There is a pear tree next to the back door of the curate’s house. It has been a joy over the last two weeks noticing it change – from having bare branches, to the first green buds, and finally watching the flowers develop and form fully into a riot of subtle whitish greens and pinks.
Pear blossom in my back garden, 12 April 2022. © Gerry Lynch
Last year I didn’t notice it until it was in full blossom. Perhaps I was distracted by the return to church and some minimal amount of socialising in April 2021. At this time of year change happens quickly, but at first subtly. If one does not pay close attention, one is confronted by it suddenly, especially if life is very busy.
Modern life can feel like it has been designed to disconnect us from the natural world. One of the things I noticed in my first week in Devizes was how dark and detailed the night skies were from my back garden, even in late June, with a fine view of the Milky Way. As a city boy who had been interested in stargazing since childhood, this was a surprise treat.
Even after all these years, I can remember quite distinctly what the northern skies looked like from my parents’ back yard in the mid-1980s. By this period, in a city centre location, the skies were already considerably affected by light pollution. Yet things have degraded further to the point that I estimate that about three-quarters of the stars then visible in Belfast with the naked eye no longer are.
The Milky Way near Shaftesbury in Dorset, 12 August 2016 © Gerry Lynch
Even in Devizes, the night sky is only a pale shadow of what our ancestors’ took for granted. The summertime Milky Way, for example, should be full of structure and complexity – while it is impressively ghostly here, detail is no longer visible from Devizes. Many more stars would have been visible than are today in this country, even in remote countryside; against the dark countryside, the night sky felt bright. I have experienced this, even in recent years, in Dorset where the councils turn many street lights off in the early hours.
The night sky should fill us with awe, an awareness of the sheer scale and beauty of the cosmos, but in the places where most people live today only a thin scattering of very bright stars are visible. Similarly, it is easy to be disconnected with the miracle of the seasonal rhythms of animal and plant life. Yet reconnecting with the world and the universe is incredibly grounding, stabilising, and life-giving.
Telling someone to “Touch Grass” became a popular online insult in recent years. It implied that someone or their ideas were so crazy, that it was obvious they were spending too much time online and they needed to go outside and calm down.
Then over the last year the meaning of the phrase “Touch Grass” changed, to something positive. It became a shout of encouragement between people aware that they spent too much online to encourage one another to disconnect and spend more time in the real world.
Most of us are spending too much time online or in front of the TV, something greatly exacerbated by the pandemic. We could all benefit from spending more of our lives away from screens, just sitting on the grass somewhere and watching nature, alone or with friends.
We are part of a system of life – God’s creation – which extends not only to all life forms on this planet but to every galaxy of the universe. This is a mind-bending, awe-inspiring, miracle. The endless banality of our technologically-driven culture, with its incessant artificial light and air conditioning and glowing screens that display the same social media sites in every country risk disconnecting us from the reality that we are a magnificent, miraculous species in a world and a universe of wonder.
It is too easy to forget that. Sometimes we need to switch off and just touch grass.
This article first appeared in the May 2022 edition of the parish magazine of St John with St Mary, Devizes.
