This is a volume of translations of translations within translations by unknown translators. Consequently, the organization can be confusing, the prose can be stilted, and the stories can be hard to follow. But the compelling moments shine so brightly it hurts. A real-life satyr instructs a desert monk on where to find God. A woman assumes the identity of a (male) desert monk, Mulan-style, and she out-monks her male counterparts—she is only discovered to be a woman after she dies, and of course she becomes a saint. The devil has numerous conversations with desert monks, and he usually walks away frustrated that he can’t trick them into screwing up their monkish ways. Two desert monks who live together in a cell decide to quarrel over who owns a specific tile on the floor, not because they care about the tile, but because they’ve never quarreled before, and so they feel insufficiently worthy of repentance (spoiler alert: they suck at quarreling). Two desert monks visit the big city: one fornicates, the other doesn’t, but the non-fornicator confesses to fornicating so that their abbot’s punishment will be lighter on the monk who actually fornicated.

All the desert monks trip over each other trying to confess sins greater than the others' sins, trying to achieve humility, and then failing to achieve humility because they tried too hard.

All the desert monks also seem to have lions as pets, and one desert monk curses his lion for eating meat (which, in case you don’t know, is what lions do).

A lot of these desert monks just give up on being desert monks, because being a desert monk is too difficult for them. But, as the desert monks continually point out, grace abounds.

Then there is my favorite story, the cryptic tale of the abbot Lot. Another abbot, Joseph, came to Lot and asked, “Father, according to my strength I keep a modest rule of prayer and fasting and meditation and quiet, and according to my strength I purge my imagination: what more must I do?” In response, Abbot Lot stood up and held his hands toward the sky, "and his fingers became like ten torches of fire, and he said, ‘If thou wilt, thou shalt be made wholly a flame.”

That’s metal.

I also liked this one: “A brother asked the abbot Alonius, ‘What is contempt?’ And the old man said, ‘To be below the creatures that have no reason, and to know that they are not condemned.’”

If you read nothing else from this volume, read the essays “Of Accidie” and “Of Mortification” by Cassian of Marseilles. They are two of the most honest and accurate accounts of the pains, challenges, boredom, and self-effacement that accompany any serious journey toward God.

In sum: it’s hard out there for a monk.