Sister Wendy Beckett

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

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For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

Speaker 40:20

Uh

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My castaway this week is the nun, writer, and broadcaster Sister Wendy Beckett. For over forty years she's lived the life of a hermit, rising every day at midnight to spend seven hours praying. Her home is a caravan in the grounds of a Carmelite monastery, and she spends her days in silence, speaking only once to the nun charged with delivering her daily food rations of skimmed milk, cold cooked vegetables, and two rice crackers. Her self imposed isolation has only been broken by the

Presenter1:05

frankly rather unlikely occurrence of a television career. She is the nun who knows about art, and her passionate and pithy critiques of the world's great works and hidden treasures have won her many devoted fans.

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With decades of solitude and prayer under her belt, she seems, unlike nearly every other guest, to be perfectly cut out for a stretch alone on a desert island. She says It is my apostolic duty to talk about art. If you don't know about God, art is the only thing that can set you free. So welcome, Sister Wendy. Your caravan, as I say, is situated in the depths of this rather beautiful looking peaceful wood. On a day like this, when you come out of the caravan and you come to the big city and you engage with the bustling wider world

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What occurs to you?

Sister Wendy Beckett1:52

After so many people in the world.

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who are searching.

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They may not know what they're searching for, but you can see in so many faces.

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I look

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of wanting, and so I always start immediately to pray that they'll find it.

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You have said that, in describing your solitude, it is the greatest imaginable bliss.

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Now here's a funny thing. So many people that I interview on Desert Island Discs tell me that they can't think of anything worse than being absolutely alone. What is it about you that you find in it such comfort and solace and happiness?

Presenter2:29

Well you see it is

Sister Wendy Beckett2:30

Isn't being lonely.

Presenter2:31

Yeah.

Sister Wendy Beckett2:31

I'm only there because it gives me a chance to be with God, so in fact I'm never alone.

Sister Wendy Beckett2:38

This is my great privilege to be able, on behalf of everybody who hasn't got this privilege.

Sister Wendy Beckett2:45

to stay close to God and let Him love me for everybody else. It's a responsibility and a joy, and I try to be worthy of it.

Presenter2:58

Uh

Sister Wendy Beckett2:58

Can Will you take me briefly through your typical day? How does it go?

Sister Wendy Beckett3:02

Well, there's nothing to it. I get up at midnight, I sit there praying.

Sister Wendy Beckett3:09

I come up to the monastery, where sisters put out for me the papers of the day before.

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so that I can look at the obituaries and the sports news.

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Then at eight o'clock it's Mass, which is the centre of my day.

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And at quarter to nine I'm off home again,

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I have my lunch at quarter to eleven.

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And by half past five I'm in bed.

Presenter3:36

You say uh one of the things you enjoy about yesterday's papers uh apart from the obituaries uh the sports news. You football you're not so keen on, horse racing you quite like.

Sister Wendy Beckett3:45

Yes, but I'm I'm not keen on football as football, but I'm very keen on it for Norwich Football Club, which my dear friend Delia Smith is so associated with. So it's a great throw when they're doing well.

Presenter3:59

All great art deals with human emotion, as you yourself have commented.

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There is a suspicion of the nuns' life that they are shying away from the depths of emotion that the rest of us enjoy and suffer in equal measure. How would you reply to that?

Sister Wendy Beckett4:14

Well, there's an element of truth in it in that the nun has sacrificed.

Sister Wendy Beckett4:19

marriage and children and having a job, all those things that give such depth to people's life.

Sister Wendy Beckett4:26

But they're not shut away from the joys and sorrows of the world. Some sisters grieve enormously over the headlines in the paper. So I don't think they avoid the normal stresses of life, but they avoid the intensity of them.

Presenter4:43

It's time to go to the music. Eight discs, as you know, we've asked you to choose today for your desert island. Tell me about the first disc that we're going to hear.

Sister Wendy Beckett4:50

Well, the first disc is the one that to me sums up my youth.

Sister Wendy Beckett4:57

And I can't hear it without immediately.

Sister Wendy Beckett5:01

Going back to that sunny veranda in South Africa.

