Modern evil tempts us to stay busy, overstimulated, overscheduled, and overcaffeinated. We become lost, friendless, divorced, encumbered with too many possessions and commitments and too few healthy relationships.

Many people start a Rule of Life and are very energetic (nearly manic) writing their first five or ten chapters, then they burn out and drop the whole thing in exasperation. No need. Relax. It takes weeks to write an owner's manual for a kitchen mixer, and you are far more complex and valuable. Just write two or three or five days a week for twenty

The discernment and writing of a Rule of Life is countercultural and never more so than when dealing with the subjects in our lives that make us vulnerable. Our society encourages us to avoid confrontation (even within ourselves) and to reach for something to anesthetize pain and discomfort.

If you want to go back and edit or expand, so be it, but first, start and finish one full draft of your Rule. Keep at it. Do not stop until you have written out all the chapters you intended. Do not fall to the sin of pride so that you never finish it, and do not fall to the sin of sloth or the grief of fear so that you never really start it. If yo

What I notice about kindness is that it is a two-handed act. One must put down other things—being right, being sure, being judgmental, being self-righteous. These must be put down in order to pick up kindness. Kindness is like a big box; it takes both hands to hold and requires us to walk gently so as not to trip.

Christian formation is a matter of becoming the person you are being called into by God—your best self but not necessarily your easiest self.

My chapter on work includes a focus on mindfulness. Is my work producing something about which I am passionate or which is, at least, a good thing in the world? Is it, as the artist Henri Matisse would say, "illuminating the fog" of life or simply making more of it? Is my work in line with the art I want to make in life or is it just a me

This is one of the reasons I wrote this book: When we are not paying attention to our "being" but only our "doing," we lose our way in the dark forests of overfunctioning and overworking. And slowly, ever so slowly, our lives are too noisy, and we lose the ability to hear ourselves and to hear God.

The truth is that a book about writing a Rule of Life can begin just about anywhere and with any chapter you like. But if we live in God, and if we believe God is communicating to us, then it is essential that we listen as we live and listen as we write our Rule. If we listen to ourselves, to our mentors and family, to the world around us, and most