The Fare Forward Interview With Courtney Ellis
Courtney Ellis is an author, speaker, and mother of three. Her books include Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope Through Grief, Present: The Gift of Being All In, Right Where You Are, and several others. Ellis serves alongside her husband as a Presbyterian pastor in southern California. She’s a regular columnist for Fathom Mag and hosts The Thing With Feathers Podcast, all about birds and hope, with an array of special guests.
Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Fare Forward: You have written about, and have a podcast now about, birding, which is perhaps the most patient of all pastimes—except for maybe fishing. What is it that attracts you to that practice?
Courtney Ellis: I think I’m attracted to birding for 500 reasons, but maybe chief among them is the fact that I’m not inherently a very patient person. I think waiting is one of the hardest things, and in my own spiritual practices, I found that sitting still was very difficult. I’m a person who’s very driven. I’m on the go. There are things on my list that I want to check off. And so birding has become kind of a spiritual practice because you’re waiting, but you’re not doing nothing. You’re waiting with anticipation. You’re waiting with open eyes and ears and heart. And as much as you can seek out particular birds, every single one is a gift. You don’t know what you’re going to see. You don’t know what’s going to fly into your line of vision or what’s going to be on the trail in a given day. And I think that combination has really done wonders for my soul, in settling my soul and helping me to focus more deeply on the things of God in a way that doesn’t feel forced, in a way that feels very natural and very holy and very filled with grace.
FF: What role would you say that waiting has played in your life, and when have you felt the weight of waiting the most acutely?
CE: My husband and I are both pastors—we serve together here at Presbyterian Church of the Master—and early on in my call to ministry, my husband Darryl and I were meeting with this husband and wife mentoring team, and the husband said to me, “You’re a thoroughbred. You like to go fast.” And I said, “Thank you!” And he said, “That’s not a compliment.” <laugh> “That’s going to be something that’s going be very hard for you in ministry. Often God does work very fast, but only after a season of slowness, after a season of deep work, and that’s going be a challenge for you.” I do think almost every major milestone in my life has come after a very painful season of waiting, waiting that I often didn’t choose, waiting that was often thrust upon me. From when Darryl and I were dating, and I was ready for him to propose, and he wasn’t for a good long bit; and the call to seminary and the journey into ministry; and I was looking for a pastoral call, and there was nothing available, so I worked for a hospice as a chaplain for a time. All of these seasons of waiting in preparation, and I keep waiting for it to get easier, and it doesn’t, but now I think I am learning to recognize the goodness in that particular and unique kind of pain. Because it’s painful, but it’s a nurturing kind of pain. It’s not a crushing sort of pain. But I’m still not very good at it. God’s not done with me yet.
FF: I don’t think any of us are. <laugh> We’ve entitled this issue “On Waiting Well,” and a lot of the pitches we got said, “Can I talk about how I don’t wait well?” and I said, “Yes!”
CE: Amen. <laugh>
It’s been really helpful for me to realize that waiting time isn’t wasted time.
FF: Your most recent book is about the virtues and benefits of being present. What are some ways that we can focus on where we are and what we’re doing now instead of just waiting for the next thing? And in those periods where you are waiting for the next thing, how can you focus on being present?
CE: It’s been really helpful for me to realize that waiting time isn’t wasted time. So often it feels like that stretch between knowing what we want to do and doing what we want to do, or knowing where God is calling us and springing into action, feels like this gray space, this foggy space, this time of nothingness. But in fact, if you can reframe that for yourself as active waiting—you know, you plant the seeds underground and you see nothing for a bit, and then suddenly something springs up that’s been at work all the while. So learning to trust God in those painful spaces, knowing that just because we don’t feel like we’re in motion doesn’t mean something isn’t happening.
