Toward order: Holly Pierlot’s “A Mother’s Rule of Life”

The movement from chaos to order is often not a decisive, once-and-for-all decision. Instead, there is a plodding course from disorder and discomfort to increasing regimen and calm. Often we unhelpfully assume that people who are orderly have always been so. Further investigation reveals many a neat nick was once a slovenly mess.

How does one successfully step from one to the other?

The journey is made of many small habits and daily decisions, but if not girded by an overarching principle, the transformation is unlikely to progress. Reaching order is what is sometimes called as achieving optimal work. In an age of relentless indecision and limitless possibilities, people, mothers especially, are hounded by a sense of not knowing what they should be doing. What is most important? What is most meaningful? What makes the most difference?

To reach optimal work, a flow state, is to know with certainty that you are where you need to be doing the task that needs to get done. There is a sense of energy and purpose. In a flow state, you no longer agonize over the passage of time. Living an examined life of purpose is, in certain respects, entering into eternity, a space outside of time.

The state of order seems so desirable, yet so many of us struggle to pursue it. We are led astray by vague notions of “spontaneity” and matters of the heart. While it is true that order can to a degree stunt creativity, there is another sense that raw creativity wrenched from any firm sense of ourselves as created beings is a dangerous and destructive thing. We may enjoy the storytelling and music of a drug-addled mind but for every genius with a bad habit there are countless addicts with no talent. We cannot confidently say that they are related.

For most of us, the people who are not geniuses, we can safely disabuse ourselves of the idea that order will stifle our creative powers and personhood. For most of us, order will set us free.

This is the message at the root of Holly Pierlot’s A Mother’s Rule of Life. The personal narrative of the book seems oversimplified and is often not very compelling (it’s hard to believe that the plain fact of basic routine cleaned up her house, taught her kids, and got the laundry done in a single day). Nevertheless, Pierlot’s philosophical and spiritual insight is well worth considering.

She writes about the Rule of the community that a nun vows to follow when she joins an order. Pierlot explains, “There are set norms and routines for community and private prayer, meals, chores, recreation, dress, house rules, and the exercise of specific apostolate of the order.” The purpose of the Rule is the flourishing of the individual and the community. Pierlot states, “The Rule brings order: ‘a happy disposition of things…a multitude reduced in some wise to unity.’”

This insight revealed what Pierlot so greatly desired: “That was just what I  wanted: a ‘happy disposition,’ and to reduce all the overwhelming tasks of motherhood into a nice, single unit of work I could handle.” More than a schedule or a checklist, the Rule, Pierlot explains, is “an organization of everything that has to do with your vocation, based on a hierarchy of the priorities that define the vocation and done with the intent to please God.”

When making the bed and doing the dishes can be an occasion to serve God and family, they become more dignified. If the children are safely abed at a reasonable time, leisure hours have been enjoyed, and all urgent tasks managed, caring for dishes, bedding, or some other aspect of home life can be an occasion to enter into a flow state, an experience of self-care, a moment of divine presence in eternity.