Twelve essays on the men and women who went into the Egyptian desert in the fourth century — on stillness, watchfulness, the hour that wants you to quit, and the one test they applied to all of it.
These essays take the psychology out of a Christian monastic tradition: attention, motivation, endurance, the recurring weather of an interior, and how to be with other people. They are read alongside modern research, with the evidence stated at the size it actually is rather than the size the claim wants.
The sayings come from the Apophthegmata Patrum, a compilation edited over several centuries and surviving in several recensions, with attributions that are traditional rather than secure. And they are not only fathers. Syncletica, Theodora and Sarah are in the collection, and the English name for the tradition quietly removes them.
What this collection does not admire is the asceticism. The literature contains extreme fasting sustained for years, sleep deprivation as a discipline, self-inflicted hardship, and deaths recorded approvingly. Several figures preserved as models would today be recognized as seriously ill. That is a deliberate omission rather than an oversight, and it means what is here is a slice rather than an account. The last essay says so at length.
Every essay carries a section headed The case against, in the body rather than at the end, because it is part of the argument. Three of them — on stillness, on acedia, and on grief — contain cautions that matter more than the practice they accompany.
Read them in order, or take whichever title describes your week.