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hippiechyck
07-03-2009, 02:43 PM
Title of Book: A Mother's Rule Of Life

Author (s) name (s): Holly Pierlot

Date of publication (year): 2004

Publisher: Sophia Press

ISBN: 978-1-928832-41-6

Number of Pages: 224

Where it can be purchased: http://www.sophiainstitute.com/productdetails.cfm?PC=253

Illustrated? no, but samples of charts are in the book

Genre of the book: Non-Fiction / Biography / Religion / How-to / Homeschooling Specific / Life Management

Rate your book: Highly Recommended

Appropriate Age group for this book: adult women

Book Summary:

From website above:

Motherhood and homeschooling had overwhelmed her. The house was dirty, the laundry undone. Holly felt frustrated, discouraged, and alone. She couldn’t find time to snuggle and have fun with her five children or to go out with her husband. Yes, she loved Philip and she did love God, but she had come to resent Philip’s freedom and she almost never found time for prayer

Today, everything’s better.

Holly still homeschools, but the house is cleaner, she gets more done, and the kids are happier. There’s less stress, less strife, and less housework. Holly’s been healed of past wounds that troubled her soul and her marriage. Best of all, she spends at least an hour each day in prayer and time each evening with Philip.

Holly brought about these changes with what she calls her Mother’s Rule of Life, a pattern for living that combines the spiritual wisdom of the monastery with the practical wisdom of motherhood.

Holly’s Rule is not just another set of schedules; it’s a way for Christian mothers to answer God’s call to holiness.

With the help of your own Rule, you can get control of your own household, grow closer to God, come to love your husband more, and raise up good Christian children. In these wise and practical pages, Holly shows you how.
Do you want to be a better wife and mother? To have more order in your life? To grow in union with God? Are you desperate yet?

With your own Mother’s Rule of Life, you’ll transform motherhood and its burdens into the joyful vocation it’s meant to be. Learn from Holly Pierlot how to craft a Rule that’s right for you and your family. Then use that Rule to help God draw you, your husband, and each of your children into Heaven!


Opinion of the Book:

I enjoyed this book very much and found it very helpful, where other books on the subject of "homeschool/home organization" leave me either feeling defeated or just plain give me hives :wink: Holly writes to be encouraging without being condecending or overly self important. She emphasised through the book that HER personal rule will probably not work for your family and to make your own. A big difference in this book as to the others. She gives wonderful highlights from her own busy life and how the Holy Spirit guided her to make the changes she needed to make in her life.

Holly is a devout Catholic wife and mother, and although I am not (Catholic), I gleaned much from her frank devotion to Christ and to pleasing Him in all she does. I did have to ask several of my Catholic friends about certain terms I was not familiar with, but all in all, I highly recommend this book for any woman who seeks to serve the Lord with gladness in all she does! She is writing to an audience who loves God, not a Catholic-specific audience.

She also has a workbook available for download (http://www.mothersruleoflife.com/hollysnotebook.html)on her site that has menu plans, prayer times ( Mother's Liturgy of the Hours), organization pages for each room of your home, children's spiritual/school charts, etc. Very worth the purchase to work through the book!

Holly also has a web site (http://www.mothersruleoflife.com/index.html)with a blog and a place where you can glean encouragement, support and ask questions.


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Rain
07-03-2009, 06:03 PM
She is writing to an audience who loves God, not a Catholic-specific audience.

Would you say this book written for a Christian-specific audience? I'm not quite clear here -- other religious persuasions love God, too, but the book is written by a Christian ... so I'm wondering if this book is written for Christians but not necessarily only those who are Catholic, as opposed to a general audience seeking a deeper relationship with their interpretation of divinity.

hippiechyck
07-03-2009, 07:44 PM
Would you say this book written for a Christian-specific audience? I'm not quite clear here -- other religious persuasions love God, too, but the book is written by a Christian ... so I'm wondering if this book is written for Christians but not necessarily only those who are Catholic, as opposed to a general audience seeking a deeper relationship with their interpretation of divinity.

it's definitly written to those of faith in God....she clearly loves the Lord and is seeking to please Him (i wish we had a spell checker :wink:)

But Rain, I think anyone would get a lot out of this book, reorganizing priorities to put your "divinity" first and foremost in your life, as it were.

