OXFORD: Love knows no bounds, that was proved when a nun of 24 years fall in love with a monk of 13 years and later got married.
Sister Mary Elizabeth was born Lisa Tinkler in Middlesbrough. Although not belong to a very religious family, her first calling came during her early childhood itself. Influenced by an aunt, she had asked her father to construct an altar in her room. As she grew up, she often visited the Catholic Churches in her hometown and devoted time to learning and devotion to Mother Mary. A weekend retreat at a monastery cemented her will to serve the church and God and she decided to join the Carmelite monastery. It was a 12th-century sect of the Roman Catholic Church and had very strict rules and regulations, including total isolation except for a few hours every day.
Robert had been a Carmelite friar for 13 years by this point. Robert on the other hand grew up in a region which was recently transferred to Poland by Germany. His Lutheran father and Catholic mother gave the early knowledge of religion. A dark period of his life and a failed relationship made him search for the meaning of life in religious literature. He came to England with a Lutheran Protestant theology but it was at the Carmelite Roman Catholic Monastery that he got his calling. He was a Carmelite friar for 13 years when they met. He was a thinker, academic and theologian who came to monastic life in a search for meaning during what he describes as a crisis of faith and identity.
They first met very briefly during one of his visits to the monastery. After about a week Robert left her a message asking if she is willing to leave her current life and marry her. She did not have any answer at that time but started to follow his sermons from behind her confinements. She got glimpses of his childhood, growing up in Silesia in Poland near the German border, and about a love of mountains.
When she talked about the developments to her superiors in the monastery, she was met with a negative reply. So she decided to pack her basic necessities and left the premises and went to meet him and informed of the development.
Robert maintains that his message to Lisa asking if they could get married marry was almost an intellectual tussle with himself. And when she arrived, he was afraid it was possible to start a completely new life at 53. The transition was difficult, especially at the beginning mentioned both. Lisa remembers a moment just before Christmas, soon after they had both left their monastic lives.
Lisa initially took a job at a funeral home and later as a hospital chaplain. Although he was initially upset when a letter from Rome mentioned that he was no longer a member of the Carmelite order, Robert was soon accepted into the Church of England.
They both got married in a small event and now share a home in the village of Hutton Rudby in North Yorkshire - where Robert has been made a vicar of the local church.
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