic life,painfully cramped and restricted by our standards, was an expanded inner world.The outer rule dealt with externals: food, clothing, work, hours of prayer, andpermissible contact with others. It was flexible, according to circumstances,and existed only to serve the inner rule. As the anonymous author explains, it
is entirely concerned with outward things, and rules the body and bodilyactions. This teaches everything about how a person should behave outwardly—howto eat, drink, dress, sing, sleep, keep vigil.... And this rule exists only toserve the other. The other is like the lady, this like her handmaid. For allthat a person ever does according to the latter, outwardly, is only to rule theheart within.
The purpose of the inner rule was purity of heart, a single-minded focus on thelove of God. For this the author offers no recipe, no easy set of ten rules ortwelve steps. It is a powerful reminder of what we are about when we seeksolitude as a spiritual practice. The externals are not really important: wemight choose a religious house or a solitary cabin in the mountains; we mightparticipate in a structured retreat or go off on our own; we might be helped tomove into the silence by carefully chosen music, or we might find musicdistracting. And on and on—the possibilities are myriad. More broadly, for thoseof us not called to actual solitude, the Ancrene Wisse has a powerful message:it is the purpose, the intent of our rule that matters, not the externals.
In many ways, it is all a matter of translation—not just moving the words frommedieval Latin or Middle English into the English of our day, but alsouncovering the verities and commonalities in the lives of faithful peoplethroughout the ages. When I read in Benedicts Rule that the monk who ends hisweek of service in the kitchen must "wash the towels with which his brethrenhave wiped their hands and feet," my first thought is that I would rather noteat in the monastic refectory—I could just picture those towels by the end ofthe week! When I translate this precept from a medieval monastery to the typicalparish kitchen, however, it seems very wise and practical indeed. Clean up afteryourself! Leave the place tidy! If Benedict were writing now, he might urgecleaning out that parish refrigerator at the end of your tour of duty; it is noplace to grow penicillin on old cucumbers. Wipe up spills, and return everythingto its proper place. Maybe even wash the towels.
The specifics of the old rules may seem austere and confining. I am quite happy,for example, that I am not, like Augustine's monks, compelled to relinquish mysummer wardrobe to the keeper of the clothes when September comes and then toreceive my winter garments willy-nilly from the common closet, wondering inadvance what shapeless, badly-fitting outfit I will be given in May. I am quitehappy that unlike the anchoress I am free to talk to all sorts of men, not justthe occasional passing priest, and to lean boldly out the window. Yet once wemove past the details, it is clear that the traditional monastic values ofpoverty, chastity, and obedience are not outmoded concepts, even though theyseem out of place in the mall.
