Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A nun who founded the world's first hospice for children, in Oxford.
On the island
Eight records
The Skye Boat SongFavourite
Elinor Bennett and Meinir Heulyn
This reminds me of my adored grandfather. It also reminds me of my beloved father, who used moderately tunefully to sing to me when I was quite tiny the skyboat song. And the harpist is Eleanor Bennett, who is a very dear friend, whose two sons used to use Helen House before they died.
Ruth Lambdin and Marion Creaser
My mother was very important to me in my life. She was a very strong character, and she and I used to war from time to time, as I've just described. But there was something very, very lovely about her. She was a professional musician. Her career, tragically, was curtailed by the outbreak of the Second World War. She left some compositions when she died, and we actually found this one and played it at her memorial service. It's a cradle song.
No particular reason, except um I remember my father singing it, and uh I love my father very, very dearly, and it's just always been my favourite musical, I think. I have a black adopted son. He's he's actually African, not Caribbean. But there's something of a similarity in the sort of approach to life and the the uh just the colour and the the warmth and the oh, I love it.
God has many, many faces. One face is the suffering God, the God of failure, and perhaps we can come back to that in a moment to whom I cling, I have to say, in so many situations now. The other face of God which really draws me is the awesomeness, the mystery, and this allegri somehow reaches beyond our understanding, beyond our grasp, to the God who is beyond.
this is particularly because I remember one little boy who came on a number of visits from the north of England because people used to travel a long way when we were the only children's hospice and he was passionate about this song and we had it playing again and again and again and when very sadly he died we had it as he at his funeral. And it sort of became the theme song for Helen House for a number of years.
The Lord Bless You and Keep You
Polyphony and Bournemouth Sinfonietta
I would like this particularly for all those countless people who have experienced the tragedy, and it is an unspeakable tragedy, of the death of a beloved child.
I I love it. In this piece of music you can hear the angels' wings and all the wonderful splendour of heaven as they sing Holy, Holy, Holy.
Because it speaks of the wonder of what one person can do in the midst of the horror of hatred and cruelty.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:25Did you have any idea when you were growing up as a young girl that you'd be a nun?
No, no idea at all. I grew up in the Church of Scotland, if I grew up in any Church, and that was because of the grandfather I adored.
Presenter asks
2:20How did you see life panning out for yourself, if you anticipated it at all?
Well, I hoped that when I had completed my training I would be able to work with one of the agencies abroad. Some of my senior colleagues had gone to Vietnam and were looking after children affected by the war. … Oh, yes, eventually, when I'd done the things I wanted to do, I was going to meet the perfect man and we were going to marry and I was going to have five children and adopt five more.
Presenter asks
5:29How did your family react to your decision to become a nun?
Well, I suppose especially then, it was very hard for people to understand why you would go and, as they saw it, shut yourself away. … Your family were devastated. Although they'd lost you. Yes, absolutely. And it was less painful, they said, not to see me at all than to see me in a habit.
The keepsakes
The book
Yann Arthus-Bertrand
I don't think there's any book that I've yet read which I could read again and again, always supposing I'm going to live on this island for years. But to look at fabulous photographs from all over the world, I think I could do again and again and again.
The luxury
a comfortable chaise longue with a mosquito net attached
Do you think I could have a really comfortable chaise longue? ... Could I possibly have a mosquito net attached?
Presenter asks
8:39What do you mean by saying you were a failure at school?
Well, I never excelled at anything and there were a lot of girls in the school. … And I think to be noticed you you had to excel at something. … My school reports always used to say she'd do better if she concentrated more. But having said all of that, I'm really glad, now, looking back, that I experience that sense of failure, because I think it gives you a whole other dimension to your character and to your understanding of other people.
Presenter asks
17:39What made you think of the idea of setting up a hospice for children?
It happened through a friendship with a little girl, Helen, and her parents. Helen tragically was taken very ill when she was two and was in hospital for six months. And at the end of the six months, when her parents knew she wasn't going to get well, they took her home and cared for her with tremendous love and devotion. And they were good enough to trust me s so that they lent her to me sometimes, um, just to give them a very short break. … And it was thinking about that? That led me to wonder if there were other desperately sick children and families out there experiencing tremendous uh stress and distress without very much support.
Presenter asks
21:12How can you make the death of a child any easier to bear?
Well, I find twenty-one years on I've got fewer answers to the big questions than I had at the outset. … To me, what I can best offer is companionship, the ordinary everyday, coming alongside, sharing, you know, the joys and the sorrows. … It's not about dying, it's about living fully until you die.
“in a split second I knew that none of my ideas were for me, that actually what God was asking of me was to be a nun. And there was just from that moment on a conviction that this was what I had to do and that I wouldn't rest until I did it.”
“It was very painful knowing the thing that was giving me great joy was giving the people I loved most such tremendous sorrow and distress.”
“It's not about dying, it's about living fully until you die.”