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With my dear friend Val.

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Playing Chopin inside the school hall. She was a rather abrasive character, but oh, she was.

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So upright and and pure and funny.

Sister Wendy Beckett5:19

And the fact that Val liked me was the first kind of validating emotion I knew. So there's a lot involved in this particular Chopin.

Presenter6:32

Vladimir Ashkenazi playing Chopin's Polonaise in A, Opus forty, number one, Military. So, Sister Wendy Beckett, when you came out beyond the monastery walls to start travelling and making television documentaries, what did you enjoy?

Sister Wendy Beckett6:45

Yeah.

Sister Wendy Beckett6:46

I'm timid to say I didn't enjoy anything, but that's not true, because I think it's our duty to enjoy.

Sister Wendy Beckett6:52

I enjoy more looking back and thinking of the beautiful art I've seen than the beautiful places I've seen.

Sister Wendy Beckett6:59

But at the time it's such a strain to do justice to the work. I picked the works, and then I pondered them, and tried to think about what points do I want to make. But sometimes it went rather

Sister Wendy Beckett7:12

Off.

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and I had to improvise in a way I hadn't expected. But it was all, really, letting the work draw from me the response that I thought would help other people.

Sister Wendy Beckett7:25

to produce their response.

Presenter7:27

I'm very interested that you say you choose the works,'cause in the programmes that I've watched there are some interesting juxtapositions of you I'm thinking particularly now of you standing in front of uh a Stanley Spencer nude, which leaves little to the imagination, and you rhapsodizing on the fluffy pubic hair and all of the I mean, you choose all the works, do you? No.

Sister Wendy Beckett7:50

And I hope he won't be hurt if I say, so I didn't choose the David Hockley, though I liked it very much.

Presenter7:56

You did describe it as diagrammatic, I think, which isn't high praise.

Sister Wendy Beckett7:59

No, but one cannot but admire Hockney's very great gifts.

Presenter8:04

You spend many hours of every day praying in your existence as a hermit. When you're on location making uh documentaries, you know, it's it's ten, twelve, thirteen hour days. What happens to your m mental balance, I wonder, when you're not able to spend time praying as you're used to?

Sister Wendy Beckett8:20

Well everything can be prayer.

Sister Wendy Beckett8:23

I'm directing everything to God. This is prayer. This isn't the kind of prayer I would have chosen.

Sister Wendy Beckett8:31

And making television isn't the kind of pool I would have chosen, but it's what

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God chose for me so a better way of praying than having what I would like, which would be just to be sitting quietly.

Sister Wendy Beckett8:43

In the depths of my little coughs,

Presenter8:46

But when those slick television producers came metaphorically knocking at the caravan door and said, Come on, we think you'd be great on T V, we'd love you to make documentaries for us.

Presenter8:55

You didn't turn them down, and you could have done, why didn't you?

Sister Wendy Beckett8:58

Well, they weren't slick to begin with.

Sister Wendy Beckett9:01

They were sweet.

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Good men whom I liked. And of course I hadn't seen television, so I'd no idea what it involved.

Presenter9:09

But you'd never seen a television programme at all.

Sister Wendy Beckett9:11

I don't think so, you know, because we didn't have one in the convicts, and of course I certainly didn't have one in the caravan haven't even got a telephone.

Sister Wendy Beckett9:19

So I didn't know what I was in for, but they told me that they had read art criticisms I'd written for Modern Painters' Magazine.

Sister Wendy Beckett9:27

and that I would help people to respond to art. But I think we are all born with an instinct for art, for something greater than ourselves, a kind of disguised God.

Sister Wendy Beckett9:39

And I thought so many people don't know God at all. Well, they will find him in beauty, and they'll find beauty in art.

Presenter9:46

Many people when they look at art they think of our capabilities of how we can interpret the world, how we can make sense of it. It's almost the exact o opposite of what you're saying.

Sister Wendy Beckett9:58

Darling, God made man.

Sister Wendy Beckett10:00

Man is God's greatest work.

Presenter10:02

Let's go to our second disc of the morning, then. What are we going to hear?

Sister Wendy Beckett10:06

Beautiful Dreamer, which is not a piece of first class music, but it's a piece dear to me because my father used to sing it round the house. He had a terrible voice.

Sister Wendy Beckett10:20

But he loved that kind of music, and it brings back that dear romantic father of mine.

Speaker 410:30

Ama Queen of my song. List while I wool thee with soft melody

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Come on, the cares of life's busy throng

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Beautiful dream or awake

Presenter11:01

That was Beautiful Dreamer written by Stephen Foster and sung there by Thomas Hampson.

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You were saying during that, Sister Wendy Beckett, that it reminds you of your father because he

Sister Wendy Beckett11:10

He was singing it to my mother.

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She thought she'd won one of life's great prizes she couldn't cook and she couldn't sew.

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But he really adored my mother, so she would be listening rather sceptically.

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While he was croaking out with great enthusiasm and love, these rather sentimental words. He only knew the first verse, of course.

Presenter11:37

I read that you spent the years that your father was away at war being your mother's best friend, really. Is that true?

Sister Wendy Beckett11:42

Yes well, I was the first born.

Sister Wendy Beckett11:45

My sister's five years younger and my brother another five years, so mamma only had me to turn to.

Sister Wendy Beckett11:52

When my father came back from the war,

Sister Wendy Beckett11:54

I found it hard to acclimatise myself to my great loss of status. It wasn't to me my mother turned any more.

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Here was the father whom we've thought about so much and longed to have come back, but he couldn't quite accustom himself to me either.

Sister Wendy Beckett12:11

Because he'd left behind a ten year old and he came back to a a a rather

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Difficult, nearly sixteen-year-old, who is determined to become a nun.

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And he thought I should go to university first.

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Now we didn't have fights about this because I heard him saying to my mother Dorothy, She's too young to be a nun.

Sister Wendy Beckett12:33

My mother said, Aubrey, the child has wanted this from babyhood. We should let her have her way.

Presenter12:38

And you were a bookish girl.

Sister Wendy Beckett12:40

Oh yes I used to read at least two books a day, and sometimes more. A day. Yes. I used to read very, very quickly, and respond and remember.

Sister Wendy Beckett12:50

My mother was very angry to hear me welcoming a friend and say, Come in, Shirley.

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There's your book, and this is my book, she said. That's not how you play with your friends.

Presenter13:01

Yeah.

Sister Wendy Beckett13:02

Did you play with your brother?

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Brother and sister Pamela

Sister Wendy Beckett13:03

No, they were too small.

Presenter13:03

No, no, which

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Right.

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How did you get on with them? Were they just a nuisance?

Sister Wendy Beckett13:07

I was I was nasty. I was I didn't of course ill treat them, but I ignored them.

Presenter13:11

Uh

Sister Wendy Beckett13:13

Couldn't see the point. Which is horrible. It has been my big sin.

Presenter13:17

But, Sister Wendy, that that every big sister is nasty to their little ones. Yes.

Sister Wendy Beckett13:21

Okay.

Presenter13:23

You're how you're eighty two now. Yes. Being nasty to your little sister is your biggest sin.

Sister Wendy Beckett13:29

Well remember I've led a very sheltered life.

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I haven't had much opportunity to commit big sins. No, that's a nasty sin. I really feel ashamed of that.

Sister Wendy Beckett13:38

My last year at Borging School she turned up at Bording School and she wasn't happy.

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I didn't do anything to help her.

Presenter13:45

You once said, I haven't got within me the capacity to take this God-given delight in other people.

Presenter13:51

Well, you see, I disagree with that.

Presenter13:53

I think you show great delight in other people.

Presenter13:55

Yeah.

Sister Wendy Beckett13:55

Yes, but it's a spectator's delight. My novice mister said to me,'You're the only person I've ever met who doesn't need other people'. And that was not a compliment.

Presenter14:03

And that

Sister Wendy Beckett14:06

But I thank God often for the beauties of other people not just the holy sisters I live with, but the people I meet when I go out. Every one in the B B C has always impressed me well, nearly everybody.

Presenter14:22

We'll leave that in, Sister Wendy. We've got to go to some music. It's your third disc of the day. Tell us what we're going to hear next.

