Abbess, Mother Thekla who died on August 7 aged 93, was the last surviving nun to have occupied the enclosed Orthodox Monastery of the Assumption in North Yorkshire, but became better known to the wider world as the spiritual muse of the composer Sir John Tavener.
She spent her last years at the Anglican Abbey of St Hilda in Whitby.
Marina Sharf was born in Kilslovodsk, in the Caucasus, in 1918, amid the strife and tumult of the Russian revolution but she was still very young when her barrister father moved his family to England. OHP’s Foundress, Mother Margaret, was concerned for the welfare of such immigrants and took pupils into St Hilda’s at very reduced fees. But the Sharfs decided to educate their daughter in London.
So, she would say many years later, ‘I did not come as a child; instead I’ve come to spend my second childhood here’! After graduating from Cambridge she joined the WAAF and worked in the Intelligence service during the war – deciphering for Bletchley Park – but she never spoke of this. She told beautifully comic stories of episodes in her own life. A friend’s favourite tells of an air-raid warning in London, which sent crowds from the streets scuttling down into the nearest tube station. In the crush, Marina trod heavily on her mother’s foot. “You b***** fool, Marina!” swore Mrs Sharf, in Russian, and the elderly woman beside them on the crowded platform responded, also in Russian, “How wonderful to hear one’s native tongue!”
Later Marina became a teacher. A long-time friend, Marilyn Wood, who knew Mother Thekla for almost sixty years, spoke of her influence: “ I knew her first as a pupil, (she was an inspirational teacher) and then, seven years later, as a colleague in her English department at Kettering High School. No-one could have been kinder and more supportive to a new arrival, although her version of ‘the last in makes the tea’ was ‘the newest staff member types the examination papers’. When she left teaching in 1966, to become a nun, I observed her journey: from Sister Marina, the junior member of the community at Filgrave, to her becoming Abbess at Normanby.
“I can honestly say that in all those years Mother changed very little in her personality. Her generosity of time, spirit and intellect, was offered unstintingly, to all who came to her. The famous, the unknown (I almost said infamous but Mother would have taken that in her stride) received her help and advice on an equal footing. She taught me a great deal, not only about literature but spiritual matters too, and sometimes things practical – among the latter the dubious pleasure of waiting in a freezing cold shed for one of her beloved goats to produce her kid!”
Mother herself wrote about her sudden decision to become a nun, “I went on a retreat and met Mother Maria and that was it. I was called to it. It’s a bit like a thunderbolt. You can’t deny it when it hits you. I used to love things like visiting secondhand book shops but you can’t compare life now with life before. It’s like walking through a mirror backwards.”
From the Anglican Order of the Holy Paraclete OHP Newsletter www.ohpwhitby.org
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