The Embodiment of Wonder
A Feature Review of
Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope Through Grief
Courtney Ellis
Paperback: IVP, 2024
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Reviewed by Justin Cober-Lake
Comfort and hope, that thing with feathers, are often available if only we know where to look. To both her benefit and ours, birder Courtney Ellis knows exactly where to look. Not to birds (why would you think that?), but to God. Ellis, a knowledgeable avocational birder, is by proper vocation a pastor, and she explores her faith even more deeply than she investigates the avian world in her new book Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope Through Grief. The ever-present birds are merely signposts, guides to wonder and even love in the midst of trials. Ellis tells the story of her grandfather’s death as she observes the natural world, mixing in some family history and her experience as a caretaker at countless funerals and deathbeds. As heavy as that sounds, the book is frequently delightful; when the heavy parts come, they’re honest and revealing, but never maudlin. Ellis pulls together experience and wisdom for a work that provides an uplifting view while maintaining a grounded perspective.
Ellis knows the signposts, the messages sent all around us. She explains that “illumination is inscribed on every page of creation,” which is why we find her “yammering on about birds” (10). We can easily miss all those words running past us, though, especially in our era of multitasking and cellular distractions. Ellis makes a discovery that many birders have found, but brings a valuable spiritual insight to the initial thought, saying that the hobby “teaches me to pay attention, and attention, I think, is at the very heart of what it means to be a person. What it means to extend and receive love. The more I fall in love with birds, the more I grow to love the whole of creation, standing in awe of the one who spun it all into being” (13). This study of feather patterns and warbling calls becomes an investment in wonder and beauty, all pointing to God.
That understanding provides the backdrop to the central story. Ellis learns that her grandfather is dying, with very little time left. As she writes of her trip to visit him one last time, she reflects on their past together, all woven together with lessons she’s learned from the natural world, usually examined with a focus on one bird per topical chapter (vultures to consider death, mockingbirds to think about uncertainty, etc). The effective structure weaves various elements – usually bird notes, autobiography, and theology – into each chapter, each of which in turns builds to the larger whole, sometimes building tension and mystery and other times working more like an essay with unusually enchanting evidence. By the end of the book, Ellis has shared her love of her grandfather, her birds, and her God in a tightly-threaded whole.
The book gains power in his second half, as the loss becomes more immediate. Ellis strings together three chapters on seemingly unrelated topics: delight, grief, and partnership. Warblers provide us with delight, but only if we’re attentive, and only with the understanding that “[d]elight requires risk and trust. It is a radical undertaking, not for the faint of heart” (115). In the face of our own (or others’) mortality, we learn to take delight in the little things. Something about that delight deepens our sorrow, but also comforts us, like a sparrow on the side of the road. It doesn’t save us from the inevitability of grief – “Every person is grieving,” Ellis says (128) – but it opens us to small measures of solace. It also invites us into partnership. Like wrens, Ellis knows, “We all need more voices in the choir than just our own” (139). From that point, we can build toward hope, even through our darkest moments.
In A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis candidly recognizes the iconoclastic effects of death and grief (he famously notes that God Himself is the “great iconoclast). There’s danger, Lewis notes, in losing reality in our constructions, and grief can bring us back to reality. Ellis, in a chapter on corvids (crows, ravens, jays, and the like) looks for truth and beauty, a daunting task, but she finds both in birds and in family photos. She never offers a false view of her grandfather, as imperfect as any of us, but she comes to a stunning epiphany: “I realize in this moment that my grandfather was a beautiful person. I realize, maybe for the first time, that there isn’t any other kind” (185). It also means, we have to learn to forgive ourselves, because we, too, are wondrous creations. “And here is where I find comfort from the crows,” she writes. “Like most of us, they are so much more than they first appear” (192). These loud dumpster-diving birds show God’s glory, surprising us when we learn to pay attention to their truth and beauty, a lesson that expands outside of ornithology.
With attentiveness to the world around us, we see those deeper truths (Ellis references Lewis and Narnia’s “deeper magic”). In approaching the world with openness, we see unexpected joy and hope. Ellis writes about birds, but Looking Up is about more than avian habits or feather patterning. It highlights the necessity of actually seeing, particularly during our tribulations. Ellis writes, “I watch the birds and God watches me and I remember that we are seen and loved and held and never abandoned” (214). This is the point to which Ellis – through her birds, her family, her candor – wants to illustrate. We all go through grief. We all go through dark times. But we can choose what to look at. When we notice the small things, like God’s sparrows, we start to sing a bigger picture of wonder and possibility, created by a God redeeming all things. Sometimes we just have to look up.
Justin Cober-Lake
Justin Cober-Lake a pastor in central Virginia. He holds an M.A. in American Studies from the University of Virginia and has worked in academic publishing for the past 15 years. His editing and freelance writing have focused mostly on cultural criticism, particularly pop music.
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