Always With Me

"It was a Sunday morning: we always had sausages for breakfast on a Sunday, and a glorious aroma of hot sausage filled the house. We were living in a little village outside Edinburgh. The local regiment had their barracks there, and they used to march past our house on church parade on Sunday mornings. For some reason I was sitting under the table. I could smell the sausages, I could hear the band, I could feel the carpet. And I became conscious of God. It was an overwhelming experience of greatness and of goodness and of protection. I remember feeling with wonder that the world—so bewildering to a little child—made sense, that it was God’s world and I was a blessed child within it. If you ask how I knew, I cannot tell you. I saw nothing and I heard nothing. But from then on God was always with me, the center of all I did, giving it significance."

~ Sister Wendy on Prayer

“Eccentric and secret genius that he was, Bosch not only moved the heart, but scandalized it into full awareness. The sinister and monstrous things that he brought forth are the hidden creatures of our inward self-love: he externalizes the ugliness within, and so his misshapen demons have an effect beyond curiosity. We feel a hateful kinship with them. The Ship of Fools is not about other people. It is about us.”

― Sister Wendy Beckett, The Story of Painting

"Sister Wendy Beckett,  (born 1930, South Africa), South African-born British nun who appeared on a series of popular television shows and wrote a number of books as an art critic. Nicknamed the “Art Nun,” she offered eloquent and down-to-earth commentary that made art accessible to everyone.

While still a child, Beckett moved with her family to Scotland. From an early age she wanted to be a nun, and at age 16 she joined the Sisters of Notre Dame. In 1950 she enrolled at the University of Oxford, graduating (1954) with top honours in English. After attending a teacher’s college in Liverpool, England, she returned to South Africa, where she taught for 15 years. Faced with poor health, Sister Wendy asked to pursue a life of solitude. Her request was granted, and in 1970 she moved back to England, settling on the grounds of the Carmelite monastery in Quidenham, Norfolk. There she lived in a house trailer with only the most basic amenities, working two hours a day."