Joan Chittister is an internationally known author and lecturer, and the executive director of Benetvision, a resource center for contemporary spirituality.  She is a  past president of the Conference of American Benedictine Prioresses and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. She is a member of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania.

Only by embracing the contradictions, Chittister contends, may we live well amid stress, withstand emotional storms, and satisfy our yearnings for something transcendent and real.

“In the still of life, when we least expect it, that questions emerge from the damp murkiness of our inner underworld… these questions do not call for the discovery of data, they call for the contemplation of possibilities.”