About the book: 2017 / "Actually, it’s hard to get used to life. You can get used to order and disorder, to happiness and suffering, to monasticism and marriage, to the multitude of things and their absence, to bad and good people, to luxury and simplicity, to righteousness and wickedness, to prayer and idle talk, to good and to evil . In short, man is such a creature that he gets used to literally everything except life itself.” In a relaxed manner, devoid of oil and teachings, Sergei Senkin, who knows firsthand how monks and ascetics live, talks about “his” Athos. About this unique “monastic republic”, a certain community of saints and righteous people, careless monks, pilgrims, workers, idle observers and seekers of truth, voluntary beggars and even thieves and criminals, which opens from an unexpected side and leaves upon reading a bright feeling of belonging to the ancient and deep monastic tradition. Filled with love and subtle knowledge of the life of the Holy Mountain residents, the book will be of interest to both the church-going reader and the neophyte just beginning to take an interest in Orthodoxy.