Sister Wendy Beckett14:22

Yeah.

Sister Wendy Beckett14:24

Uh

Sister Wendy Beckett14:29

You're going to hear Regina Chaley, the little Easter hymn to Our Blessed Lady.

Sister Wendy Beckett14:36

I want to have something in on Mary.

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because she's been such a role model for me.

Sister Wendy Beckett14:42

Here is somebody who totally loved, and she is exactly what I would like to be not for what she is, but for what she was in relation to her son, and her importances with Deces.

Speaker 415:06

Ah, every God, we are seen.

Sister Wendy Beckett15:12

Hallelujah.

Speaker 415:43

Hallelujah.

Presenter15:58

Regina Chelly performed by The Voches Choir with cantor Tony Yates and directed there by Martin Warren.

Presenter16:05

You were sent to a Catholic boarding school. Wh when did you first decide that you wanted to become a nun?

Sister Wendy Beckett16:10

I was a baby. It was the only thing I wanted, because I didn't know there were other ways of loving God completely. I now know, of course, you know, you can be a bus conductress or a television person and love God completely. I don't think I could have, because I'm weak. I needed to be a nun.

Presenter16:29

You said that your father's reaction to the fact that you wanted to be a nun was that he thought it was ridiculous?

Sister Wendy Beckett16:35

He was a very good Catholic. He would have loved to have a daughter who nun.

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But this difficult daughter, what convent would want her? He said she treats the house like a hotel.

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She comes in, gets her book, and goes to her room.

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Well, I've always done that.

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I thought I was failing his expectations.

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And in fact I was helped

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with my difficulties over my father, by thinking, well, I'm not making a success of this, but once I'm a nun it will all be better. I didn't really take in that he thought it wouldn't last, because it never would have occurred to me that it wouldn't last.

Presenter17:13

So you had a long time ideal of what you were expecting when you

Presenter17:17

danced off to become a nun.

Sister Wendy Beckett17:20

Well, you see, I was a very stupid child. I wanted to be a praying nurse.

Sister Wendy Beckett17:25

It didn't dawn upon me that if I entered with the nuns who were teaching me, which is what I did, I was going to be a teaching nun where I never wanted to teach.

Sister Wendy Beckett17:35

Because I think I was frightened of being a teacher who couldn't keep order, and that seemed to me the most horrible of fetes.

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So I undertook it as a sort of martyrdom that would purify me, which I knew I needed, rub off some of the selfishness and conceit

Sister Wendy Beckett17:53

I think it rubbed off a bit of it. I'm sure there's a lot left.

Presenter17:57

Can you remember how you felt when you first got to wear the habit?

Sister Wendy Beckett18:00

Oh, I thought now I was as I'd been meant to be always.

Sister Wendy Beckett18:06

Wearing clothes that showed visibly I didn't belong to myself.

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I wanted, though I haven't yet got there, to belong wholly to God.

Presenter18:16

And it was a relief, was it, not to have to think about all the things that, you know, most young women have to think about. How do you do your hair? What lipstick should you wear? Is that skirt the right length? All of those things.

Sister Wendy Beckett18:27

Feetard remember in nineteen forty six and forty seven.

Sister Wendy Beckett18:32

I'd never had lipstick.

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My mother bought all my clothes.

Presenter18:37

But since, have you ever desired any of those things? Have you ever looked at a terrific pair of high heels, or somebody with their hair done in a

Presenter18:44

fancy way and thought, Oh, I'd quite like to try that just to see what it

Sister Wendy Beckett18:46

Oh, no, no but I like looking at it.

Presenter18:46

Fools Man

Sister Wendy Beckett18:50

I love it when the people who work with me wear pretty things, or, for that matter, are pretty. It gives me enormous pleasure, but I would never want these things for myself.

Presenter18:59

Let's have some more music, then. It's your fourth choice of the morning, Sister Wendy Beckett. What are we going to hear?

Sister Wendy Beckett19:05

You're going to hear my very favourite music, Schubert's Serenade. When I was a novice, the younger novices used to sing to the ones who were being professed.

