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Like countless others, I first discovered Sister Wendy by accident. If someone had told me there was a program on public television featuring an English nun talking about art I might have skipped it, imagining something pious or didactic. Instead, I had the joy one evening of being taken by surprise, while scrolling through the television offerings, when I alighted on a small, medieval-looking nun with big eyeglasses, lively and intelligent features, and an English accent of indeterminate origin, who strolled about in a museum while reflecting aloud on what she saw. I couldn’t look away. It turned out that this nun was the star of a television series: Sister Wendy’s Odyssey, originally produced by the BBC in Britain but broadcast in the United States by PBS.

Though Sister Wendy had spent many decades as a member of a teaching order in her native South Africa, I learned that she was actually a “consecrated virgin,” who lived as a hermit on the grounds of a Carmelite monastery in England. Somehow she had found the means to become an avid student of art history, and by some even more unlikely means she had been discovered by the BBC and given her own television series, thereby becoming an even more unlikely celebrity.

Sister Wendy was not exactly a figure out of “central casting”: diminutive, slightly hunched in her old-fashioned black habit, with a bit of a speech impediment and teeth that had never seen braces. On the one hand she seemed not entirely of the modern world, as if she had walked onstage from a tale of Chaucer. Yet on the other hand she defied any stereotype of an otherworldly nun. She spoke appreciatively about all styles and forms of art— from cave paintings and Greek vases to Byzantine icons, Renaissance masters, French Impressionists, and abstract modern paintings. Whatever the subject, she spoke, unscripted, not only with authority and learning but with compassion and insight into the human condition. Invariably, reviews of her show singled out remarks that showed her lack of prudery in discussing the human form—thereby revealing more about the reviewers’ own assumptions regarding the supposed innocence of a habited nun. Sister Wendy found this perplexing; God made the body, and there was nothing “dirty” or ridiculous about it.

I was a fan of Sister Wendy’s show long before I had any notion that we might one day become friends. The initiative in our first interaction came from her. I had been working for many years as editorial director of Orbis Books, a publishing house owned by the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, a Catholic missionary society based in New York. Orbis had a reputation for publishing works on liberation theology from Latin America and other works by theologians that kept officials at the Vatican awake at night. But we had also published the English edition of an authoritative multi-volume history of the Second Vatican Council.

One day I received a handwritten note—very difficult to decipher—asking on behalf of the Quidenham Carmelite Monastery in England if we might have a damaged set of these expensive volumes to donate to their library. The letter came from Sister Wendy! I responded at once, assuring her that I would happily donate these books to the sisters. And that is how I came to know the famous “art nun.” Over many years I received scores of short notes from Sister Wendy, sometimes on picture postcards, but often (in a testament to her frugality) written on the backs of envelopes, or on hotel stationery filched during her travels. At first these caused excitement in my office, as my colleagues eagerly vied to decipher Sister Wendy’s virtually impenetrable script. Sometimes they would photocopy and enlarge her notes, attempting to crack her elusive code word by word. Over time, I found their enthusiasm for this sport dwindling, and messages from Sister Wendy were received with mixed emotions.

These were not chatty letters, but mostly gracious thank you notes for gifts or news related to her own Orbis pub - lications. For yes, I came to publish four books by Sister Wendy, the first two describing her discovery and exploration of the earliest Byzantine icons of Mary and Jesus. Aside from Sister Wendy’s television fame she was also a noted author, having written several major books on art history, as well as short books featuring spiritual meditations on favorite works of art. As these books made clear, for Sister Wendy art was a vehicle for talking about the things of highest importance. Her response to art was not a digression from her contemplative life but an expression of it. Reflecting on beauty was for her an entry to reflection on the source of Beauty. And as she later wrote me, her work as a guide to art history was actually a kind of ministry—a way of talking about God to an audience who might otherwise be uncomfortable with religious language.

Eventually this public apostolate faded, and she was happy to return to the hidden life of solitude and prayer to which she had dedicated herself since 1970. Most of her fans knew very little about this side of Sister Wendy. Amidst all her writing and speaking, she purposely said very little about her inner life, and she vehemently resisted invitations from journalists or publishers to delve into such matters.

Apart from my professional work as an editor, I also had writing proj - ects of my own. Early in life I had dropped out of college to work in New York City with Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker. Day, a convert to Catholicism, had spent her early life as a writer and activist engaged in the radical social movements of her day. After becoming a Catholic, she prayed for some way of combining her faith with her commitment to the poor and social justice. In 1933, after meeting a Frenchman named Peter Maurin, she was inspired to start a newspaper and a movement devoted to living out and calling attention to the radical social implications of the gospel.

