Art critic and hermit Sr Wendy Beckett saw her popular 1990s television series as a coded way of talking to people about God, according to publisher and author Robert Ellsberg.
In a Tablet webinar Ellsberg spoke about his friendship and extensive correspondence with Sr Wendy between 2016 and her death in December 2018, which is published under the title, Dearest Sister Wendy: A Surprising Story of Faith and Friendship by Orbis Books.
He explained that she didn’t see her television appearances as an opportunity to be famous or well known.
“She felt that she was given this incredible opportunity through art, to talk to people; to try to open people's eyes to the source of beauty. She felt that it was really a kind of coded way of talking about God to people who were not familiar with that language, awakening them to the idea that there is a deeper dimension, a deeper underlying meaning, if we could only look at it with the eyes of love, which she brought to art. She would often say that heaven is here, if we would only see it.”
Ellsberg is editor in chief of Orbis Books and worked very closely with Dorothy Day at the outset of his career. He is also the son of Daniel Ellsberg, who played a crucial role in the Watergate affair.
He described the elderly consecrated virgin and hermit who lived in the grounds of the monastery of the Carmelite Community in Quidenham as “remarkably insightful” regarding the opposition Pope Francis has been experiencing from some quarters of the Church.
She had “a deep sense of trust in the Holy Spirit in the Church, and the people of God” and she saw the opposition to Pope Francis as the counterpart of those antagonists in the Gospel who were offended or scandalised by Jesus’s mercy and tenderness towards sinners and outsiders.
“During this time, we were cheering him [Pope Francis] on with our prayers, but I was also writing him letters regularly to tell him about the books we [Orbis] were publishing and how much his ministry meant to me.” Though he received no response, Sr Wendy urged him to keep sending the letters to the Pope, telling Ellsberg he may never get them, but your prayers, your intentions will surely be very meaningful to him. “In the epilogue of the book I mention that among the things that happened right after she died was that I finally got a response from [Pope Francis].”
On human sexuality, she told him that the attitudes of the Church are still those of past centuries when the mystery of what it means to be a sexual creature and was not understood. “She was quite bold in her thinking on these kinds of things,” Ellsberg said.
Her non-judgmental attitude regarding his divorce was a turning point in their relationship.
He also noted how most articles about Sr Wendy have focused on the fact that in her television programmes she was unafraid to comment on the human body. “That sort of irritated her a little bit because it reflected people’s prejudices and stereotypes about a prudish nun who must not know anything about sex.”
“She was shocked about the kind of subtext [in the Church’s attitude] that [human sexuality] was wrapped up in sinfulness and that there was something ugly and terrible about it and dangerous. She felt instinctively that this was something that was part of God's creation, and could be abused, but there was a goodness in it and it was not something dirty or naughty or laden with danger.”
She felt that the obsession with sex, as the epitome of sinfulness and a source of guilt, was misplaced.
He said there was “an other worldliness, an innocence, to Sr Wendy. She did not see the world through lenses of fear or guilt or judgment, but through freedom and the mercy and love of God. That was just the air that she breathed.”
The webinar was part of The Tablet Autumn Festival. More details on past and upcoming events here.
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