Sister Wendy Beckett19:16

And I've always had a knack for writing verse. So I wrote lines to Schubert's serenade about loving God. So apart from the intrinsic beauty of the music,

Sister Wendy Beckett19:28

It has all these connotations of beginnings, hopes, which have been so marvellously fulfilled.

Speaker 419:37

Flies a fleeing miner leader, Durtina Todin.

Speaker 419:52

We need still that I need a leach and counsel me.

Speaker 420:08

Flush and shallong as moon as a leaf.

Speaker 420:17

Yeah.

Speaker 420:19

There's a woman, there's a lee.

Speaker 420:24

This foretold fillet a whole early

Speaker 420:35

There is the whole thing

Presenter20:41

Schubert's serenade sung there by Dietrich Fischer Descal. The pianist was Gerald Moore. You were very moved during that, Sister Wendy.

Sister Wendy Beckett20:47

Oh yes, I'm still a bit teary about that. It's got all those mirrors

Presenter20:52

Movies

Sister Wendy Beckett20:53

Yeah.

Presenter20:53

You graduated with a first class degree in English literature. That would have been around about nineteen fifty three. Had you let your hair down at all during your student years at Oxford?

Presenter21:04

I

Sister Wendy Beckett21:05

It has a unique oxped.

Sister Wendy Beckett21:07

because we had a new sister superior at the convent, and she said remember, the rule of silence applies just as much to an undergraduate sister. You don't talk to the other students. And I stuck to it.

Sister Wendy Beckett21:20

You see, the important thing to me was to be a good man far more important than any enjoyment.

Sister Wendy Beckett21:27

In fact, when I heard I had a very good class, almost my first reaction was to feel a bit anxious. Would this make me think that I was somebody?

Sister Wendy Beckett21:39

Think that I was clever.

Presenter21:41

You would think possibly that gaining a first-class degree from Oxford might answer that question.

Sister Wendy Beckett21:46

Well, actually I'm not particularly clever. I think I have an ability to put all my goods in the shop window.

Sister Wendy Beckett21:54

You know, Professor Tolkien was the head of my examining board. Ah, yes. Ah, sweet man When I came in for my viva they all clapped, and I didn't realise this minute it was a congratulatory first, because I hadn't heard of these things, so I sat down feeling very nervous.

Sister Wendy Beckett22:13

And he turned round the Mark book so that I could see that I had alphas and practically everything. Was it one of the best degrees in your year then?

Presenter22:21

Yeah.

Sister Wendy Beckett22:21

Yeah.

Sister Wendy Beckett22:22

Yes, but I quite enjoy political biographies.

Sister Wendy Beckett22:26

And the political biography of Harold Wilson said he got the best degree ever at Oxford, and he gave his marks, and it was exactly like my marks and I thought What what is the point of a good degree if you're like Harold Wilson? We'd really cut it down to size.

Presenter22:42

Um so following Oxford you returned to uh the convent in South Africa. You were a teacher there for many, many years, were you? But it didn't really suit you.

Sister Wendy Beckett22:51

Well

Sister Wendy Beckett22:52

I needed more time in prayer, and in the end my sort of health broke down. I did my very best, because this was what was being asked of me, and somebody said to me, You must have been very unhappy.

Sister Wendy Beckett23:06

I said, no, I wasn't unhappy, because I was doing what I thought God had put before me.

Presenter23:11

So you you had a sort of physical breakdown, but really it was symptomatic of a a a mental breakdown?

Sister Wendy Beckett23:14

I I had what they call an epileptoid condition which stress would bring on. And one who must have been a romantic, rather like my papa, said

Sister Wendy Beckett23:24

I think she's dying of a broken heart.

Presenter23:26

The doctor said

Sister Wendy Beckett23:28

Then the Order said we're going to let you go and live a life of prayer. Oh, that wonderful day when I got that letter

Presenter23:37

Let's have some more music, Sister Wendy Beckett. We are on your fifth choice of the day. Tell me about this.

Sister Wendy Beckett23:43

On Sundays Sister Sheila, who was a very good organist,

Sister Wendy Beckett23:47

Often plays something at mass.