My husband and I have three children, and I remember, I have always been ahead of things. I turn things in early, and I’m moving fast and thinking like, “I will probably have this baby early. I can have this baby early.” And my midwife kept saying, “You don’t want that. That’s not good.” You know, ideally, it’s 38 to 42 weeks; there’s a window—and just thinking, “But I’m faster.” And I had to learn the hard way, as our firstborn was 10 days overdue, you know? And every day people are asking and texting like, “Hey, had that baby yet?” And you’re like, “Thank you. I’ll let you know.” That doesn’t mean nothing is happening. That means the baby’s lungs are developing. That means the baby’s putting on weight to where, Lord willing, they’ll sleep a little bit better. That waiting is not the same as inactivity. It’s not the same as nothing. God is at work in the waiting.
FF: You talk in your book about getting something that you’ve been waiting for for a long time—like, for instance, a house where you can paint the walls any color you want. What is it like to get something that you’ve been waiting for a long time, and does having waited for it add anything to the pleasure of that experience?
CE: I think it absolutely does. I live in Southern California now. I grew up in the Midwest; I grew up in Wisconsin—and I remember the taste of those first strawberries and blueberries when you finally make it across the frozen tundra and it’s spring, and then it’s summer—and they taste different. They taste more special. Here in California, we can get strawberries all year, and suddenly they’re not as enticing to me. They’re still great; we still buy them. But that first taste—there’s nothing like it. I think another temptation that comes when we finally receive that thing that we’ve been longing for, striving for, is that it feels amazing for a minute, but then our tendency is to ask, “What’s next?” We got the thing, okay. What’s next? We signed the contract, what’s next? Or, we bought the house, what’s next? Or, the baby was born, what’s next? And to be able to savor those moments of really, really taking it in, is really hard, because that treadmill of always going for the next thing is a really hard thing to step off of.
Our whole culture is kind of geared toward striving, and that’s not the way God works. I think God sets us up in seasons for a reason, and the natural world flows in seasons. Our lives flow in seasons. Often something beautiful can’t come to fruition without some fallow time beforehand. So to trust the Lord in those ebbs and flows, and to really fully celebrate and embrace once that fulfillment does come, and to take some time to rest in it before hopping back up to try hard again. <laugh>
The work of being present really is about awareness, and I think all spiritual practices, at their heart, are about this increasing awareness that the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, and that God has something for us in this particular moment.
FF: The concept of a spiritual discipline pops up pretty often in your writing, including in Present, where you describe the spiritual disciplines of presence and stability. What makes disciplines like these spiritual? What is the spiritual component of a discipline of presence or stability?
CE: You know, I’m Presbyterian, and we have fairly low sacramentology, where all things are holy, and God takes ordinary things and makes them holy. So I think any practice can be a spiritual practice. I think brushing your teeth can be a spiritual practice if there’s some attentiveness to the Lord during those moments. But the work of being present really is about awareness, and I think all spiritual practices, at their heart, are about this increasing awareness that the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, and that God has something for us in this particular moment. (Even if it’s a very ordinary moment: You’re in line at the grocery store, you’re sitting in traffic, or you’re scraping up under the highchair for the 89th time in one day, it feels like.) And that as we become more attuned to the work of God, suddenly we see the work of God more clearly, and we see God present to us more clearly, and we notice God’s face in the face of a neighbor and God’s Word to us through a song on the radio. So the work of presence, at its heart, is about learning to pay attention to the moment that’s right before us, because it’s so fleeting. But it’s also all we have. We can remember the past and think about the future, but this moment is everything.
FF: You’ve talked a lot in your book about the particular ways that you cultivate these spiritual disciplines. Can you tell me about a few of your favorites right now?
CE: Yeah. So Present is my most recent book to come out, and there’s a book on birding and hope and grief that’s going to come out with IVP in March of 2024, and they speak to one another in terms of that practice of presence. One of my favorites is just to go outside, and if it’s really gnarly weather, maybe don’t go outside, but sit near a window—if it’s too hot, it’s too cold, it’s too rainy. And I find that for most people, it is much easier to be present in the moment when there is some natural element about it. So, you know, take off your shoes and feel the grass beneath your feet, or step into the sun and feel the temperature on your skin. And those things tend to ground us in the physical.