Rain
07-03-2009, 09:20 PM
it's definitly written to those of faith in God....she clearly loves the Lord and is seeking to please Him (i wish we had a spell checker :wink:)

But Rain, I think anyone would get a lot out of this book, reorganizing priorities to put your "divinity" first and foremost in your life, as it were.

OK ... sorry to be a pest, I don't mean to be :) So from your second sentence, I'm thinking that you mean faith in the Christian view of God? Because I do have absolute faith in God .... I just see Him totally different than a Christian does.

Just trying to clarify :) because I've seen some Amazon reviews of books where "God" is meant to be only Christian, and others where people are complaining that "God" mentioned in the book isn't based on the Bible.

So my question would be more of a -- (and I don't mean this to cause any offense, just asking for clarity's sake) -- is this a 'faith in God' Eckhardt Tolle way, or 'faith in God' conservative Christian way?

Thanks :) I looked at her site, and though I could see she was Catholic, it's hard to tell just from that how inclusive or exclusive she is.

GrandSophy
07-04-2009, 10:20 AM
I read this book and I liked it. It's all about scheduling or arranging your life around your spiritual commitments. I think you would have to be at least interested in the Catholic faith to get something out of it. I am not Catholic, but I am interested in all Christian spiritual practices.

hippiechyck
07-04-2009, 07:44 PM
OK ... sorry to be a pest, I don't mean to be :)
Thanks :) I looked at her site, and though I could see she was Catholic, it's hard to tell just from that how inclusive or exclusive she is.

Rain, never a pest :D i would have to say she's probably writing from a conservative Christian stance, although, in my personal experience, Catholics are more apt to be accepting of others

I read this book and I liked it. It's all about scheduling or arranging your life around your spiritual commitments. I think you would have to be at least interested in the Catholic faith to get something out of it. I am not Catholic, but I am interested in all Christian spiritual practices.

i agree with you GS...i found it very encouraging:)

Rain
07-08-2009, 05:40 PM
Thanks! I ordered it from the library :D

hippiechyck
07-08-2009, 07:32 PM
i really hope you enjoy it! :D

LeahinTexas
07-15-2009, 10:46 PM
I read this book, too, and liked it.

I would say that it is very Catholic oriented, but could easily be used by others who want to follow a spiritual discipline. What I got out of it was that she wanted to have the spiritual disciplines that in a limited way were similar to rules of religious lives of priests and nuns, but wanted to do it with a family. If you were not Catholic or even Christian, you would have to have tolerance for reading about these spiritual disciplines and be able to translate them into your own.

Some examples of the disciplines: Divine Office (prayer), scripture meditation, adoration, mass, confession, spiritual reading, Bible reading and so on.

So she expanded the idea to family. It is very worthwhile.

She gives a lot of information about her personal spiritual journey which I found to be less helpful. I was put off by her explanation of why she returned to Catholicism from her time exploring a protestant Christianity; her argument was that the protestants that she knew were sleeping around and such. Of course, she is free to do as she wants or feels led, but her reason didn't really make sense to me. I wished she'd left that out.

She also talks some about opening herself up to evil spirits during a phase of her life when she was exploring the occult and then having to have a priest involved with correcting that; in fact, in her opinion, the priest was the only way to overcome the resulting depression.

These points are small parts of the book, however.

I haven't read this in a while. I may have to go through it again!

Leah

Rain
07-15-2009, 11:24 PM
She also talks some about opening herself up to evil spirits during a phase of her life when she was exploring the occult and then having to have a priest involved with correcting that; in fact, in her opinion, the priest was the only way to overcome the resulting depression.


thanks for the warning

hippiechyck
07-16-2009, 08:28 AM
She also talks some about opening herself up to evil spirits during a phase of her life when she was exploring the occult and then having to have a priest involved with correcting that; in fact, in her opinion, the priest was the only way to overcome the resulting depression.

These points are small parts of the book, however.

I haven't read this in a while. I may have to go through it again!

Leah

i forgot about that Leah, thanks for mentioning it