Sister Wendy Beckett23:50

And she plays Brahm's lullaby occasionally, and it seems to me absolutely to sum up.

Sister Wendy Beckett23:57

The Life of a Contemplative Nun

Presenter24:56

Bram's lullaby, played by Martin Jones and arranged by Percy Granger. There was something you wanted to say. What is it, Sister Wendy?

Sister Wendy Beckett25:03

Well, to say that this sums up

Sister Wendy Beckett25:06

The contemplative life

Sister Wendy Beckett25:08

Baum's lullaby could be misleading.

Sister Wendy Beckett25:12

Because the life of prayer is not a sleepy life. You have to be wholly attentive to God all the time. It's a passionate life.

Sister Wendy Beckett25:21

You want to be there for God to take possession of you.

Sister Wendy Beckett25:24

How do you know that he's taken possession of you? How do you know? It's because of what God is.

Sister Wendy Beckett25:29

If you present yourself to God, He will give Himself. He can't but He just wants the opportunity, and most people either don't know or haven't the time to give Him the opportunity.

Sister Wendy Beckett25:42

So contemplatives give their whole day for everybody, they're receiving God's love and His grace for the world.

Presenter25:51

Can you appreciate?

Presenter25:53

that some people strongly believe that the goodness of man

Presenter25:57

comes from man, and that God has nothing to do with it.

Sister Wendy Beckett26:00

Well, sweetheart, I would

Sister Wendy Beckett26:02

I would not find it logical.

Sister Wendy Beckett26:05

Because all that's in you has been created.

Sister Wendy Beckett26:09

No, it's it's it's God giving Himself through this most wonderful of means the human spirit. And the human spirit doesn't have to know Him. They may well believe they're doing it all themselves.

Sister Wendy Beckett26:21

That's fine. God likes interfenses.

Presenter26:25

You once said, I think if you're afraid of death, you're afraid of life. Expand on that one for me.

Sister Wendy Beckett26:30

Well death is the climax of our life.

Sister Wendy Beckett26:33

when we pass into the presence of God.

Sister Wendy Beckett26:38

And I mean it's going to happen whether you try to put it off or not, so why not see it as a crowning?

Sister Wendy Beckett26:44

Never Barding says Grow old along with me, The best is yet to be.

Presenter26:50

Let's talk for a moment about art, then. You once said the one essential for art appreciation is a chair.

Sister Wendy Beckett26:57

Because you have to look at the art. Right. It's so fatally easy just to walk round glancing at things.

Presenter27:03

What do you make of of installation art, I wonder? I'm thinking of Emmin's Unmade Bed or Hurst's Pickled Shark.

Presenter27:10

Is it all in the sigh? Need you say no more?

Sister Wendy Beckett27:12

I wouldn't like to seem to deny Grace.

Sister Wendy Beckett27:15

any artist's work. It means a lot to them.

Sister Wendy Beckett27:18

I have sometimes said, and this is rather nasty of me, I'm so glad that these young people are in settled employment.

Sister Wendy Beckett27:26

I'm tempted to say it's rather that kind of newspaper as opposed to drama. You read your newspaper, it's interesting, it's good, then you throw it away. It's five minute art. Don't let the the great pleasure people are getting from these popular forms of art debar them from the demanding forms of art, because great art is not just a pleasure, it's demanding. You have to be totally there.

Presenter27:51

Your father didn't live to see you on television, but your mother did. What did she make of it?

Sister Wendy Beckett27:56

Well, my mother was one who didn't believe in praising her children, so I didn't think she was all that impressed, but my sister tells me she was very proud.

Sister Wendy Beckett28:05

privately in the family, whereas my father would have been ecstatic.

Presenter28:10

Let's have some more music, then. We're on your sixth.

Sister Wendy Beckett28:12

Well, the absolute centre of my life, without which I don't think I could go on.

Sister Wendy Beckett28:18

is the mess.

Sister Wendy Beckett28:20

And S. Thomas Aquinas, who was a very great saint, was also a poet, and he wrote this poem about the Eucharist, the sacrament. And it's so full for me of the sense of what it means to have the mass. It's rather like sort of plugging in to electricity to a power greater than ourselves. We're taken in and given the freedom and the joy of Jesus.

