LETTER: I'm with the butterflies

We are coming now into early summer at this time of year grass grows quickly. This grass is food for not only all the seed-eating birds, such as Linnets and Goldfinches, but also provides habitat for butterflies and insects. Are we acting respectfully when we as human beings knowingly destroy and despoil that habitat, the life source of other life forms that we share this planet with.

The days of mown churchyards such as a Ringmer are coming to an end, those of us who follow the Christian tradition and those who follow other spiritual paths are now at last beginning to understand that we share this planet with the myriad lifeforms that exist within it. If we are acting generously and consciously we will seek to nurture all forms of life, not because it suits us but because it supports them. Mown graveyards are not cared for, we are not caring for anything else other than ourselves and that is an act of disrespect to all other forms of life.

The environmental crisis we all face, the crisis of an oncoming sixth mass extinction, global warming, not to mention the imminent loss of 90 million ash trees in this country is largely down to the fact that we see nature as something to dominate rather than something to nurture.

The whole notion of mown graveyards is I agree very important because as public spaces they act very much as a litmus to how we see ourselves and what kind of species we are in relation to other forms of life, birds and butterflies. I am with the butterflies Mr Higham, they have so much to teach us about what it is to be human.

Revd Peter Owen Jones

The Street, Firle