Rule of Life

We had a discussion about ‘rules of life’ yesterday.  There is a good chapter about this in Justin Lewis-Anthony’s If You Meet George Herbert on the Road, Kill Him: Radically Rethinking Priestly Ministry (2009).  The book suggests that a rule of life can serve as a public statement of the limits (and lack of limits) of a public ministry.  My sense from reading Lewis-Anthony’s own rule was that he wasn’t quite practicing what he was preaching in terms of simplifying ministry to ‘being religious’ and ‘killing’ George’s Herbert’s over-committed and over-active of priesthood.  But I did like broad point about the importance of having a rule to act as a guide to life, and there was actually much in common between the rule I have developed for myself and the rule Lewis-Anthony presents at the end of his book.  In our discussion we talked about the importance of language.  Some people prefer the idea of a rhythm or a guide to ‘rule’, since rules are there to be broken (Lewis-Anthony calls this a ‘fault’ not a ‘sin’).  There is a lot that is useful here in terms of boundaries and identity.  A key point was that these rhythms or rules need to be constantly reviewed and adjusted according to circumstance.