Courtney Ellis
10 min read ⭑
As a natural-born encouragement-giver, Courtney Ellis spends her professional time speaking, pastoring Presbyterian Church of the Master in Orange County, California, and discussing creation care on “The Thing With Feathers Podcast.” She’s also the author of five books, the latest of which is “Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope Through Grief.” In case you can’t tell from her book title, Courtney takes every opportunity she can to wake up early to go bird-watching and regularly regales her loved ones with exciting bird facts she’s learned from her latest aviary read.
Keep reading to learn more about Courtney’s obsession with birds as she shares what they teach her about life, grief and closeness with God and other people. Discover, too, how she’s avoided going “full hermit” by better managing her social energy and how novels like “Les Miserables” and “The Door of No Return” refill her spiritual tank.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
The meals we enjoy are about so much more than the food we eat. So how does a “go-to” meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?
I’m a sucker for doughnuts. I know, I know, this isn’t a meal per se, but a good doughnut is like a confetti bomb from heaven. Perfect sweetness, perfect friedness, perfect icing or glaze. I grew up in a little town in northern Wisconsin called Eagle River, and my grandparents would often visit us. On the way, they’d stop at a little bakery with a green roof and buy chocolate-frosted cake doughnuts. I’d eat them with my sisters at our kitchen table and feel every ounce of my grandparents’ love.
Then, 15 years ago, I was diagnosed as severely gluten intolerant, and there went my doughnuts. I learned to bake most of my favorite treats, but doughnuts are a specialty item. We weren’t about to buy a fryer! In 2014, we moved to Orange County, California, where my husband, Daryl, and I are raising our three children. In 2021, we had a weekend getaway just down the road and Daryl, always my gluten-free food scout, found a place called JD Flannel Donuts. Not only did they offer seasonal and local ingredients, but they also had a dedicated fryer to make gluten-free specialty doughnuts. He bought me a box. I bit into one. I cried.
Today, we are on a first-name basis with all of the employees at JD’s. They know our kids by name. I go when I need a pick-me-up. I go when I want to feel like a normal eater again. I go just because. It’s magic.
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activity do you love engaging in that also helps you find essential spiritual renewal?
I am an avid and prolific birder. I am absolutely head-over-heels in love with birds. Birds get me out of bed obscenely early in the morning. They lure me out to the hills and the trails to see what’s newly hatched or just migrating through. I’ve gone on birding boat trips (pelagics) and I attend every birding festival that I can. But not only do I love birds, I love birders, too, with their silly pocket-covered pants and their sun hats and their many different pairs of binoculars. It’s a delightful subculture and a wonderful hobby that has the added benefit of getting me outdoors, which is good for both the body and the soul.
I’m fairly new to the passion, having just begun birding in 2020, and Daryl often says, “You weren’t like this when I married you.” He’s a good sport, putting up with all of the dinner table bird facts and the mountain of birding books on the nightstand, but sometimes he does reach his limit. On date nights, he’ll look deeply into my eyes and say, “Two bird facts, Courtney. And I will listen attentively. Two bird facts, and then we are moving on.”
But here’s the thing: birds are amazing. They truly are a bottomless bowl of delight. And the more I learn, the more I hunger to learn. And the more I fall in love with God’s good creation.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness; every human too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you confront its power head-on?
I am not a hermit, but I am hermit-adjacent. It runs in my family a bit, with my maternal grandfather rarely leaving the house during the last decade of his life. I’m an introvert’s introvert, which can be both a great strength (it helps a great deal with reading, writing, study, sermon preparation, etc.) and also a great weakness. Pastoring is a very people-facing vocation, and I am continually grateful for the ways it pulls me out of my natural Hobbit-hole proclivities and into the wider world.
That said, I’ve also learned to manage my social energy well as I’ve grown in understanding that it isn’t simply an unending supply. When I reach my end and have little people-energy to give, I need to take time to recharge. Sometimes this is time for quiet prayer, other times a walk or even a nap to let my tank refill. It heartens me that even Jesus had his fill of crowds, retreating to a mountainside to pray and be alone with his Father. Though I joke sometimes that I want to retreat to a cabin in the woods forever, when I’m really honest, I know that I would miss people too much. Eventually.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
My love for Jesus and birds and my desire to work through some of my own griefs (the death of my grandfather, the many sorrows of the pandemic, etc.) came together in my most recent book, “Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope Through Grief.” It’s a narrative of woven threads, from natural theology to memoir to stories of amazing birds and the things they do. I’m passionate about helping others find hope through grief, with assistance from the natural world.
The truth is that we’re all grieving — every last one of us. Some of us have lost a loved one to death, others have witnessed the death of a marriage or a dream, and still others are grieved by our current political climate or the sufferings of their friends or neighbors. Helping others learn how to cope with grief, not denying it or ignoring it or trying to rush past it, is one of the joys of my life. It’s why I wrote “Looking Up,” and it’s much of what I do in my pastoral ministry at the church I serve.
If you love birds and birding, “Looking Up” is a great book for you. If you have no interest in birds at all but are experiencing grief or suffering, this is the book for you. A dear friend of mine just lost her grandmother, and her husband gave her my book to read on the plane to her funeral. “You can skip the bird parts if you want,” he said. After reading the first half, she told him, “The birds helped! Otherwise, it would have been too much grief all at once!” The birds are a balm — one more way God showers his gentle love on each of us.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
There was a season of deep grief in my life, after pastoring a church through a divisive and painful pandemic and then saying goodbye to my beloved grandfather at his deathbed, where I struggled to pray. Grief felt like a bruise, and the words just wouldn’t come. As a pastor and lifelong Christian who met Jesus when I was only 5 years old, this was scary! But what I found was that, even when my words were absent, prayer was very close to my heart.
