“Actually, life is hard to get used to. One can get used to order and disorder, to happiness and suffering, to monasticism and marriage, to many 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, a person is such a creature that he literally gets used to everything except life itself. In a relaxed manner, devoid of oil and teachings, Sergey 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, negligent monks, pilgrims, workers, loitering skygazers and seekers of the truth, voluntary beggars and even thieves and criminals, which opens from an unexpected side and leaves after reading a bright sense of belonging to an ancient and deep monastic tradition.Filled with love and subtle knowledge of the life of the Athonite Mountains, the book will be of interest to both the church-going reader and the neophyte who is just beginning to be interested in Orthodoxy.