蜜芽传媒

Two nature stories leapt at me from the papers yesterday.

First was first the amazing news that a Wollemi pine, a species of tree which till recently was thought to have vanished 80 million years ago, is now fruiting in a garden in Worcestershire.

A few Wollemis were discovered in the 1990s in a remote Australian ravine, and a hundred or so have now been cultivated globally, as the Wollemi teeters on the precipice of an incredible return.

Second, less spectacular but for me just as moving, was news of an urban project in Bristol which has set the city鈥檚 back-alleys buzzing vibrantly with bugs and insects and colour.

A local resident, Flora Beverley, inspired neighbours to help her plant wild flowers along litter strewn, unloved concrete passages to create 鈥榥ature corridors鈥� for our vital but oft forgotten pollinators which are, themselves, on the edge of catastrophic decline.

Her vision is not just to enliven the city with nature but to join up separate pockets of wildlife habitats such as parks and reserves which have until now, unhelpfully for wildlife, sat in fragmented isolation.

Such happy re-connection need not be reserved for insects alone, of course. As Flora Beverley herself says, 鈥淭he things that are good for nature tend to be very good for people too.鈥�

The nature poet Mary Oliver writes movingly of our own belonging within the 鈥榝amily of things鈥�. And I love to think myself as belonging not so much to the 鈥榢ingdom鈥� of God as the 鈥楰IN-dom鈥� [without the g] - as for me that鈥檚 how God created our world to be: a joined-up whole; an ecosystem in which we come to life in relationship with the least as well as the greatest.

鈥楾he deepest mystery of all,鈥� says the eco-theologian Thomas Berry, is how 鈥榓ll forms of life, from the plankton in the sea and the bacteria in the soil to the most massive mammals are ultimately related to one another 鈥� in the entire complex of earthly being.鈥� [From the smallest bugs of the backyards of Bristol to the revival of the ancient Wollemi trees.]

Perhaps we can join things up a little more, today - re-join the family - by planting autumn flowers for the bees, say; pausing to wonder at a forgotten part of nature; reaching out to a neighbour - or indeed as Flora Beverly has done so beautifully, to bring love to an unloved place, and to watch life return.

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