I took to the hills near my home and went for a walk every day. On those walks, I saw birds. I heard birds. Little by little, my heart began to unclench, and I began to feel the comfort of the Holy Spirit. Those tiny-winged messengers brought me hope.
I’m a firm believer in the beauty and truth of Scripture, but I am also learning about the book of nature — the many ways God reveals himself to us through the natural world, through everything from weather patterns to microbes to plants to animals. Birding brought me back to my native land of delight, awe and wonder. The grief was still there. I believe that when we lose someone we love or live through trauma, we will carry those things with us always. But how we carry them may change. They may become lighter. Their shapes less frightening and more familiar. The Holy Spirit is a good and faithful guide to us in seasons of grief, and I encounter that guide most often out on the trails.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?
While birding will always be my first and favorite spiritual practice, another one that’s restoring my soul these days is reading novels. That’s right, not Christian nonfiction or spiritual self-help or even theological tomes — but novels! What? Let me explain.
Novels take us into new worlds. They lead us into the experiences of others. They breed empathy, awareness and understanding. They transport us. They awaken our imagination and infuse it with wonder and joy. The best novels aren’t preachy or prescriptive, they’re descriptive. They may have characters who are cautionary tales, who make bad choices or who do, say, or believe things we never would. And yet entering the world of the novel is an opportunity for us to look for God at work all around.
Flannery O’Connor once described her beloved South as “Christ-haunted,” and I think this is true of many of the best novels too. Whether it’s a classic like “Les Miserables,” which tells a story of redemption and self-sacrifice, or a newer story like the one I just finished, Kwame Alexander’s “The Door of No Return,” which helped me understand the history of Ghana around the time of the trans-Atlantic human trade, novels help connect me with the imaginative, compassionate, creative heart of God.
One of the best habits for my spiritual life is to read one or two novels at a time, always. Usually one on my nightstand and one in the backpack I take to church and all our kids’ activities. There’s nothing better on a sports practice sideline than a good novel!
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and your heart?
I am in love with music from The Porter’s Gate, especially their “Lament Songs.” I appreciate worship artists who can lead us through the whole human experience, much like the Psalms. There is joy, of course, but there is also grief and lament. Singing those words to Jesus continues to fill my heart and lift my spirit. Lament is strange that way — it is often in pouring out our sorrow to God that our hearts are lifted, not sunk. When we pray the depths of our sadness, God meets us there with profound comfort, beauty and wisdom.
I really enjoy Fleming Rutledge’s book of sermons, “Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ.” I read them year-round, not just in the season before Christmas! She has a wise and wonderful way of weaving together a deep understanding of Scripture with news stories, pop culture, the hymns of the faith and her current cultural climate. It’s a challenging and beautiful book, and I return to it time and time again.
Finally, I am a regular listener to NPR’s “This American Life.” Jesus was a master storyteller and one of the things I seek in both my writing and pastoring vocations is to tell good stories well. “This American Life” weaves together different stories each week and, in addition to almost always learning something about a good story well told, I am usually well entertained to boot.
We all have things we cling to to survive or even thrive in our fast-paced, techno-driven world. How have you been successful in harnessing technology to aid in your spiritual growth?
I love the Venite app, a way to pray the Daily Office of the Hours. It offers everything from morning prayer to compline (evening prayer) with the day’s lectionary Scripture readings, a time for the confession of sin, Psalms, a meditation timer (it suggests five minutes, but can be adjusted to be shorter or longer) and often a prayer from one of the great saints of the church like Augustine or St. John Chrysostom. I love the connection to the larger church, knowing that many other denominations pray through the same lectionary texts during the day. And I appreciate having it on my phone in my pocket so that I can get to it in a pinch when I have a little downtime during the day.
QUESTION #8: dream
God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
God is stirring a greater commitment to creation care in my heart. Often in American culture, faith and science are seen as enemies, and this is a real false dichotomy. If all the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, we have much to learn from both science and faith — including in all the areas in which they overlap.
In Genesis, God commands Adam and Eve to care for creation, a mandate that has never gone away! Yet often, we’ve had a false sense that our faith is simply a ticket to heaven, not something that should influence how we care for our world here and now.
On the ecological side, often creation care has been seen as a joyless mandate or a dour, hopeless task. But our God is the God of joy. God loves the earth even more than we do! So we will find a willing and wonderful partner in this work. None of us can do everything, but we can all do something.
One small way I’m investing in creation care is by starting a podcast called “The Thing with Feathers.” It’s all about birds and hope, with an array of special guests, many of whom are experts in the field of conservation. Some of our guests are Christians, others are not, and I find a great deal of hope in finding common ground with those who love the earth and want to care for it.
While the Bible is full of commands to rejoice in the Lord, this doesn’t mean there isn’t room for sadness, a very real response to the fact that we live in a fallen world. In fact, as much as 40% of the Psalms are lamenting in nature, giving biblical voice to human emotions such as fear, grief, anger and rejection.
Have you ever experienced emotions you felt you couldn’t share with Jesus? How can you entrust those feelings to him now?
Courtney Ellis is the author of five books, most recently Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope Through Grief. She pastors Presbyterian Church of the Master in Orange County, California, together with her husband, Daryl. Courtney hosts The Thing with Feathers Podcast, a show about birds and hope. She and Daryl are raising three amazing children.