Sister Joan Chittister, O.S.B.,  is the featured speaker for "Come to the Waters."

Sister Joan has been a visionary voice and spiritual leader for more than 30 years. She is an award-winning author of 35 books, the most recent being The Tent of Abraham: Stories of Hope and Peace for Jews, Christians and Muslims (Beacon Press) and The Ten Commandments: Laws of the Heart (Orbis). Sister Joan writes and lectures on issues of peace and justice, human rights, women, contemporary religious life, and spirituality.

She serves as co-chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women, a partner organization of the United Nations, facilitating a worldwide network of women peace builders, particularly in Israel and Palestine.

She is working on two books that will be published by the time of the triennial gathering: The Gift of Years (BlueBridge) and Welcome to the Wisdom of the World (Eerdmans).

Her commentary from Rome in April 2005 on the death and election of a pope aired on CNN, the BBC, and all national U.S. media networks. On Easter Sunday 2006 she was a panelist on "Meet the Press with Tim Russert." Her weekly Web column, "From Where I Stand," can be found at www.natcath.org.

Sister Joan is a member of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania.