Sister Wendy on Prayer by Sister Wendy Beckett. Harmony, 2007. 144 pages

Celebrities are born under many guises, but the reason for their birth is our own need. Paris Hilton must satisfy some need in a large group of people or she simply wouldn’t keep making the headlines. Princess Diana appealed to all who love fairy tales, gossip, and lives that end badly.

Seventeen years ago, few would have predicted that a bespectacled nun with buck teeth teaching art and art history would become a celebrity, but that is precisely what Sister Wendy Beckett became. Beginning in 1991, she became a presence on television, first in Great Britain and then in the United States. She wrote several popular books on meditation and art, and her The Story of Painting became a best-seller for several seasons.

Probably Sister Wendy owed much of her fame to her vocation as a contemplative nun. Had she presented her lectures on art as a university professor drably dressed, speaking with the same lisp and appearing in serious need of an orthodontist, she would likely have remained a classroom teacher of undergraduates. The combination of nun and art historian, however, worked a sort of magic on audiences, and for a time Sister Wendy was a celebrity.

Unlike a certain type of celebrity, however, the sort who exist as a sort of walking magnet for the dreams of their fans, Sister Wendy appealed in part to her viewers on account of the goodness which they sensed in her. Behind her lectures on Donatello, Van Gogh, and Picasso they sensed her good will, a yearning for holiness, for God. Sometimes the little nun with the lisp shared these thoughts directly, as in her interview with Bill Moyers or in her books about faith, Sister Wendy’s Nativity, for example, or the Child’s Book of Prayer in Art.

Sister Wendy on Prayer (Harmony Books, ISBN 978-0-307-39381-4, $21.95) gives us our deepest insights into this eccentric nun’s life and spirit. Fully one quarter of the book consists of a “Biographical Introduction” by David Willcock, a 30-page passage that sheds much light on an extraordinary woman. Here we learn about Sister Wendy’s vigorous prayer life, her simple diet, her daily schedule as a hermit and contemplative living in the shadow of a Carmelite convent in Norfolk, England. For decades she has lived a solitary life in a trailer on these grounds, praying for hours each day while she also intensely studied art. When she did win an unsought fame through television, she continued as best as possible her intense prayer life. Willcock observes her as the television crew sets up for work in the early morning hours:

“The gallery is dark apart from a bright bulb of light and activity around the artwork, where the crew busy themselves with shadows, flares and exposures. Beyond this glowing pool of activity the unmistakable form of Sister Wendy sits hunched on a low-slung bench. Although she is seated in a direct line of sight to the painting or sculpture, she is utterly still. Her eyes are tight shut. It is as thought she is creating a personal minihermitage within the echoing vaults of the gallery as she concentrates, motionless, until everything is ready for her to step into the light and deliver her piece to the camera. For some people this stillness and aloneness can be disquieting.”

For some people, many people in fact, including many Christians who regard themselves as fervent believers, silence and stillness are disquieting. Surrounded by noise, we moderns have forgotten that God speaks in silence.

Sister Wendy reminds us that we must seek that silence in which to pray. In her chapter “The Practice of Prayer,” she gives readers other valuable instruction on how to pray, writing that desiring to pray, making time for prayer, and then simply putting oneself in the presence of God are the necessary ingredients for a prayer life. “The essential act of prayer is to stand unprotected before God,” she writes, and explains how to do so.

To illustrate certain points about prayer, Sister Wendy does use art in this small book, 13 paintings ranging in style from El Greco’s “Christ on the Cross” to Jules Oilskin’s “Judith Juice.” Unlike her other books, however, the emphasis in Sister Wendy on Prayer is verbal rather than visual. In her “Introduction,” Sister Wendy tells us that she found this book difficult to write, and in the careful construction of the sentences and the sensitive language we can sense her struggle, her effort to act as a guide to the reader, a steppingstone rather than a hindrance to prayer. Just as she doesn’t “talk down” to her television audiences, so here she stands a humble teacher, one who wishes to share with us the hard-bought wisdom of a lifetime.

Sister Wendy on Prayer is the sort of book in which sentences from every page beg to be quoted. “Love always seeks knowledge,” she writes. “And the more we want to love God, the more we will want to understand who it is we love.” Of feelings: “I cannot tell you how passionately I would like to help people realize that what we feel does not essentially matter. This is especially true of prayer.” Of humility and prayer: “Accept that you get no feedback from others as to how good you are, how pure your prayer. Live in the shadows, and let God have all the glory.”

At the end of her book, Sister Wendy offers her hope to her readers that through prayer “God will take possession of us, live within us, give His love to the world through us.” This book will surely help readers to attain that hope.