On the Wisdom of the Desert

This is a fine, brief collection of the sayings, stories, and other writings of the early Christian monks who retreated to Skete — today Wadi El Natrun, in Egypt. Skete was a city in the desert just west of the Nile valley, and the early monks went there to focus on their devotion; but it wasn’t only a place of prayer and contemplation — the monks worked hard, believing that rest opened the door to moral failing. Merton’s curation is excellent, and I think it will appeal to far more than Christians. Some of the material is explicitly Christian, but much of the advice may well be universal: how do we extinguish vice? what must we do to live moral lives? how do we set our ethics? Most of us won’t go off and become desert monks, but we don’t have to — there’s virtue in living ethically within a community of people, and because that’s so much harder to do, the reward must be greater. The 150 passages here are uplifting and nourishing to the soul, and essential reading for anyone interested in Christian spirituality, or in spirituality at large.