Rules for Life
By Andrea Lingle
“One by one, Lord, I see and I love all those whom you have given me to sustain and charm my life. ” (Chardin, The Mass on the World, “The Offering”)
Attend to these instructions, Listen with the heart and the mind; they are provided in a spirit of goodwill.
These words are addressed to anyone who is willing to renounce the delusion that the meaning of life can be learned;
whoever is ready
to take up the greater weapon of fidelity
to a way of living that transcends
understanding.(McQuiston, 17)
What rules do you live by?
Is seven or five the proper amount to exceed the speed limit? How about seventeen? How many vegetables do you eat per day? Does corn count? How many days should you go between washing your sheets? Jeans? Car?
We all live by rules. Some are imposed by others and some are self-imposed. Some are imposed by nature and others by chance.
While I am fascinated by gravity, it does not offer any flexibility. I can’t choose how to interact with it. I do not have to wake up each day and choose to project from the surface of the earth in a perpendicular fashion. Well, I do have to stand up, but, once that decision is made (with great reluctance on my part), I find that my interaction with gravity is standard and invariable. As I walk down the stairs, my brain does not have to interpret gravity in a new way. It can simply allow the cerebellar automaticity carved out in my toddlerhood to take over, leaving me able to wonder about rules and scheduling and Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
During my inter-floor passage today, I found myself gathered up by the interplay between Chardin’s words that we pondered during Advent, the Rule of St. Benedict as worded by John McQuiston II, and the Liturgy for the Mundane that flowed from the heart of St. Teresa of Avila last winter. I wondered if you, like me, have put away the garland and the glow and long to embrace the deep nourishment of finding meaning in the mundane.
As Longfellow noticed, “All are architects of fate.” You might not get to choose what you do each day, but you get to decide what it looks like. You get to make a rule. You get to say that each day you will wake up, obedient to gravity, but not to shame or hopelessness or cynicism. You get to choose “the greater weapon of fidelity.” Sticking to what you find deeply true. If you have ever run flat into the chaos of tragedy, you know the rasping pain of having well-meaning sympathizers try to eke meaning out of things that hurt. Sometimes your rule gets to be I am allowed to hurt.
So, how will we honor the mundane this year? By making a rule and sticking to it, tenaciously, one day at a time. We will return to this rule hour by hour and allow it to shape the cathedral of our lives. One by one we will live by a rule for living. What will your rule be? What will you allow into the one-by-one-ness of mundane life? Where will you post it? How will you remember? How will you apply its pigment to your hours?
I am stealing my rule:
“The first rule is simply this:
live this life
and do whatever is done,
in a spirit of loving kindness.(McQuiston, 17)
Mentioned in this essay:
Chardin, The Mass on the World, “The Offering”
McQuiston II, John, Always We Begin Again