Speaker 428:53

All is his marriage Sarvis went on see when he lets you Fruit us generously Blessedly generous you

Speaker 429:21

More these bottles, born these noddles, there's been touch of me drinking.

Speaker 429:34

Let me move on the side.

Sister Wendy Beckett29:35

Yeah.

Speaker 429:39

Also, there is a

Presenter29:42

Pangelingua Gloriosa, performed by the Voches Choir with cantor Tony Yates and directed by Martin Warren.

Presenter29:49

I watched you once in one of your documentaries describe your life as one of unimaginable happiness.

Presenter29:55

I'm wondering, though, what you feel you have sacrificed. And I'm thinking particularly of a family. D do you do you ever feel that that has been a sacrifice?

Sister Wendy Beckett30:03

No, this is where you see the the nasty cold bloodedness of me. I never particularly minded. I love my parents deeply, and over the years I've come to love my brother and sister,

Sister Wendy Beckett30:15

I really sacrificed nothing.

Sister Wendy Beckett30:18

Except

Sister Wendy Beckett30:19

In a small way music.

Sister Wendy Beckett30:21

We can't have everything in life. If you want saddens, then you can't have the music. And I do get a bit on Sundays. I wouldn't swap what I've got for anything.

Presenter30:30

What about a woman's place within the Church? We've recently seen the Church of England reject by a very narrow margin the possibility any time soon of women bishops. Was that a good decision?

Sister Wendy Beckett30:40

Yeah.

Sister Wendy Beckett30:41

Well, once you've made the decision to have women priests, it's only logical to have women bishops. The episcopate is the fullness of the priesthood. You can't have one without the other, so it's not sensible.

Presenter30:54

I'm wondering in the Roman Catholic Church if you ever worry that they are being very slow to update their doctrine on things like contraception and abortion and so on.

Sister Wendy Beckett31:05

Well, you must remember that as the Church develops it changes, but it changes slowly. I know eventually everything that the human race needs to have from the Church will happen. But we must be patient and wait.

Presenter31:21

The difficulty with that, of course, is that while the Roman Catholic Church is is choosing to say that condoms should not be used, th the the spread of HIV AIDS continues apace, especially in places like Africa, and that while people are waiting on the Church, however slowly changing its doctrine, there are hundreds, no thousands, no tens of thousands of people who are suffering materially day to day as a result of that.

Sister Wendy Beckett31:46

Well, I can make a little defence there. You're right ahead. Because our present Pope, who, as you know, is not in any sense a radical, has said now that he sees the point of condoms.

Sister Wendy Beckett31:56

He says they're an evil but a lesser evil, so there's one little step forward. Let's rejoice in that.

Presenter32:01

Let us. And let us also play some music. We're on your sevens. What are we going to hear now?

Sister Wendy Beckett32:05

Ah something wonderful

Sister Wendy Beckett32:09

Which represents the culmination of a great ambition. I always wanted to hear one opera.

Sister Wendy Beckett32:16

And I took it for granted it would be Mozart, but it turned out the chance I got was Vedi, and I was in Fraud.

Sister Wendy Beckett32:24

And this was the of all the wonderful things in Iltrovatore, what we're going to hear is the bit that I love most.

Speaker 332:33

I must be

Speaker 332:36

Londi brendi the ho ch

Speaker 433:13

People

Presenter33:30

That was Verdi's Il Travatore, Act five, I Nostri Monte Retonoremo, again to our mountains we shall return, sung there by Dolora Zachic and Placido Domingo.

Presenter33:41

We're coming up to Christmas soon, and I'm wondering how you spend the day itself. What do you do on Christmas Day?

Sister Wendy Beckett33:47

An blissful day.

Sister Wendy Beckett33:49

I don't have to put up any decorations, don't have to have a Christmas dinner. It's just like any other beautiful, peaceful, prayerful day.

Sister Wendy Beckett33:58

You don't allow

Presenter33:58

yourself a little

Sister Wendy Beckett33:59

Yeah.

