Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope Through Grief, Courtney Ellis (Foreword by Kay Warren). InterVarsity Press (ISBN: 9781514007167) 2024.

Summary: A birder’s guide to hope through grief consists of reflections on various birds as the author grieves a grandfather’s death.

Birders speak of “spark birds” that first turned them on to birding. For Courtney Ellis, it was a phoebe, perched on her backyard string lights. A friend identified it. She writes:

“What I did know, in those very first moments, was that this little bird had unexpectedly captivated me. For a moment the volume turned down on my shouting to-do list and clamoring young children and creaky house projects and pinging work emails, and it was just me and this bird. A moment in time. A breath. Delight.

“In that moment, I looked up.”

She joined birding groups, bought binoculars and guides and downloaded apps. She learned the patience required of birding…and the wonder. These were lessons in attentiveness that spilled over into the rest of life as a pastor and parent. As acquainted with the griefs of others as she was as a pastor, she did not realize how important the lessons of looking up at the birds would become when the news came that her grandfather was dying.

In this book, Ellis takes us through her process of grief as she rushes home to spend time with her grandfather, only to find him sinking much faster than expected. While gathering with family, she remembers her grandfather, including many incidents of her childhood. An outdoorsman, he shaped her love of the natural world. As many of us do, she reckons with both his admirable and less than admirable qualities. She parts hours before his death to partake in Easter services. Then she grieves. Coming out of COVID, the church grants her and her husband sabbatical. During this time she had lost her voice. And, drawing on an idea from John Stott, another avid birder, the birds become her teachers.

In each chapter, Ellis interleaves her journey with reflections upon a particular kind of bird. Vultures symbolize death and they are the janitors of the natural world. Yet there is marvel in a physiology that allows them to ingest rotting carrion without being sickened. Then sparrows, so commonplace and ubiquitous, remind her of how much of life is lived in ordinary time, that it is often in the commonplace that we meet God. She reflects: “Blue Jays may not be good to other birds, but they are very good at being themselves. And this is its own kind of beauty.” As she thinks of her grandfather, she sees that he had his own kind of beauty as well.

In addition to these birds, we are introduced to mockingbirds, owls, house finches, hummingbirds, warblers, albatrosses, wrens, doves, pelicans, and quail. In her grief journey she learns that “looking up” doesn’t remove the hurt of grief but points us to the one who cares for the birds, and notes the falling of even one sparrow.

There is an understated beauty beneath the attentive observation of the birds and the unvarnished account of her grief. While pointing us toward healing and hope, there are no sappy assurances or sweet nostrums. But there is the wonder of the birds in all their variety, (And there is even an appendix for those who for whom this book is a kind of “spark bird” to take up birding.) Most of all, we have the chance to listen to one who has not only looked outward at the human condition and inward at the darkness of her her own grief. We also accompany her as she looks upward, not only at the birds but at the God who made them.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.