Mother Thekla (born Marina Sharf)[1] (18 July 1918 – 7 August 2011), was a teacher, a nun and founder of the Orthodox Monastery of the Assumption in North Yorkshire, and spiritual muse of the composer Sir John Tavener.
[1] Marina Sharf was educated at City of London School for Girls,[2] and graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in English and Russian.
[3] One of her students wrote after her death "Miss Marina Sharf was our English teacher and sometime form mistress at Kettering High School.
Shortly before the Monastery moved from the Filgrave to the North York Moors, Sister Thekla (as she was then) wrote about how the Orthodox Monastic Vocation had been put into practice in Buckinghamshire.
"I was taught the meaning and work of repentance, that is, the growing into the attitude – in spite of every lapse until death – which recognises the failure within oneself, not even as much in the sin committed, as in the very being.
However, the encroachment of Milton Keynes meant that the small Community at Filgrave felt that they needed to move, which they did in 1974, choosing a farmhouse on the North Yorkshire Moors in which to establish themselves.
As a leading theologian and religious thinker, she strongly influenced the great British composer, John Tavener, who converted to Orthodoxy from Presbyterianism.
She also provided libretti for a series of important works including Song for Athene (1993) which was part of the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, The Apocalypse (1993), Fall And Resurrection (1999), We Shall See Him As He Is (1993), and Let Us Begin Again (1995), inter alia.