How two devoutly religious lives were transformed by a fleeting encounter in a convent.
Sister Mary Elizabeth had lived a devout, austere and mostly silent life as a nun, spending most of her days in her Carmelite cell in northern England. But a fleeting encounter with a similarly devout monk would lead him to send her a message bearing words that left her reeling, "Would you leave your order and marry me?"
As Sister Mary Elizabeth let Robert out of the door, she brushed his sleeve and says she felt something of a jolt. Before entering the Carmelite order at the age of 19, Sister Mary Elizabeth had been Lisa Tinkler, from Middlesbrough. A weekend retreat at a monastery while she was still a teenager convinced her of her calling. The monastery was run by Carmelite nuns from an order that had origins in the 12th Century and where the life was particularly spartan, secluded and strict - but she decided that was precisely the life she wanted to lead.
She describes the way she felt her "interior world" open up as the outside world closed to her. There was a sense of feeling content and fulfilled. But, that day in the convent parlour, it all changed with the touch of a sleeve and a message asking if she would walk away from monastic life and get married.He may have known nothing about her, but she knew a little about him.
Sister Mary Elizabeth had imagined the reaction of her family, or of her bishop, if she left. She also wrestled over whether her relationship with God would change.
"I was really struggling, I thought I should just stop this from happening and Robert could get on with his life. But I also wondered if he really meant what he said about getting married." But it was a dark period after a failed relationship that led him to continue his search for fulfilment in England where, in spite of the Lutheran Protestant theology he had settled on, it was in a Carmelite Roman Catholic monastery where he found his solace.
"When she appeared at the pub the little demon in me was terrified. But my fear was not religious or spiritual, it was purely about how I would start a new life at the age of 53," he says. They describe the moment at the job centre when they both burst into tears when asked about their transferrable skills - and another time when they were driving from Preston to Yorkshire.
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