This is a great, brief collection of sayings, stories, and other content produced by the early Christian monks who retreated to Skete, today Wadi El Natrun, in Egypt. Skete was a city in the desert, just a bit west of the Nile River valley, and early monks retreated there in order to focus on their devotion. However, this was not just a place of prayer and contemplation: the monks worked hard, and they believed that rest opened up the possibility for moral failing.

Merton’s curated collection here is excellent, and I think that they’ll appeal to far more than Christians. While some of the discussions here are explicitly Christian, much of the advice may well be universal. How do we extinguish vice? What must we do to live moral lives? How do we code our ethics? Of course, most of us won’t go off and become monks in the desert, but we don’t really have to. There is virtue in living ethical lives in a community of people, in my opinion. Because it is so much harder to do so, the reward must be greater.

The 150 passages here are uplifting and nourishing to the soul. It’s a must-read for those interested in Christian spirituality, or spirituality writ-large.