I grew up in a very evangelical tradition that was not intentionally, but basically almost gnostic adjacent—like, we have bodies, but that’s unfortunate; it would be much better if we didn’t have bodies. Bodies are troublesome, bodies have lust, bodies have sin. And so to recapture that idea that bodies are good, and the natural, tangible world can help ground us in the things of God, because when I’m present to my body, I’m present to the Lord, and I’m present to my family, and I’m present to the people who are right in front of me, rather than all of the digital and technological escapism that we’re faced with. You know, put down the phone and take a deep breath and smell the smells and feel the things and the wind on your face. And it’s such a simple thing, but even a couple of minutes of that really can be very, very helpful. It brings down our stress level. I’m a big believer in going outside. I think going outside is a good place to start.
And I think children only live in now time, especially young children. As they grow up and hit like 6, 7, 8, they start to like worry about the future and think about the past. But especially toddlers and preschoolers—they live in now time. So that’s another thing I encourage people to do, is if you have children, it’s easy. If you don’t have children, spend time with children and watch how they experience the world. Spending time with kids is tremendous for learning how to be present.
I think over the course of our Christian lives, almost all of us will be called at one time or another to go, and almost all of us will be called at one time or another to stay.
FF: You talk in your book too about staying versus going and the discernment to know which is needed at any given time, so I wanted to ask if you have any tips on that discernment, about when we should wait and when we should act and stop waiting.
CE: I think that’s one of the key questions to the life of faith. Often as a child in the churches I grew up in, the highest calling was to “go for God”—go to a foreign country, go on a mission trip, go spread the gospel. But just as often in Scripture, we hear the stories of faithfulness where people are called to stay. We hear of Ruth and Naomi: “Where you go, I will go,” but then, “Where you stay, I will stay, and your people will be my people.” And it’s not as glamorous. It is often much easier to pick up and go, even with all the stresses and costs of moving, because we don’t have to stay and work through conflict or figure things out with our neighbors, or this church isn’t the best church, and if I move three towns over, I could go to a shinier church.
And so that is a process of deep work with God where we are discerning. Am I looking over there because the grass is greener, or am I looking over there because that’s truly where God is calling me to go? The first church I pastored was a beautiful church in rural Wisconsin, and I started to sense God’s call to go somewhere new. It was a very hard discernment process for me because I’m very loyal. I will stay for a thousand years. I do not want to go.
But it became clear that God was calling us, in part because of our dual vocation. My husband was finishing a PhD. He was ready for a vocation, and in this small town, there was nothing for him. So we started to look, and when we interviewed at this church out here in California, we were coming off the coldest winter in recorded history in Wisconsin. Okay–it was February, it was 30 below zero for three weeks straight. And I said, “Jesus, if we land in California and it’s 75 and sunny, I’m just going tell them yes. I will not hear from you; I will not listen to you—you have to help me! You have to help me make the wise, faithful decision, because I know myself.” And we landed here in California, and it was the storm of the century. All the newscasters were like, “Super Doppler 5,000!” Stuff was sliding down the mountain; there were mudslides. And I was like, okay. Everyone on the hiring committee kept apologizing, and I was like, “No, I kind of think I did this! I’m sorry!” So to be able to discern and to know ourselves well enough that we can pray those sorts of prayers, because I think over the course of our Christian lives, almost all of us will be called at one time or another to go, and almost all of us will be called at one time or another to stay. I can’t tell you which one you should do in any given time, but the call of God is to draw closer and to listen more deeply, because both are a challenge.
I think another part of the question is, are we running from something or is God calling us to something? One of my dearest friends is career military, and she was telling me she’s sown some bad habits over the years because every year she moves and she’s like, “You know, it’d be easier not to work through this conflict in this friendship, because I know I’m gone in two months. But that’s not the person I want to be. I want to have the hard, faithful conversation, even though I know I have to go in a couple of months.” So it’s a complicated question, but I think those are the questions that draw us more deeply into a life with God. If God gave us the answers, we could just run away and hold onto those answers. But it’s daily bread: the manna will spoil tomorrow. You’ve got to back and get some more.
FF: Tell me a little bit more about that next book on birding and grief.
