A spiritual practice that I’ve long been intrigued by is crafting a Rule of Life. 

I first became acquainted with the concept of life Rules when I spent several weeks living at a Benedictine Monastery while pregnant with my eldest child eight years ago. Life for Benedictine monastics is guided by the most well-known Rule of Life, the Rule of St. Benedict, which Benedict wrote in the sixth century to guide his community of monks in infusing their faith into the habits and rhythms of their shared daily life.

The Rule of St. Benedict 

St. Benedict’s Rule includes concepts such as:

Prayer and work form the foundation of each day. 

Humility – involving reverence for God, suppressing one’s own will, and accepting difficulty – is a psychological and spiritual foundation for all living. 

Guests to the monastery should be treated with the utmost hospitality, including care and respect.

…and much more. 

While large parts of the Rule of St. Benedict are translatable to the lives of non-monastics (such as the concepts I named above), other aspects are specific to the men and women who take vows. For instance, the vows themselves: Monastics promise stability (staying in one community, conversatio morum (fidelity to the monastic way of life/conversion of life), and obedience (to the Abbot). Additionally, the Rule specifies how community life takes shape within a monastery. 

For this reason, while I’m interested in the Rule of Benedict specifically, I’m a little more interested in the concept of Rules of Life more broadly speaking. 

Rules of Life for Everyone 

At its heart, a Rule of Life is an intentional plan – made by an individual, a family or a community – that organizes the habits and routines of the everyday around a person or group’s deepest values. It’s a framework for living a life aligned with one’s consciously determined priorities. Crafting and living by a Rule of Life is an exercise in both discernment and discipline. It involves first deciding what’s most important and then operating in a way that reflects that import. 

Creating a Rule of Life sounds like a monumental task, but in an effort to make it feel less overwhelming (because I often find that if it feels daunting, it doesn’t happen), I like to remind myself that if it’s not the Ten Commandments, it’s not written in stone. While Rules of Life are often influenced by faith and grounded in spirituality, the ten commandments or the beatitudes they are not. A subtitle for any Rule of Life could be: at this stage of life. Or: right now. Or: for this season. 

On that note, I want to share with you the Rule of Life that I’ve drafted for my family this summer. I find that summer is a season when our family especially benefits from some explicit structure, given that the ordinary routines of school, extra curricular activities, homework and an early bedtime (to prepare for an early school bus pick up the next morning) are not on the table. Additionally, I’m aware that we have more spaciousness within our summer schedule, and that these few months are extra time that my husband and I get to instruct, enjoy, guide, love and shape our children. Whereas throughout the school year they spend a large chunk of their waking hours with their teachers and classmates (good thing I trust them!), in the summer they are mostly with our immediate family. In other words, summer is an opportunity to fill my children in a way that I deem needed and desired at this particular stage of life. 

While Rules are, by their nature, personal to the individual, family or community for which they are created, maybe you’ll find something from my ideas that resonate with you or that inspire you to create your own Rule. 

A Rule of Life for Summer 2026

Work together cheerfully. Everyone completes morning chores. Everyone participates in after-playtime toy pickup. Everyone helps clean up after dinner. You don’t have to like it, but try to contribute with a helpful and enthusiastic spirit. Remember the old adage: “if you can’t get out of it, get into it.” 

Speak with care. Whining, grumbling, bickering, and shouting – these are vexations to the spirit of everyone involved, both the speaker and the listener. While we can’t entirely eliminate these patterns of speech – kids are kids! Humans are humans! Perfection is a fool’s errand! – we can all make a concerted effort to curb negative communication and to practice positive communication (and to practice keeping silent when you can’t manage positive communication; another adage: if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”). 

Enjoy God’s creation. In our neck of the woods, summer is a great time to be outside. Fresh air and sunshine are good for all of us, and so we’re going to prioritize time outdoors through a three-prong approach: 1) in the morning – after chores and before it gets too hot – kids play outside for at least an hour, 2) in the afternoon or evening, depending on when it works for the parents, we go to the neighborhood pool, and 3) parents will go extra out of their way to plan outdoor outings (trips to the park, walks to the library, blueberry picking, time at the creek). 

Strengthen our bodies. This one dovetails with enjoying God’s creation. Given that my husband and I both tend towards the bookish side of life, we want and need to make a specific effort to nourish our bodies through movement, and to encourage our kids to do the same. This summer, cycling and swimming (and teaching our kids to do both!) are priorities. 

Grow independence. Our family is transitioning from having three little kids to having two school aged kids (a rising second grader, a rising kindergartener who will be six in July, and an almost three-year-old). Up until now, my husband and I have been heavily involved in most things: we prepare all the meals, we supervise neighborhood play, we facilitate clean up time. I think that this summer is a time for all of us to stretch our wings a bit, starting with inviting our seven year old (and maybe her five year old sister) to make their own breakfasts and allowing them to cycle/skate/scooter on the alleyway adjacent to our house unsupervised (with rules in place, of course). 

Strengthen character. Years ago I ordered the Rise Up Devotional for myself/my future children, and I think this summer might be the one to start reading it with my daughters. I’m envisioning reading a chapter each week, and making the virtue it focuses on a central point in our discussions, activities and observations throughout the week. 

Prioritize connection. There was a season of my life when the goal of vacation was to relax. This isn’t that season. The goal of trips with my family now is to make memories with my children…and that likely means that I’ll return from the vacations we took more tired than I was when we embarked. Keeping this expectation is essential for me to both avoid resentment and to maximize contentment. Other ways that I imagine prioritizing connection will look for our family this summer include: inviting my parents over frequently, organizing impromptu picnic parties with pool friends, and lazing on the front porch swing with my husband while the kids play in the yard, no phone, book or magazine in sight.