Sister Agatha - A Nuns Story--The Deeply Moving True Story of Giving Up a Life of Love and Luxury in a Single Irresistible Moment

I cannot remember a time when I wasnt in love.

Agatha leaned towards me as we sat beneath the shade of a tree in the convent garden, a slight smile playing on her lips as if to tease me. Then, much more seriously, for she needed me to understand, she added: Ive changed my mind on how I want you to begin. I want this book to start off the story as follows, then you can do the rest. She proceeded to recite the piece in one run, clear in what she wanted to say.

Will you tell me the way to Sligo? Because I wouldnt start from here. Now, Ive always felt that if I was God, I wouldnt start with me. I know that God loves and cares for me, but He called me to be a nun and I would not have started with the person, or the background that I came from, when my other Sisters came from Catholic families, but, extraordinarily, He is with me so this is my story told my way.

Having set the bar she resettled herself in her chair and glanced around at the visitors arriving for afternoon tea in the peaceful garden, open to the public. Agatha is an intelligent woman, with over thirty years in this convent alone, and totally familiar with every operation that has taken place within the clutch of elegant Georgian buildings that form The Bar Convent, gently nudging the outer walls of Micklegate in York for 300 years. She exudes warmth towards the twenty nuns and other staff, which flow back and forth along the corridors as does the tide on a Cornish beach.

My first idea was a bit too sensational, too tabloid newspaper and all that sort of thing, even if it was true and it is but this is a story, a very personal one, about God and me.

This is indeed a story about a life in two complete parts yet each inextricably bound to the other by the same beliefs, constant threads in a long life. The first half is about Shirley Leach, the obverse side of Agatha, who retains the same mind, the same intellect, yet whose life is diametrically opposed to the younger version. On the one hand it tells of a young girl growing up in a twenty-three-bedroom mansion on the North Downs of Kent, cossetted and enjoying a glorious life of dances, parties and flirtations; of horses and cucumber sandwiches on the tennis courts, with a butler in attendance to meet her every whim. Then theres the nanny, the governesses and her own groom. How does this fit when, in 1952, she received a message of such power and clarity that she wept for a day, raging at God for taking her life, and her fianc, yet soon afterwards she was to change her name to Agatha and leave all that had once been precious to her folded away in a case?

For all the agnosticism of today, the disbelief and the downright mocking, one can be easily awed at her unbroken authority in the belief that caused her to surrender a life of luxury for a disciplined and meticulous Order, and at her sheer mental strength that few would be able to match even if they wanted to, certainly in the twenty-first century of self-indulgence and egocentrism.

Its not as though Agatha fits the standard image of the pious, silent nun, the projection on a wall of the good woman devoted to prayer and reflection. At least not on the surface, for she is as different to this as chalk is to cheese, or for that matter, whisky to Coca-Cola. She strides rather than walks through the building to meet me in the hall of The Bar Convent, the oldest unenclosed order in the UK, with the continuous presence of sisters since 1686. She has no habit or cap and veil to form an obstacle between us. Her beliefs are as strong now as when she received the call sixty-five years earlier and this conviction tells with every word she utters.

Her stories, her whole life, bubble out of her, unstoppable; each sentence is laced with humour, stitching in and out of her words like fine worsted cloth with, always, a mischievous glint in her eye. She is constantly astounded that anyone would wish to know about her.

Only once or twice have we strayed into a dark place (my description) when I raise the subject of that day again. This was the day, an any sort of a day, a happy day, when she wrote to her fianc telling him of the chairs she had found, and wouldnt they be just right for the new dining room? Her hand had come to rest on the notepaper before continuing as if by itself but I see no point now, for I am to become a nun.

There is a greyness in her eyes, like early cataracts, and I know that that apocalyptic event is as vivid and vital as it has always been.

Life, despite the security of the convent and her Sisters around her, has not always been easy, and when she became the Local Superior that period coincided with the threat of bankruptcy and loss of their home. Strength and belief allowed her to help redress the balance and how she achieved this is an extraordinary tale in itself. From this harrowing time she moved into calmer, if deeper, waters to develop her credo of Life is a Paradox.

Whatever your beliefs, whether you hold any sort of theory on life after death, or even if you do not, this is a story that cannot fail to uplift you. This is the story of the life of Agatha, who, having been tested to the very core of her conviction, came out the other side, her faith secure.