CE: Yeah. Looking Up. It’s my first book with IVP. It comes out in March. I was working on a book about birds and kind of hadn’t found a frame for it and was trying to figure out how that could all come together. I hadn’t signed a contract or anything yet when we got news that my grandfather only had a couple of months to live, and the story of grieving him—he was the outdoorsman in our family, fishing and birding and fighting with the squirrels in his backyard and <laugh>—and so stitching together those pieces of my grieving process with my birding practice and realizing how often hope lies on the other side of sorrow and is sweeter for that journey through sorrow.
The book is centered around different types of birds, but also different virtues or attributes. There’s a chapter on peace and doves, which are the obvious bird for peace, but also doves are fascinating and their closest relative—they’re basically pigeons, and we don’t think of pigeons when we think of peace. There’s a chapter on hope and love and sorrow and brokenness and sin which is connected to hummingbirds. It all makes sense, I promise. But to walk through that story of losing my grandfather to death and grieving his loss with that birding practice that really did in a way kind of save me through the pandemic.
I had three young children and suddenly we’re homeschooling, which is something I’m so not built to do. And trying to pastor a church digitally and all of the crushing weight of managing those things. And suddenly I had to start looking up or I wasn’t going to make it. And so I would go for these walks every day. Every day I’d hand all the children to my husband, and he would take his break from his digital pastoring, and I would walk. The birds really saved me—God through the birds. And so the book is that story, but also pointing to the larger concepts of Christian hope, and what does it mean to offer that hope to a world that’s facing things like pandemics, like the worries of climate change, like the warring over our national politics? What do birds have to say to that? And I think they have a lot to say. It weaves in some natural theology and a little bit of memoir and I’m very excited about it. The cover is beautiful. <laugh>
My all-time favorite bird is the song sparrow.
FF: Is there anything that you are waiting for right now, other than your new book?
CE: Oh, that’s a great question. I have a wonderful editor at IVP, and I emailed him, I think, four times, saying, “Is my book cover done? Is my book cover done? Is my book cover done?” I get so excited about new book covers—and it’s done, it’s beautiful. What am I waiting for? We leave on a family vacation tomorrow, and we’re kind of holding on by our fingernails until then, you know, all the final emails, all the final things. So that feels like it’s right on the horizon.
But as a working mom, I find myself at the start of summer a little bit unmoored, thinking about how will I do this? How will I work and make sure I have childcare? You know, we’re cobbling together camps and Vacation Bible School and babysitters—and sometimes the babysitter calls out sick, and then what do you do? It’s a real challenge for me in seasons of summer and seasons of school break not to just be holding on until the kids are back in school, but instead to receive this unique season for the gift that it is—while acknowledging the stresses that it brings, because it does bring some stresses. Every day is different. My husband and I feel like we’re playing traffic cop. But to not just live in the anticipation of “we’ll go back to school, we’ll have our normal schedule,” but to live these beautiful summer days. Our kids will not be young forever, which is bittersweet. They have to get older, or we will die of exhaustion—and also we will miss the days where we can fix almost all of their problems with a Band-Aid or a popsicle. So to live in these sweet exhausting summer days and not just wait for them to end has been my current challenge.
FF: Well, those were my big serious questions, but I have a few more that are a little more fun.
CE: Yeah, bring it on.
FF: What are your top three favorite birds that you’ve seen?
CE: It’s like asking my favorite kids. I only have three, so they’re all my favorite! My all-time favorite bird is the song sparrow. I have one and only one tattoo, and it’s a song sparrow on my leg. The thing I love about song sparrows is they’re really, really common. You probably have them where you are. We have them where we are. They’re all over the country. They only migrate a little bit, so they kind of stick around and they’re kind of drab, ordinary birds, but they have this beautiful song. Folks think that Beethoven wrote one of his symphonies based on the start of how a song sparrow sings. Possibly—it’s, you know, bird lore. And they sing no matter the weather. They sing even in the storm. And that I find very inspiring. There are some birds that will only sing at dawn and dusk, some that will only sing when the weather is nice. And song sparrows are like, “I have something to say.” I love, love, love song sparrows.
