For most of my life, I have walked two different paths: one foot on the social activist path, the other on a spiritual path. This has not always made for the most graceful journey. Sometimes Ive tried to stay true to both and failed both watering down passionate truths into an indecisive, spineless soup.

But most of the time, having my feet in two worlds has given me the gift of balance.

When this balancing act gets the better of me, I look for inspiration. For me, there has long been a saint in sensible shoes, a person who encourages me to stay close to my spiritual core, yet eschew complacency. Her name is Sister Joan Chittister, and she is a living exemplar of courage. For more than half a century, she has been one of the countrys most prominent spiritual visionaries.

I turn to Sister Joan because she lives between water and fire between the tenderness of love and the fierceness of conviction. She gives us permission to be both devout and probing, to be a believer and seeker. Her faith is unshakable. Yet she has unapologetically assailed the church as sexist, and says it is shameful that the secular world is leading the development of women in society and not the church.

As I rose through the leadership ranks of an organization, I often found it challenging to find the equilibrium between maintaining my ideals and effecting change in a male-dominated environment. Sister Joan would help me discover my own voice and style of communication while keeping my hand on the souls rudder.

We need a new worldview that puts the old one in a new light, she says. And we need the enduring commitment to say it where it is least welcome to be heard: In every office, at every cocktail party, at every family gathering, in every conference, no matter who gets bored with us, no matter who gets tired of hearing us, no matter who gets angry at us for doing it one more time.

Sister Joan became a Benedictine nun at the Mount St. Benedicts Monastery in Erie, Pa., at the young age of 16. She served as the orders prioress for 12 years, and throughout it all, she has emerged as a leading voice for women in the church, human rights and spirituality.

She is a founding member of the Global Peace Initiative of Women, a partner organization of the United Nations, she works to develop a worldwide network of women peace-builders. She is based in a monastic community in Erie, Pa., where her order of Benedictine nuns runs a huge food pantry, an after-school program and one of the largest education programs for the unemployed in the state.

If you want to be a leader, you must refuse to tell the old lies, she told Stanford University graduates last year. You must learn to say that the emperor has no clothes. You must see what you are looking at and say what you see.

She took her own advice when Pope Benedict issued a stinging reprimand of American nuns and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the organization that represents 80 percent of them and which she once led. He accused the nuns of spending too much time working for social justice and not enough time speaking out against abortion and gay marriage. The sisters have listened to every side of every question in an attempt to discern their best role in the church, their best gift to these people at this time, Sister Joan wrote in defiance of the pope. This has apparently made them, in the minds of some, a danger to the faith. How sad.

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A leading voice for women in church, human rights, spirituality