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| Sister Wendy Beckett |
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Sister Wendy Beckett is a native of South Africa who now lives in England and is a member of the generation born between the two world wars.
Wendy Beckett felt a call to religious life as a teenager. In 1946, when she was sixteen, Wendy left South Africa to enter the Sisters of Notre Dame in Great Britain, where she had lived as a child. After obtaining a degree in English Literature from St. Anne’s College at Oxford, Sister Wendy returned to South Africa where she taught until 1970, when health problems forced her to retire. Sister Wendy moved to England and received permission from the Vatican to live a semi contemplative life as a consecrated virgin. She settled into a small trailer on the grounds of the Carmelite convent in Norfolk, England, where she could lead a life of solitude, prayer and poverty under the protection of the Carmelites. Even though she spent most of her day in prayer, Sister Wendy found time to indulge a lifelong interest in art, and she regularly borrowed art books from the public library mobile van that occasionally visited the convent area. In the early 1980s, she began to write articles for art journals in order to contribute some financial assistance to the Carmelite sisters who were supporting her.
Then a divine accident occurred. Sister Wendy was attending an art exhibit in Norfolk in the late 1980s when a television producer who was in the gallery on another assignment overheard her talking with her friend about a painting. He was so impressed with Sister Wendy’s lively commentary on the painting that he asked permission to film her. A BBC executive happened to see the videotape of Sister Wendy on a local television channel, and the rest is, as they say, history.
Now known worldwide as the “Art Nun,” Sister Wendy has hosted a number of art programs for the BBC, and her ten part art series broadcast on PBS stations in the United States has been a big hit. Yet, Sister Wendy seems rather bemused by a fame which she never invited, and she has remained focused on her life of prayer and consecration to Almighty God. Some of the deep and refreshing spiritual perspective of Sister Wendy, which often are ignored by the popular media, are reflected in her meditations chosen in the book, “In the Midst of Chaos, Peace.”
Ann Carey
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