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Resting Place

REV. GILLEAN MACLEAN

This poem was written after the scattering of ashes on Iona of a member of my congregation who had come to faith on that island. I use poetry often in worship – my own and others’. I think that, as we try to express what is essentially mystery, often it is only in poetry that we can come close to an understanding. Some of the best poetry I have read is by women. The mistress of the love poem, after all, is surely Christina Rossetti. She wrote about love, human love, but also about divine love and how the two are inextricably linked.

‘Resting Place’

Here,

in this place

to dance with seagulls

over white-tipped waves,

to sing with the curlew

the corncrake and the skylark

to swim with the seals

through forests of swaying kelp.

Freed,

at the last

from the restrictions of the earth

the vagaries of time

the restraints of the years.

One with tides and seasons

an eternal jewelled droplet

part of the endless breath of God.

And yet,

not resting at all

ever moving, changing, creating.

Finished with life.

Alive to eternity.