Bunessan

                                                                Bunessan

When do you usually get up in the morning?  The older I get, the greater becomes the temptation to stay for another hour or two in my cosy bed, reading or just dozing. But then I remember my Birdsong Clock with its twelve different birds and I hurry downstairs to the kitchen before the eight o’clock blackbird bursts into song.  If I’m there on time I feel that the day has got off to a good start!

As I put the kettle on I often remember the words of the hymn ‘Morning has broken, like the first morning, Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird.’  That hymn is set to the tune Bunessan – which makes it doubly meaningful to me, because it was near Bunessan, a little village on the island of Mull, that I experienced a powerful spiritual blessing.  As a result, the name Bunessan has been precious to me ever since - and the startling incident which took place there prompted me to write my book Joyful Witness.  Here, from chapter 6, is a shortened account of what happened that day.

“Escape!  We have to get away!”

‘This thought was uppermost in my mind as my husband Bob and I waved goodbye to our three children, leaving them in the care of my sister and brother-in-law.

Illness and stress had taken their toll recently.  Bob’s recurrent bladder cancer had meant yet another operation; his elderly mother needed our constant support; both full-time teachers, we had had end-of-term reports to cope with as well as the daily demands of the classroom; June had brought extra family activities, enjoyable but tiring.  The children had all needed ferrying to and fro: our son Michael to various sports events, our daughters, Sally and Linda, to rehearsals for their school’s production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S.Pinafore.  Now that the summer term was finally over we were totally exhausted – physically, mentally and spiritually.

Experience has taught me to hand everything over to God in such situations, so for the previous week I had prayed: “Please, God, give us Your support – and make us aware of it.  Please send us Your Holy Spirit to guide us, so that we can come back spiritually refreshed, certain that You are always present and know our every need. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.” ‘

We had decided to head north to the little island of Iona, to the west of the much bigger island of Mull.   Iona is where St Columba arrived from Ireland to bring Christianity to Scotland, and it is often said that it is a “thin place”, halfway between earth and Heaven.  Iona, therefore, seemed a good place to go for spiritual renewal.  We would travel at a leisurely pace, stopping each night at a guest-house offering Bed and Breakfast which a Tourist Office employee had found for us earlier the same day.  Our first stop would be Helensburgh, then Oban, then somewhere on Mull, as we knew that there were very few hotels on Iona itself.  

Nowadays it is easy to choose and book holiday accommodation online, but at that time we depended on the helpful Book-a-Bed-Ahead service.  Using a list of hotels and B&B places, the assistant in our local Ayr tourist office telephoned her Helensburgh counterpart and fixed us up with a bed for the night.  That evening, when chatting over supper, our B&B host advised us not to choose Tobermory on Mull but instead head for Bunessan, which was much nearer the ferry to Iona.   Neither Bob nor I had ever heard of Bunessan.

On our arrival there our host led us to our bedroom – and to our utter astonishment we saw beside the bed a group photograph, with our two daughters, Sally and Linda, smiling out at us! 

‘This ‘coincidence’ was so overwhelming that we could only stand stock-still in awe and wonder, sensing the presence of some invisible power which had led us to this experience.  The information that our host’s daughter had spent the summer term at our local school, teaching art and helping backstage with H.M.S.Pinafore did nothing to reduce our sense of wonder. It only added one more to all the elements of our special journey: our Helensburgh host, who had told us of Bunessan, and the Book-a-Bed-Ahead service through which complete strangers had found rooms for us in guest-houses which were completely unknown to us.

Once we were back home I felt that I just had to tell my friends about that startling incident.  Several of them exclaimed “Goodness, you should put that all down in writing!” Over the previous years I had already recorded many other ‘coincidences’ in my private diaries.  Now, at last, I felt prompted to “go public” and share the joy and comfort they had brought me, thereby strengthening my faith in God.  I began work on the book, which I entitled Joyful Witness, and asked my artist friend Ronnie Russell to illustrate it - which added to the pleasure!

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