Presenter33:59

Uh

Sister Wendy Beckett33:59

It's a bit.

Presenter33:59

Yeah.

Sister Wendy Beckett34:00

Okay.

Presenter34:00

Yeah.

Sister Wendy Beckett34:00

Oh, well the sisters usually offer me, so I'm not very keen on Christmas pudding. You're not. But uh I often have a mince pie.

Presenter34:00

Yeah.

Presenter34:04

You're not.

Presenter34:07

Um will you have a Bailey's? You quite like a Baileys, I hear.

Sister Wendy Beckett34:10

I used to like it more. I'm going off sweet things as I age.

Presenter34:14

As you know, then, Sister Wendy, I'm about to cast you away. It won't be solitude for you, of course. You will not be lonely, will you?

Presenter34:21

Yeah.

Presenter34:22

Because you've got to understand, for most of the people who are sitting where you're sitting, I say to them.

Presenter34:26

How will you find life on a desert island and they are plunged into the depths of misery by even imagining it?

Sister Wendy Beckett34:32

Well, I'm pretty miserable in that I won't have math.

Sister Wendy Beckett34:36

That would be an enormous sacrifice for me.

Sister Wendy Beckett34:40

But apart from that great gash in my heart every day, I'll be perfectly happy. And how pr

Presenter34:45

Practical are you? Would you build a fish and cook and build a fire?

Sister Wendy Beckett34:48

Oh no, I'm I'm I'm a very ungifted woman.

Presenter34:53

I've heard you tell me to day about all the things you're bad at. What are you good at?

Sister Wendy Beckett34:57

Yeah.

Sister Wendy Beckett34:58

I don't really know. I used to be good at reading, good at understanding what a book was about, and being able to drag out from myself.

Sister Wendy Beckett35:07

What that understanding was in words that could be shared

Presenter35:11

A lot of people, I include myself here, think you're very good at art criticism. What do you think about your art criticism?

Sister Wendy Beckett35:16

Oh, I don't think it's all that good. It's something. It sets people saying, Well, I can do better than that, I hope.

Presenter35:24

That's the best I'm gonna get, isn't it? Yeah.

Presenter35:26

Okay, let's have your eighth disc.

Sister Wendy Beckett35:29

You're going to hear another of Schubert's leader.

Sister Wendy Beckett35:32

One of the few ones in which the words, at least the first words, matter. You

Sister Wendy Beckett35:36

Ah the peace.

Sister Wendy Beckett35:39

Because for me everything is summed up in God. He's my prayer and and my peace and and my joy. And this says it.

Speaker 436:03

Until

Speaker 436:12

Is fall smooth.

Speaker 436:24

Swo to fold on the hill.

Speaker 436:38

Fine old

Presenter36:49

Schubert's Lubis Deroux, sung there by Bryn Terfel, with Malcolm Martineau on piano. It's time to give you the books our Desert Island Discs copy of the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you get to take one other book. What will it be?

Presenter37:03

I want an enormous book of logical puzzles.

Presenter37:08

We shall find one. There must be a mensa book or something of puzzles. We'll find that. We will give it to you. You get to take a luxury, too. What will your luxury be for this island?

Sister Wendy Beckett37:15

What I'd really like

Sister Wendy Beckett37:17

would be a portable chapel, but since I can't have that with a priest inside it, I'll have a refrigerated tabernacle.

Presenter37:20

But that

Sister Wendy Beckett37:25

Right. You could have a chapel, you're not allowed the priest.

Presenter37:29

Yeah.

Sister Wendy Beckett37:29

So a tabernacle which will have the sacred hosts in. When I said this to Sister Shelda, she said, But you know, Sister Wendy, I know you're not very practical. They might go mouldy.

Presenter37:43

Yeah.

Presenter37:44

We shall give you that. And if you had to save just one disk from the waves, which one would you run through the sand to save?

Sister Wendy Beckett37:52

Need you ask me, shove it serenade?

Presenter37:54

It's yours. Sister Wendy, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Sister Wendy Beckett37:59

Thank you.

Presenter38:23

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.