I’ve got a thing for barn owls—I love barn owls. They’re beautiful. They’re kind of spooky. If you see them at night, they have this really shrill screamy sort of call. And because of their front facing eyes and the way their beak is shaped, they look almost human. They scare people. If you see one in a barn at night, you’ll scream back. But they’re so, so beautiful. They fly silently. I love a good barn owl.
And then my mission in life is at some point to see an albatross in person. Albatrosses are big, and they’re ungainly, and they’re amazing. And mostly they live in the stormiest latitudes on earth. They live the bottom of the globe near Antarctica. They fly for weeks at a time, months at a time, sometimes without reaching land. And I love a bird that sees the foulest weather on earth and says, “Absolutely. That’s where I want to be.” I find them inspiring. They also live like—the oldest known albatross is 72 years old. Wow. And is still laying eggs, which I mean, hardcore, man.
FF: And have you ever played the board game Wingspan?
CE: I love Wingspan, love Wingspan. Some of our date nights are just going to a cafe and playing Wingspan while someone watches our kids.
I think it’s difficult to continue to draw close to God without all opening up in new ways to the natural world. And that’s not birds for everyone.
FF: You mentioned earlier that as a Presbyterian your sacramentology is low, but it sounds like your sacramental view of nature is very high. Do you have any favorite writers who write about that way of finding God in nature?
CE: How much time do you have? <laugh>
FF: I have 11 more minutes.
CE: Alright, perfect. I think almost all of my favorite writers who go to those deep places—I love Annie Dillard and Wendell Berry and Frederick Buechner and Eugene Peterson. It’s amazing, as someone who has an eye to birding as a spiritual practice, how many of those people were birders in one way or another. John Stott used to ask for another day on his speaking engagement so he could go birding. He was like, “You don’t have to pay me more. I just need to get out in the forest—everyone leave me alone.” I mean, just so many, and some that are not explicitly Christian writers but are very open to faith, or faith-adjacent, writers like Margaret Rankl. Kay Warren is a birder. She’s obviously not faith-adjacent; she wrote the forward to my book that’s coming out.
I think it is not impossible, but I think it’s difficult to continue to draw close to God without all opening up in new ways to the natural world. And that’s not birds for everyone. You know, my husband always says, “I love you very much, and you can give me two birding facts on this date, and then we’re moving on talking about other things.” <laugh> Like, ok, that’s fair. I still hold out hope, but he’s not a birder yet. But he’s a gardener, and his practice of gardening has been a deeply, deeply spiritual thing for him. So yeah, the list is very, very long. Poets like Ross Gay and Denise Levertov, who are not explicitly birders, but birds work their way into their poems all the time. Jason Myers. So many writers of faith find their way into faith in deeper ways through the natural world.
I’ve woven a lot of those things into the book. But it’s always a particular delight to discover a writer you’ve loved for a long time is also a birder. My editor was like, “Do you know this Rowan Williams quote?” And I was like, “Really? Of course he’s a birder, of course.” So to find those little bright spots. You know, Theresa of Avila writes about the birds, and Julian of Norwich writes about the birds, and all of these Christian mystics. They are the obvious ones like St. Francis, yes, we know he loved the birds, but Thomas Aquinas loved the birds, and St. Augustine had things to say about the birds. And it’s in part because they are one of the most easily observable elements of the natural world that’s not a plant. Insects are small, mammals are rare, birds are everywhere.
Jesus talks about the birds. The quote on my office wall behind you is, “Look at the birds. – Jesus.” <laugh> I’m like, you know, he told us to, so we’re supposed to. I think for a while pinned on my Twitter profile was, “If you want to take the Bible absolutely literally, then y’all need to get birding because, you know, not enough of you are birding and it shows. <laugh> It makes you a better person. Jesus told you to, so.
Birds work their way into my sermons all the time. A couple of weeks ago I was like, “I’m not bringing birds into this sermon.” And I read the lectionary text, and it was “consider the sparrows,” and I was like, okay, fine. It’s not my fault. I’m not bringing in an illustration. And I try not to be myopic about that. Birding is for everyone, but also it doesn’t have to be for everyone. There are lots of ways into discovering the work of God in the world, and birds just happen to be mine.
