Where Rules Become Roots
How a 1,500-year-old monastic guide taught me to live & why I'm writing about it here.
I never met a rule I didn’t want to break.
As a kid, I bristled at structure, questioned authority, and resisted anything that smelled like control. I’ve always been a little allergic to systems, suspicious of the word obedience, and quick to challenge anything that looked more like religion than God. This, of course, drew me to find a natural home in punk and hardcore culture as a kid that I still hold near to my heart today.
I’m still that way in many ways. Tattooed, questioning authority, systems, and harmful theologies. It then seems logical for many people to question my obsession and commitment to this thing called The Rule of Saint Benedict. I’m an oblate at a Benedictine Monastery and am now writing on this rule. For someone who hates rules, does it not seem ludicrous that I would commit myself to this book and these teachings?
I think it’s important to first note how I came to the way of Benedictine life in the first place. I didn’t visit this path looking for rules, structure, or even clarity on how to live. When I first visited a Benedictine monastery was broken, disoriented, and deeply disenchanted with religion as a whole.
My mom had died. Depression had become my closest companion. And the spirituality I had inherited — the one built on certainty, answers, and tidy Bible verses—no longer had the space to hold the depth of my grief. The religious tools I had in my tool belt were no longer serving me, and I needed relief.
In a way that can simply be described as Divine, I found the Benedictine sisters of Benet Hill Monastery. They didn’t try to fix me. They didn’t hand me formulas. They didn’t ask me to believe anything I wasn’t ready to believe. They just welcomed me.
With open hearts. With open arms. With a quiet spaciousness that felt like God.
In their presence, I was allowed to grieve, question, and wander. It was in that sacred wandering inn, something inside me began to soften and heal. The God they embodied and pointed me toward was not the God of fear and fences I had grown up with.
It was the God beneath the God. The One who holds all things together. The One who cannot be contained in dogma or doctrine or denomination. The One who is always and only Love. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, that God began to reintroduce Themself to me.
Not as the keeper of rules, but as the source of life. Not as the judge in the sky, but as the presence within and around all things. Not as the gatekeeper, but as the gate. The sisters’ lives reflected that God. The way they moved, prayed, laughed, made cinnamon rolls, welcomed strangers, honored silence, and spoke of the Divine. It wasn’t performative. It wasn’t religious in the way I had known. It was true.
They loved people I was once taught to avoid. They embraced stories that weren’t their own. They held nuance and complexity with tenderness, not fear. They lived what I can only describe as a radical, embodied compassion.
Yet there was a paradox at play.
For a community grounded in a “Rule” they seemed to live with more spiritual freedom than anyone I had ever met. What looked like a life of structure was actually a life of liberation.
They didn’t live according to rigid, lifeless laws. They lived according to rhythm. According to Love. According to the deeper current of God’s presence pulsing through every ordinary moment.
And the more I watched them, the more I realized: I didn’t want to be tamed. I wanted to be transformed. And they were showing me how. As is so often the case with things of the Spirit, what I first misunderstood turned out to be the very thing I needed. The rule they lived by was not about control. It’s about support. It’s not a cage, it’s a trellis.
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The word rule, in this context, comes from the Latin word regula. It’s where we get the word for trellis: a simple, sturdy structure that supports the growth of a grapevine. Without a trellis, a vine will still grow, but it grows wild. It sprawls across the ground, clings to the dirt, becomes vulnerable to disease, and bears only a fraction of the fruit it’s capable of. But with a trellis—with a bit of intention and guidance—the vine is lifted. It’s supported to grow upward, toward the light. It becomes strong, deep, and fruitful. And so do we.
Jesus said, “Abide in me, and I in you… as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine.” To abide is to remain. To connect deeply, intentionally, and with presence. In a world of chaos and distraction with every vice screaming for our attention and time, this kind of abiding doesn’t happen by accident. We need something that helps us stay rooted in what matters. That’s what the Rule of Saint Benedict offers. It’s not a list of rigid demands, it’s a sacred rhythm. A trellis for the soul. It doesn’t suppress desire; it refines it. It doesn’t restrict love; it gives it shape. It doesn’t demand performance; it invites presence.
In my time with the sisters of Benet Hill, I saw this lived out. Their lives bore real fruit. The kind the Spirit grows in hidden places: gentleness, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, joy. These weren’t traits they forced. They were the natural result of lives deeply anchored in the Vine, supported by a Rule that helped them remain close to God. Because whether we realize it or not, we are always being formed. The way we live, our habits, pace, and posture,shapes who we become.
We don’t drift into freedom. We cultivate it.
A Rule of Life is not about restriction; it’s about intention. It’s how we gently train our souls to stay near the Source. It’s how we become people of compassion in a culture of comparison. People of rootedness in a world obsessed with chasing. People who abide—and in abiding, bear fruit. Because the spiritual life isn’t just what we believe. It’s how we live. And if we want to bear the kind of fruit that nourishes the world, we need more than willpower. We need a trellis.
A trellis, a rule, a system of support wisdom helps us bear fruit of the spirit. The wisdom of the rule teaches us that a life that truly bears fruit must live as nature teaches us to bear fruit. This is to say, trees and vines are seasonal. They don’t always bear fruit. They need dormancy, pruning, and deep rest. They lose everything in winter so they can bloom again in spring. The Rule of Saint Benedict honors this truth. It makes space for stillness, welcomes silence as a teacher, and allows room for both flowering and falling apart.
Over the years, studying with the sisters, I’ve come to learn that this is what the rule offers, not just a way to live, but a way to endure. This small book, written in obscurity by a man who longed for depth, has become a trellis that has held communities steady for over 1,500 years. Through war and famine, peace and renewal, joy and collapse, it has helped people remain grounded. It’s not loud or flashy, but it lasts. And anything that endures this long deserves our attention.
In a time when war, violence, poverty, injustice, and instability of all kinds is always nigh, to lean into the wisdom of of a people who have endured all life has to offer, while still loving God and others, just makes sense. It’s the wisdom I long to embody.
Benedict didn’t give us a rulebook, he wrote a lifestyle. A way to stay close to the Divine when the world feels unrecognizable. A way to live with love when fear would be easier. A way to root ourselves in presence, day by day, moment by moment. In a time when everything is hurried and noisy and disembodied, this Rule is a quiet rebellion—a simple invitation to stay in the Vine, to live from Love, to return again and again to what really matters.
So yes, I’ve never met a rule I didn’t want to break and to be honest, that’s still true. I’ve always pushed back on systems that felt hollow, questioned rules that seemed disconnected from love or common sense. I’ve never had much patience for control disguised as obedience, or structure that asked for compliance without offering wholeness. Rules for rules’ sake never moved me because they don’t offer healing or wholeness.
But this Rule I’ve committed myself to isn’t that kind of rule. It’s not a set of mandates to blindly follow. It’s a path of wisdom. It’s not about earning or pleasing or behaving—it’s about becoming. The Rule of Saint Benedict doesn’t hand out checklists; it offers a way to live. A way to grow. A way to stay rooted in what really matters. It invites me not into rigidity, but into rhythm. Not into control, but into communion.
And I have no problem submitting my life to that. I have no issue following wisdom. Because wisdom doesn’t shrink us. It expands us. It doesn’t demand perfection. It cultivates presence. And in a world that is constantly reacting, dividing, and consuming, choosing instead to live from ancient, time-tested wisdom is a quiet act of resistance. It’s a daily return to the deeper current beneath the chaos.
This is a true rebellion.
I didn’t come to the Rule of Saint Benedict to obey; I came to discover a life that flows like love. Love is a rule I don’t mind obeying.
This is good. Soul-deep nourishment.