I worked with Dorothy Day for the last five years of her life, returning to college just months before her death in November 1980, and shortly after I myself had decided to become a Roman Catholic. Some years earlier Dorothy had named me as (a very young) managing editor of The Catholic Worker newspaper, an assignment that pointed me in the direction of my life’s work—not just as an editor, but also as her editor. After her death I edited her Selected Writings, and also, many years later, her diaries and her selected letters. Sister Wendy, who adored Dorothy Day, became a great fan of these volumes, even including Dorothy’s diaries, The Duty of Delight, on a list of five favorite books for a BBC program.

From my years at the Catholic Worker I had also come away with a fascination with saints and holy lives. In a series of books beginning with All Saints (1997), I had written about an eclectic range of “saints, prophets, and witnesses,” combining traditional Catholic saints with writers, activists, modern mystics, and others who seemed to speak to the spiritual questions of our time. I had elaborated on some of these lessons in my book The Saints’ Guide to Happiness (2003). Over the years Sister Wendy had appreciated many of these books, and for several of them provided generous endorsements.

Nevertheless, I would not have pretended that we were close friends. We shared a mutual esteem, and certainly a set of passionate interests and values. But Sister Wendy never crossed the boundary of true intimacy, and I respected that limitation. It was clear that her communications were functional, motivated by courtesy, business, or a combination of the two.

These boundaries were even more in place after she completely retired from public life and was forced by declining health to abandon her “caravan” on the monastery grounds and move into a room within the monastery cloister. In a letter of 2013, which seemed to be closing the door, she wrote me: “I like communicating with you... but if I’m to live a life of silence, communication without a real purpose has got to be sacrificed. Of course sometimes there is a real purpose, which I accept with joy. My life is full of joy and Our Lord seems so close that I laugh to recall to myself that I am only seeing Him in a glass darkly. How can we contain the happiness of what that face to face will mean? So rejoice with me, dear Robert.”

But three years later the door was surprisingly opened. Evidently, communication had found its “true purpose.”

It began in the spring of 2016 when an Easter card from Sister Wendy apparently went astray. Sister Wendy was now attended once a day by an American nun, Sister Lesley Lockwood, who delivered her frugal provisions and helped with correspondence. Sister Lesley would read aloud the day’s emails, and Sister Wendy would dictate a reply, which Sister Lesley transcribed on her laptop computer—or what Sister Wendy called “her machine.” Among other things, this meant that Sister Wendy’s words were suddenly and magically rendered legible! At first the messages were from Sister Lesley, conveying Sister Wendy’s intentions. But before long Sister Wendy herself had stepped from behind the veil. To my surprise, my emails were immediately answered, as one long email letter followed another, and then another. Before very long, we were exchanging letters on an almost daily basis.

In the beginning these letters focused on our common interest in saints and the general subject of holiness. Sister Wendy was fascinated by a series I had inaugurated on “Modern Spiritual Masters.” She was a voracious reader, and in supplying her with fresh volumes from this series I could barely keep up with her insightful reviews. Before long, however, our exchanges extended to wider reflections on the spiritual life. I encouraged Sister Wendy to share more personal reflections on this subject. At first she scoffed at this idea. But as our exchanges grew deeper and more personal, she reflected that perhaps the book I had in mind was actually here in our correspondence.

I found that the best way to elicit personal reflections from Sister Wendy was to write about my own spiritual journey and experiences. Had she ever felt or experienced anything like that? Sister Wendy had a great aversion to self-examination. Yet gradually she began to open up, recounting aspects of her story, sharing with remarkable candor an assessment of her own character, and opening up an extraordinary window on her soul.

But as our correspondence continued I quickly dispensed with any pretense of “ulterior motive.” Sometimes I wondered at the miracle that was unfolding. Sister Wendy had revealed that she was suffering from a terminal condition of her lungs. I imagined that her time was very limited, and these letters were written with her limited breath. Toward the end of her life, had I been chosen to receive this most precious gift of herself?

I found myself also emerging under Sister Wendy’s gracious gaze, reviewing my own life as a kind of spiritual story, beginning with the circumstances of my unusual childhood, marked by my parents’ divorce and the very diverse influence of their respective personalities. My father, Daniel Ellsberg, had become famous as the whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret history of the Vietnam War, resulting in his arrest and prosecution by the Nixon administration. From him I had inherited a sense of purpose, a commitment to find my own way to serve the cause of peace and a better world. My mother, an ardent Episcopalian, had raised me to value honesty, modesty, and kindness. In different ways they had shaped my path, including my decision to join Dorothy Day at the Catholic Worker, when I was nineteen; to pursue an interest in writing about heroes of the moral and spiritual life; and eventually to become the publisher of books that would promote a spirit of faithful engagement with the needs of the world. Sister Wendy had deliberately avoided the realms of politics and social struggle, and my connection to these themes opened for her a window on a wider world.

