18

 We hear and we see. Sound and light. It is all nature, all part of human life, but it certainly may be argued that our modern life has twisted and distorted nature in ways much to our disadvantage. Although quiet and darkness have been part of us since we first gained hearing and vision, nature has changed since then, and one of the greatest changes came about with the  industrial revolution, about 1700 when we turned to using machines instead of muscles. Noise and glare was added to sound and light or maybe, better, sound and light changed to noise and glare, and that is where we are now.

Think of the world we now grow up in, especially in any residential area. Think of your day. Think of the time you spend listening to artificial voices or music, or just noise.  Think of the times when you use artificial light to see—anytime during the 24-hour day. Think of how you are now surrounded—or invaded—by machine made sound and light. Think of how  much of your life is artificial, unnatural.

For contrast, try to remember past moments of natural sound and light in your own life. Maybe there were times when you were camping, perhaps, or staying with a friend who lived in the country, and in the dark you could listen to  leaves rustling or insects chirping. I can look back to such times. Even today if you live in the right place and get up early enough, you can hear a chorus of bird song. Today, however, no one gets up that early unless they have to and then there are other things to attend to, like getting to work on time, and there is constant noise. There is noise on the way, noise at work, noise on the way home, and noise into the night until at last we are able to go to sleep, in spite of airplanes overhead, sirens, and the neighbors’ television.  

There were other times for some of us when we were able to reach back into the natural world. I once had a special, natural experience when I was on the deck of a blacked-out ship in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. (At your expense, thank you.) One could almost read by starlight. If there were a moon to help the stars, you indeed could read! Those moments were long ago, but I remember them; I remember them.

It was a rare experience, the like of which down through the years has inspired countless writers and poets before and after Robert Service who said “The stars sing an anthem of glory/ I cannot put into speech.” In my instance, though the ship’s engines drowned out any sounds of the sea, the stars were untouched and for a time I saw the night sky as did all past humanity, an “anthem of glory”. But whether land, sea or sky, natural sound and light are hard to come by these days.

By coincidence—maybe—I have recently encountered two arguments regarding the need for the natural and the cost of the unnatural in human life. The first is a book,  The Silence of the Angels, (Dale C. Allison, Jr.) The second is an article in the New Yorker magazine, (August 24, 2020). The former argues that “our mastery over nature is a removal from nature”.   One aspect, one dimension of that mastery is  artificial light, that is, all the light bulbs shining all over the world, and, continues the book, the multiplication of lights is one way we measure “the progress of civilization.” That ‘progress’ from natural to mechanical light has been, argues the book, emotionally and biologically harmful.

The New Yorker article is chiefly about gardening in Great Britain, and it describes the vigorous gardening world of England which is a big, thirty billion dollars a year industry. There are garden clubs, garden stores, gardens all over the Isles, but the point of the article is the therapeutic, healing power of gardens, of nature. Gardening in its various forms is emotionally and intellectually strengthening. It is tranquil labor (and it doesn’t have to be in starlight!)

Whether then it is our backyard garden or a remote part of the planet, a tiny flower bed or a distant mountain, nature is a healing presence in human life, but we have to a great degree, exiled nature. We will suffer, but we should do what we can to bring nature in its many forms back into our natural life. It will not be easy. There is more to nature than sound and light. There is today the whole issue of environmental disorder, of climate change. We face great dangers. —and we are always easily deceived.

For his purposes, the Devil will change himself into an angel of light (11 Cor. 11:14); there are those who will tell us that Broadway is a fine and wonderful place!  And remember the words of Screwtape: “Noise, the grand dynamism . . exultant, ruthless, and virile . . . We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth.” (Read Whispers #20.)  You may not believe in the Devil or even God, but there is no doubt that today’s machine-created atmosphere is adversely affecting the human condition, you, me, everyone else, and we do not presently know how much we are paying for our ‘progress’.