"Our world waits for you and me, for spiritual people everywhere—to refuse to be pawns in the destruction of a global world for the sake of national self-centeredness."

And so it begins. This book is heavy. Sister Joan Chittister speaks with a challenging voice that she wants us to echo.

"We are here to seed the present with godliness so that others may someday reap the best of what we sowed."

Chittister challenges us to do something. As followers of Jesus, she says we "must each do something to redeem our battered, beaten world from the greed, the egregious elitism, that smothers it."

She's not shy in naming the problems: nuclearism, sexism, homelessness, harassment, poverty, immigration, and more.

And she's not bashful in naming who needs to do the helping:

"It is now our task, as individuals, as intentional groups, wherever we are on the social spectrum, to shine a light on their lives and to insist that others see it, too. It is the task of each of us to be their voice until they can be heard themselves."

"It is our task to give them hope, to give them possibility, to help the outcasts to fit in."

Prophets nows are called to the same mission as prophets of long ago: to look at life as it is and set out to expand it. "We must not fear the darkness; we must simply resolve to carry light into wherever we are."

Chittister doesn't say it will be easy. Speaking out disturbs a society that likes its comfort. But if we are to be spiritually mature, we have to think about something greater than ourselves.

"The silence is deafening as the world waits for those on the edge of the crowd to speak up, to speak out."

Chittister is indeed a prophet in our times. We'd be wise to listen to her in this moral moment.

"What does a prophet do? A prophet cries out, cries out, cries out. Without fear. Without care for cost. Without end. Dear Prophet, for the sake of the children, for the sake of the world, for the sake of the gospel, Cry out."

My thanks to Net Galley for the review copy of this book.