Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:
Sister Wendy Beckett (1930-2018), a contemplative nun and consecrated virgin, delighted audiences worldwide during the 1990s with her BBC documentaries on the history of art.
Born in Johannesburg, she moved as a child to Scotland; in 1946 she joined the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, a teaching order, and earned a degree in English Literature at Oxford.
She then returned to South Africa and in spite of her “constant longing to pray,” lived an active life of teaching from 1954 to 1970. When she began to have stress-induced heart trouble and epileptic seizures, she was given permission to return to England. There, in solitude and silence, she found her true vocation.
READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.


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