Mark Barrett's concern when writing Crossing was to offer a way for those who do not live in monasteries to access something of what is a daily experience among supposed religious specialists. He hoped that the reader would find that monastics - so often the shadowy medieval figures of media-gothic - are in reality fellow-seekers, apprentices training among the tools of a spiritual workshop. Monastic practices are not a panacea for the ills of modern society, and it would be naive to suggest they can be. The point is rather that Christian monastic practices came into being at least in part as...