u/vanchica

This is a single video of many from this series, available on YouTube. She is a great onramp to lifelong love affair with art.

Sister Wendy Becket was a real nun, from age 16, dedicated to teaching. Born in South Africa, she did her degree at Oxford beginning in 1950 and earned a 'congratulatory first honours" in English Literature and was admired for her scholarly work by J.R.R. Tolkein, author of "The Lord of the Rings".

She had joined a UK convent that required vows of poverty, as all nuns take, but also silence in the convent at all times, until Vatican reforms in the 1960's (a time when most religious orders were losing many of their members) before taking up teaching literature and Latin, moving back to South Africa.

She taught in girls' schools there and later lectured at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

She had to give up teaching in 1970 due to 3 grand mal epileptic seizures brought on, in part, by stress and perhaps her lifelong heart damage. She returned to England, lived alone, permitted by the Vatican to be a 'consecrated virgin hermit', dedicating her life to prayer, with two hours a day to work and earn a living.

Quoting Wikipedia: she "spent many years translating Medieval Latin scripts before deciding, in 1980, to pursue art. Her first book, Contemporary Women Artists, was published in 1988. Sister Wendy Contemplates Saint Paul in Art was published in 2008 to celebrate the Year of Saint Paul.

In May 2009, Encounters with God: In Quest of the Ancient Icons of Mary was published, which follows Beckett's pilgrimage to see the earliest icons of Mary which had survived the Byzantine Iconoclasm.

Beckett continued writing about her interest in religious icons in the second volume of her Sister Wendy Contemplates series, published in July 2011.

This book, entitled The Iconic Jesus, takes the reader through scenes from the New Testament, accompanied by Beckett's reflections.

She came to the attention of a BBC film crew when they overheard her discussing art at an art exhibit. And the result was a number of TV series beginning in 1997 and a number of popular books on art history that captivated millions at the time.

Quoting Wikipedia again: she **"**was often effusively verbal in her descriptions of the human body in paintings, both male and female.

In view of her religious state, this came as a surprise to some viewers.

She insisted, however, on describing the depiction of the human anatomy in art when it was called for, stating that "God did not make a mistake when He created the human body, so I am not making a mistake by describing it."

"None of the Sisters has ever raised an eyebrow at anything I've said or written because they're not cramped by this false idea that sexuality is something wrong [...]

God looked at His creation and thought it was good, thought it was beautiful, we're made in the image of God, and there's nothing amiss in any part of the human body." "

She lived to age 88. She donated all money earned from her fame to her Order, accepting food and few other supplies in return.

Note: Please be decent.

Sister Wendy had a speech difference, please do not mock her speech or her person.

Also, no bigoted comments about religious life and sexuality, repressed or otherwise, please, apart from obviously justified comments about emotions, life, and actual events, including crimes of religious persons.