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Through the famous verses of Ecclesiastes—”For everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven”—Joan Chittister reflects on timeless themes: the purpose and value of human life, the balance of joy and sorrow, work and rest, love and loss.
In meditating on the contrasting seasons of our lives, Chittister shows how human fulfillment and true happiness come, not from getting and having more and more, but from knowing and valuing what we have. Friendship and laughter, patience and sorrow, humility and compassion, from birth through death—all these are Gods gifts to us, the precious moments of life itself. These moments speak to us: “Look at life once more and where you have been blinded, see, and where you have become numb to the point of the senseless, the dead of heart, now glory.”
Joan Chittister, a member of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania, is a best-selling author and well-known lecturer on topics of justice, women’s issues, and contemporary spirituality. A past president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, she currently writes a regular column for The National Catholic Reporter. She is the author of 45 books, including Illuminated Life, The Way We Were and The Way of the Cross.
