About six months later, and still keen to make a documentary-style film about the sisters’ extraordinary life, Whyte repeated the exercise: only to be met (not entirely to his surprise) by the same response.  Undaunted, he tried again; and again; and again.  ‘And in this way,’ he says, ‘about ten years went by.’

And then one day in November 2007, out of the blue, Whyte got a phone call from the Mother Prioress.  She said: ‘Michael, I’d like to talk to you about your film’.

Whyte’s persistence had paid off.  He spent the following year moving, camera in hand, between the outside world and the enclosed world of the sisters – and the result is a thoughtful, and painstakingly accurate, portrayal of a community that is almost entirely invisible from the huge city in whose midst it exists.  In fact it was this sense of the Carmelites as ‘so near and yet so far’ that first captivated Whyte – his own home is just a stone’s throw from the convent, and yet (especially given that he’s not a Catholic) he knew hardly anything about it.

What his film illuminates, and brilliantly, isn’t just the silence and the peace and prayerfulness of the sisters, or even their dogged work ethic and their purposefulness.  No: much more than that, he manages to convey the fact that being a Carmelite (and I know what I’m talking about, because I once spent a fortnight inside the enclosure living as one) is doing something that’s completely absurd – for God.  Sister Mary of St Philip, the prioress, sums it up: ‘I wanted to live the kind of life that affirmed my belief in God and was totally ridiculous without a belief in God,’ she tells Whyte.

Being a Carmelite is one of the most totally self-giving vocations on earth: the nuns spend the vast majority of their day in silence (a silence that pervades Whyte’s film), with just two short periods of recreation, when the sisters gather to chat over their sewing and mending.  

What I found during my fortnight ‘inside’ – and what Whyte found during his year as an interloper in the Notting Hill community – is that, although they may seem austere and other-worldly from our side of the grille, Carmelite nuns are enormously fun-loving, caring, chatty and have a huge sense of humour.  I remember the suppressed giggles and the smiling eyes when funny things happened during the silent hours; I remember, too, how immensely human the women whose lives I shared were.  

A sister is shown tapping away on a computer...
...another is shown unpacking the weekly Sainsbury’s internet shopThere were the obvious difficulties of Carmelite life – the 5am starts, the constant restrictions, the limited landscape (the nuns only leave the convent to see the doctor or dentist), the lack of visitors, the obedience to the authority of The Rule, and the prioress.  But I also remember how, though they clearly often themselves found it difficult, the nuns were hanging on in there for the long haul.  In Whyte’s film, Sister Mary of St Philip makes the astonishing revelation that, despite knowing from the moment she visited Carmel while still an undergraduate at Cambridge that the life was for her, she went on to spend 18 years inside the enclosure not really feeling God’s presence.  For almost two decades, it transpires, she simply held on to the belief that there was a God, and that she would eventually sense his warmth again... as indeed, thankfully, she did.

There are plenty of misunderstandings about Carmelite life.  One of them, explains Sister Mary of St Joseph, is
that it’s an escape from real life.  ‘But that’s totally rubbish because you are brought face to face with
yourself. ‘  Others believe it’s either totally impossible, or actually an easy and selfish existence.  ‘But it’s
within the capability of anyone if they are called to it.  You couldn’t sustain it unless it was something outside yourself...the life itself is about total self-giving, to God.  

‘We believe that it carries not just a message for the rest of humanity, but that it generates a love at the heart of humanity.‘  For busy people – working people, parents, all those out there in the hurly-burly of the world of the office and the shopping centre, the school and the hospital – the Carmelites are an unseen oasis of prayer, doing for all of us what we haven’t got (enough) time to do ourselves - talking to God.  

Twenty-first century life has penetrated the Carmel at Notting  Hill – but only in subtle, and highly selective, ways.  A sister is shown tapping away on a computer, keeping in touch perhaps with other Carmelites around the world; another sister is shown unpacking the weekly Sainsbury’s internet shop.  Where the trappings of modern life can aid the centuries-old Carmelite existence, it is embraced wholeheartedly; but  unlike in many communities, there is no automatic right of entry into the community for the latest gadgets or fads.  

There is, for example, no television at Notting Hill; instead, for fun, the sisters enjoy country-dancing.  Whyte’s film shows a group of sisters skipping around the room, before dissolving into fits of well-earned giggles as the music ends.

The Mother Prioress washed, kissed and dried the feet of the sisters on Maundy Thursday with the most extraordinary tendernessFor most of the time, though, there is no dance music inside the enclosure: in fact there’s no music at all, outside of the delightful notes of the sisters in the choir, singing the Office.  But silence, says Sister Marie Christine, ‘becomes music... it’s something that’s full of life, and expectations.  There’s a grace in it’.

Of the many thoughtful moments in Whyte’s film, two stand out.  One is when the Mother Prioress washes the sisters’  feet on Maundy Thursday (she is shown drying their toes, and then kissing their feet, with extraordinary tenderness); and the other is the funeral of an elderly sister, Sister Mary of the Blessed Sacrament, who is shown laid out in her open coffin.  Unlike in so many other communities, elderly Carmelites are properly cherished inside the enclosure; not only are they the source of much wisdom and knowledge, but they are as good as anyone at the raison d’etre – prayer – and, of course, they are nearer to God, in the sense that they will soon be with Him.  

Whyte says his hours spent inside the Notting Hill convent were hugely important to him, and he’ll never forget them, nor what a privilege they were.  He’s not become a Catholic, but he describes himself as ‘a great friend of the Catholic Church’ and he’s now working on a film about the relics of St Thérèse.  What he discovered amidst the Carmelites, he says, was ‘an almost tangible atmosphere of goodness...there were moments in the choir, when the sisters were in prayer, when you could not but be aware of the intensity of the moment, the sense of peace, and the presence of faith.’

NO GREATER LOVE is released
on DVD June 28th,
RRP: £15.99