A Review of Courtney Ellis’ new book Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope Through Grief.
My desk where I read my Bible and pray in the mornings, is placed right in front of the second largest window in our house. The window is longer than my desk and over three feet tall. In the mornings, I flip the homemade curtains up over the curtain rod and let the light shower over my work space. When the weather is nice, I open the windows and let fresh air flow through the house.
During my times of quiet alone with God, I find myself looking out the window. From here, I can see my greenhouse filled with tomato and pepper plants, my hibiscus plant, and the side of my neighbor’s house. It would not be what many would think of as a beautiful view, but the neighbor has three large, mature trees. One closest to our property and then two on the other side of their house. The trees are alive with birds most mornings; because of all that life, I find myself getting my tablet out and opening the Merlin app. I have it record all the birds while I read scripture or write in my prayer journal. The app questions you if you want to keep recording after ten minutes, so every seven to eight minutes, I get up and check to see what happens to be in the neighborhood today.
Starlings live in the soffit of a neighbor’s house. There are about three pair of cardinals who live close by our house. The house sparrows live in the end of the clothes line post. Dark eyed juncos like to perch in the dead hibiscus branches that I leave for them in the winter. Mourning doves and Eurasian collard doves like to hang around and enjoy the bird seed on the sidewalk in the winter and on the power lines in the spring. The mocking bird, Midnight, and his family live here too, (Midnight got his name when he was a young male learning his songs. He would wake us up around midnight sitting on the vent pipe for our hot water heater. His song would travel down that pipe and sound like we had a mocking bird singing in our laundry room). Fish crows live at the park across the street along with the Canada geese who never go back to Canada, the meadow larks, the scissor tail fly catchers, and the killdeer. We have a pair of red shouldered hawks as well. The blue jays are here along with brown thrashers, house finches, and several different types of sparrows and finches.
Many mornings are interrupted many times with a “what was that?” as I go to the app to see who the newest visitor might be. It never ceases to amaze me how many different birds are here that I can only hear, but not see. Occasionally, I can catch a glimpse of the red bellied woodpecker who likes to make his loud calls at 6:15am or the eastern blue birds who have just arrived back from their winter homes. Many days I just stop and listen in awe of all the beautiful creatures who share this space with me.
I ordered Courtney Ellis’ new book Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope Through Grief for two main reasons. First, I consider Courtney a friend. Not the kind of friend who comes over for dinner, but the kind of friend who I met online. She actually may not even remember any interactions online with me, but I will claim her as a friend since I know about her family, her church, her birding, and I hear her voice as she keeps me company while working in the greenhouse listening to The Thing With Feathers podcast. When a friend of mine publishes a book that really interests me, then I am going to buy it.
The second reason why I bought the book is that for the past ten months our family has been traveling through some pretty tough grief. My father died suddenly, but not unexpectedly, at the end of June and then my father-in-law died the very end of September. We walked through a muddled summer and fall, numb with grief even if it didn’t feel like what I would consider normal grief.
In December, I told my husband that I finally was starting to feel like myself again when my childhood through college aged best friend told me she has stage 4, terminal cancer. Losing my dad was complicated. Losing my father-in-law was hard, because we live 5 hours away and he was such a quiet man. Then losing my best friend too? It was too much. Anticipatory grief doesn’t mess around. It felt like all the grief I have been experiencing wasn’t just adding up, it was growing exponentially.
Looking Up met me where I am right now: whatever this state ends up being named by me later. The writing in it is just so absolutely beautiful. I find myself thinking over and over again of descriptions like, “The day of the funeral arrived dreary in the way Wisconsin becomes when it’s worn itself out with gray winter days but isn’t sure what to do next.”
I love Courtney’s stories of different birds and bird experiences. She quotes people who either I am friends with as well on Twitter or people whom she has had on her podcast, making the book feel much more like conversation among friends, then a book either about birds or about grief.
Honestly, reading through the book, I found the words to help me describe what I had been feeling. I read and cried both happy and sad tears while waiting for a kid after school and waiting outside of guitar lessons. Someone can see me and knows what this feels like.
The best line in this book is one of the final ones in it. Courtney says, “God offers no promise of ease and few explanations this side of eternity. What we do receive is presence. And therein lies the promise- not of certainty or ease or simplicity or overcoming but of the God who was and is and will be God-with-us. We are part of a story with an arc that bends, as the Reverent King once put it, toward justice. Jesus sits with us in our sufferings and points toward a deeper, unfathomable hope.”
Courtney Ellis’s newest book, Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope Through Grief is beautiful. Not only is it beautifully written, but it is also beautiful in how she handles all our hurting hearts. Courtney weaves together for us the story of her own personal pain, her insight into different birds, and her belief in how God shows us His presence through the things he has created in nature. In the twisted fibers of those things, we too find hope.
You can purchase the book here:
Growing Hope 