The story begins far, far away in the System Divine.
 
 
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“The Time is Now” by Sister Joan Chittister

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I’m not sure how Sister Joan Chittister ever had time to run the Benedictine monastery that she was in charge of for years. She earned a doctorate in speech communication from Penn State, ran the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and developed a reputation as a rabble-rousing, tell-it-like-it-is nun.
 
She also managed to write more than 50 books about prayer, spiritualism of the seasons and the gift of a good dog.
 
But every now and then, Sister Joan fixes her uncompromising gaze on the state of our contemporary world... and lets us have it in a way that only a smiling, steely-eyed nun can.
 
Listen to what she writes in the introduction about our only choice in a world that feels disorienting and painfully divisive:  "The...choice," she says, "is to refuse to accept a moral deterioration of the present and insist on celebrating the coming of an unknown...but surely holier..future… The third choice is to follow the path of the prophets of old."

And if the image of a gaunt and dusty dude with a long white beard just  popped into your head when you heard the word "prophet" — you need to get acquainted with Teresa of Avila, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, Nelson Mandela and Wangari Maathai — all prophets, says Sister Joan, who harnessed their courage, their awareness, their confidence, their patience and their wisdom to speak truth to power.

Sister Joan writes:  "What does a prophet do?  A prophet cries out, cries out, cries out.  Without fear. Without care for cost. Without end."

— Kerri Miller 

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