Sacred art in the spiritual life wasn’t something I had much time for before I entered the convent. Perhaps fittingly, it was the sister with Bruegel’s Procession on her wall who helped me the most to appreciate it. Whenever I have caught a glimpse of her collaged pinboard over the years, I have seen something to remind me that while there is a time and a place for reading, writing, and arguing about theology, there is also much to learn by simply looking – looking with a gaze that can rebound from the image up toward God and then downward, inward, into ourselves.

A disturbing painting of Christ’s harrowing of hell showed me something about my own spiritual life.