Wisdom from Mount Athos: The Writings of Staretz Silouan 1866-1938

'Starets' is a title given to Orthodox monks of particular spiritual development. Silouan was a Russian peasant whose only formal education consisted of two winters at the village school. But on Mount Athos, rooted in a tradition reaching back to the very beginnings of Christian monasticism, he was taught of God and attained a wisdom akin to that of the Desert Fathers. This is a companion volume to The Monk of Mount Athos, in which Archimandite Sophrony. Staretz Silouan's disciple, interpreted the life, personality and teaching of the master. Here we have an arrangement of the with which the Staretz pencilled on odd scraps of paper. The prose poem Adam's Lament has the haunting lyrical urgency of the Psalms, and the whole contents recall the splendour of the great liturgical texts of the Eastern Orthodox Church.