The Time Is Now: A Call to Uncommon Courage

by Joan D. Chittister

We now find ourselves surrounded by people formed in other ways and places who by virtue of their tribes, cultures, and religions see life in other ways than we do. They were raised to value other ideals than we were. They speak another language. They paint a different face on their icons of God. They, too, seek life in its fullness. At base, we are all nothing more than humans together. We all want an order in our societies that we can depend on. We want a good future for generations to come. We want a way to make a steady, decent living that provides the basics of life and a chance to enjoy them. We want the opportunity to become the best of ourselves. Most of all, perhaps, we want a government that exists for the good of its citizens, that protects rather than oppresses its people, that is an equal partner in the community of nations.

Anaïs Nin wrote once: “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” And courage is a prophet’s road.

The only question is, Will we take up what we know is our moral and spiritual responsibility: to make the world a better place for all, to bring to life the fullness of Creation for all? To help bring about equality, safety, security, and compassion for all? That is where the prophet comes in. The prophet is the person who says no to everything that is not of God. No to the abuse of women. No to the rejection of the stranger. No to crimes against immigrants. No to the rape of the trees. No to the pollution of the skies. No to the poisoning of the oceans. No to the despicable destruction of humankind for the sake of more wealth, more power, more control for a few. No to death.

And what exactly is that? It is the spirituality of awareness, of choice, of risk, of transformation. It is about the embrace of life, the pursuit of wholeness, the acceptance of others, the call to co-creation.

First and primarily, the prophets support tradition but are wary of traditionalism. They know what it is like to be suffocated under the weight of meaningless laws when the soul is crying out loud for a new vision of leadership. The prophets remind us that faith in the living God has often been smothered, even abandoned, by the institutional trappings of the past.

And so, that question emerges as the nexus of this book. And you? What will you do here and now, in this world, in our time? Simply stand there looking on? Why? Because underneath it all, something else lingers and will not go away, is still heard in the recesses of the soul and calls us over and over and over. There is another spirituality, far older than guided meditations or spiritual routines, that rings through the ages with models of spiritual giants who knew in their time—and leave to our time—the spiritual obligation to reshape a world run amok. The question, What will you do? is at the core of spiritual maturity, of spiritual commitment. To follow Jesus means that we, too, must each do something to redeem our battered, beaten world from the greed that smothers it.

Prophecy, on the other hand, has ragged edges. It sets out to deconstruct the present situation. It critiques social structures to which many have given their lives or in which they have status. They are invested in its continuance. They have something to lose if the world listens to the cries of the prophet for change. Where the hallmark of charity is its uncommon generosity, the ring of real prophecy lies in its uncommon courage. Both go far and beyond the normal measure of either. Both of them lead the way for others to follow. Both of them give witness to the world of another way of life, a better way of life for us all. Nevertheless, charity without prophecy can serve only to make the world safe for exploitation. As long as the poor are being fed, why raise the wages it would take to enable them to feed themselves? It enables employers to go on underpaying and overworking the very people who have made them their wealth.

All of life is a sacred adventure in the coming of the Reign of God, a journey to fullness of life rather than its denunciation. Yet many still follow the privatization of the spiritual life that blossomed in the nineteenth century. They still cling to the notion that the purpose of the spiritual life is to enable people to flee the sullying secularism of the world for the sake of personal sanctification. It is a spirituality that “practices” religion but does not identify with the Gospel messages that embody it.

To be spiritually mature, we must each be about something greater than ourselves.

To own the implications of prophetic spirituality in the Christian life, we must think beyond our own small world to the effects other issues are having on the local area and make a response to them—with others or alone.

Prophetic spirituality requires us to think and study about causes as well as consequences. We begin to ask why people are sleeping in metro stations in the richest country in the world, why in my small town there are not enough beds at night to shelter people from the snow and cold. I ask why there are no funds available for college education for average students. We begin to refuse to take reports for granted and begin to look for answers instead. Prophetic spirituality leads us to understand our own role as “herald in the camp,” the watchman of which Isaiah speaks when he repeats his call to prophesy: “I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me.” Today’s prophets take it as their responsibility to explore what it means to run a hedge fund; to bundle debt; to argue for the right to discriminate against those who are gay, for instance, on religious grounds. Most of all, they set out to help others understand what’s going on so we can all do something about it together. The seeker who understands the place of prophetic spirituality in a mature Christianity takes responsibility to spread the word. She holds seminars or article discussions on the topic. She distributes material that outlines and explains the articles so that others can become comfortable with the topic, too. The prophetic Christian identifies with the issue. She becomes a lay expert on the questions and concerns of people wi...

Those who would speak the truth of the storm from inside the center of it cannot expect to live without being tossed around by winds. The one who speaks a message other than the official one, in any institution, cannot expect to be loved by it. Institutions live to preserve themselves. Prophets speak to reform the institution. It is a collision course of the heart.

Only a strong spiritual life, good friends, distance from the issue, and laughter really bring balm to the heart and renewed strength to the soul.

Friends are those who love us enough to trust what we’re doing even if they themselves have yet to fully understand the implications of it. Instead, they talk to us and with us and for us. They ring us round with a sense of security. They make life with all its confusion possible. Friends such as these keep us grounded in reality. They provide the space and the sense of emotional stability that contemplation demands. They give us the space to rethink it all, to ask ourselves again what life demands of us, what morality demands of us, what courage demands of us. In touch with the innermost motives of the soul once more, it becomes obvious: there is nowhere to go—but on. Surrounded by love and trust, failure is no longer either an option or a possibility. Loneliness is no longer an obstacle to truth telling.

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Politicians will always ask the question, ‘Is it expedient?’ but the prophets must ask the question, ‘Is it right?’ ” The words shake convenience, complacency, and comfort to dust. It is convenient to satisfy the crowds. It is complacent to meet the barely satisfactory in human needs and assume that is enough for anyone to do. It is comfortable to know that anything more than nothing will be sufficient to satisfy the record of success.

we ask ourselves what we really stand for—and what we’ve done to prove it. At that moment, we either become prophets—or simply churchgoers. And that is the ultimate question, the question we must all answer, And you—what are you doing about it?

In every period, the prophetic task was the same: to interpret the present in light of the Word of God so that new worlds could be envisioned and new attitudes developed that would eventually make the world a better place.

Once upon a time an old woman ran through the streets shouting, “Power, greed, and corruption. Power, greed, and corruption.” For a while, people stopped to hear, to think, to discuss the problem. As time went by and nothing happened, they finally went back about their business. Finally, one day, a child stepped in front of the prophet to say as she ran by, “Old woman, no one is listening to you.” So, the woman stopped to say, “Oh, I know that.” The boy was puzzled. “Then if you know you have failed, why do you go on shouting?” And the old woman answered, “Oh, child, you do not understand. I do not shout in order to change them. I shout so that they cannot change me.”

“Impatience,” Voltaire wrote, “is the mark of independence, not bondage.” Impatience stirs the soul to action. It looks at life with an agitated glance and wants to make it better. It is the first step toward independence of soul. It’s the impatience that betrays us. We begin to show the underside of our hearts: what we really think, what we really want, what we really intend to do.

The loss of community, of somewhere to go, somewhere to call home, leaves the prophet adrift. It undermines certainty. It drains the heart of purpose. To find the place where someone knows who I am and what I am talking about and why I am saying what I say becomes paramount. To have to look for community outside what I have always known to be community is also a damning condition itself.