But I was also passing through a time of transition, following the failure of a long marriage, the beginning of a new and hopeful chapter in my life, and the questions this posed about how to make sense of all this in terms of my identity as a Catholic. Sister Wendy encouraged me to see all of it as part of a spiritual journey in which God was present along the way—not just in moments of light, but also in darkness. She received it all: my work, the stories of my friends, accounts of my travels, my response to politics and tensions within the church, the developing relationship with my fiancée, Monica, whom I had first met when I was seventeen, and even my densely symbolic dreams. She took all of this, placed it on the altar of her heart, and returned it with her blessing

What all this meant to Sister Wendy I can only determine from her words, her extraordinary generosity, and from the evident affection that poured from her. She never tried to steer the conversation toward more “spiritual” topics. Life itself, with all that it revealed about the capacity for love, suffering, and joy, was itself a work of art whose meaning unfolded before her contemplative eye. And as with her appreciation of the human body, she accepted everything as part of God’s creation, and she embraced it all in love.

Nevertheless, as she several times observed, this exchange was quite out of character, and actually unique in her experience. As much by temperament as by vocation Sister Wendy was a true solitary. She was happy to meet people during her forays into the world, traveling to museums with a film crew, meeting with producers and publishers and curators. She had a natural charm and an interest in people, but she was anything but an extrovert, and she had developed careful strategies for maintaining boundaries and discouraging trespassers.

And yet, in the course of our correspondence I could detect something changing; evidently there was a deeper story below the surface of our back and forth. This was reflected curiously in a subtle drama played out in her obsession with the famous Trappist monk and writer ThomasMerton. I later perceived this clearly only after several readings of our correspondence. Sister Wendy was constantly reading and rereading Merton’s books, admiring his genius as a writer, but always accusing him of a kind of falseness in his pretense of living a contemplative life. I generally pushed back, arguing that Merton represented a kind of spiritual bridge between different conceptions of the religious life, and that his ongoing search and effort to go deeper into the heart of his vocation, even when it seemed he was leaving something behind, was part of his significance and attraction to other spiritual seekers. At times this became a subject of disagreement between us. Yet she would not drop the subject.

Then, toward the end of our second year of correspondence, a light went on. She determined that she had completely misjudged Merton, and that this reflected her own narrowness and rigidity. Her epiphany seemed almost to parallel an incident in Merton’s own life, a famous experience he described after some years in the monastery when he felt himself suddenly awakening “from a dream of separateness,” from a kind of self-isolation and “spurious holiness,” that allowed him to enter into a more compassionate relationship with the world and his fellow humans.

Readers can judge whether I am reading too much into this. But as she entered into her final year, as breathing became increasingly difficult, and as she prepared for the long-awaited reunion with her Beloved, it seemed that Sister Wendy was still growing, still emerging from a kind of self-enclosure into a wider, freer, and more loving world.

Many other events occurred along the way, including an opportunity finally to meet face to face, when I was invited in 2017, with Monica accompanying me, to lead a retreat for the community at Quidenham. She keenly followed my work in promoting the canonization of Dorothy Day, read my stream of talks, books, and articles, including my letters of appreciation to our shared hero, Pope Francis. She followed with bated breath the exhausting but deeply rewarding service of helping my father write his memoir, a prophetic warning against the perils of nuclear doomsday. All this was transmitted in several hundred letters, from which this volume has been drastically edited and abridged.

Sister Wendy died on December 26, 2018, at the age of eighty-eight. She is still remembered fondly by many people as the famous “art nun,” whether from her broadcasts or from her published commentaries and reflections which live after her. Anyone who has watched her programs or read her reflections knows of her brilliant powers of observation and empathy, and her ability to see in works of art a window connecting the everyday human world and deeper spiritual realities. She brought that same deeply intuitive power to her encounters with people, as I was privileged to learn. I was always astonished that on the basis of some very brief reference to someone she would seem to know and understand them completely. It was thus with my first mention of Monica, or my children, or anyone who came into her field of view. Many viewers and readers probably felt that she knew and loved them as well.

But perhaps those who read these letters will discover someone they never knew: a modern mystic, a genius of the spiritual life, a person of farseeing sensitivities, a great lover of God whose capacity for love she was still discovering and exploring at the end of her life. Deep within what St. Teresa of Avila would have called her “interior castle,” in her small room, within the walls of an enclosed monastery, there burned an intense, though secret fire. For a brief while I was privileged to warm myself at that flame. I hope others may now do the same.

A note on this volume, which is drawn from a correspondence of more than 350,000 words. I have divided the text into three parts, corresponding to the three years it covers, 2016–2018, beginning with a short prologue that introduces the real jumping-off point, and an epilogue following Sister Wendy’s death. Naturally, I have omitted much that was of a personal nature, as well as long accounts of books read, news of the world, travels, and biographies of friends, authors, and family. I would have been happy to leave myself out of the whole thing, as I had originally intended. But as it became clear, Sister Wendy and I shared an exchange of gifts, and my own part in this was an essential aspect of the underlying story. I have added notes to explain references to many of the saints and figures we discussed. Some of these figures, including Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day, seemed to require a longer notation, and thus appear in a biographical glossary at the end.