Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to that makes total sense, a podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis Bussetti, a Christian aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same.
Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice. But the how sometimes eludes usually that makes total sense, is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners, and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day.
Okay, so, Courtney, this may or may not be appropriate, and I'm not ashamed anymore that I sometimes get a little tearful and I'm like, okay, this is going to be a podcast, at least partially, about grief. It's a book about grief, and I've already teared up just a little bit, so maybe that'll be the last time. Or maybe I'll just have to get a box of tissues and we'll just spend the whole time with me, trying not to snot into the microphone.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: I'm here for it. I think our tenderest times, whether it's sadness or joy, are very close to tears, and I think. I think God is honored with that. So bring it on, whatever you need to do.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: See, this is one of the reasons I like talking to pastors, because they're not afraid of tears and things like it. So if people listening haven't figured it out, I'm sitting here with Courtney Ellis, who is a riot on Twitter. I'll just get that out of the way. I love, I love your tweets. Oh, my goodness. And we're the tweets, and we're here talking about a book about bird watching. Okay, I'm over it.
Your book is called looking up your newest book, looking up a birder's guide to hope through grief. And I'm just going to throw it out there that I'm not a birder.
I'm not there yet.
I do notice them sometimes, and this made me like, oh, but I want to, and, but I'm not. So I'm just throwing that out there. And it was still wonderful and beautiful, and I have recommended it more times than I can count at this point. So thank you, thank you. Thank you for this work.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Oh, thank you for that kind word, Alexis. I appreciate that. You say you're not a birder, and then you add the yet. Because I tell people, don't say I'm not a birder, just say I'm not a birder yet. If you live long enough, birding comes for us all. It's only a matter of time.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: I got the feeling of that, and I did feel myself, like, noticing a bit more. So I had. I had a couple.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:02:37] Speaker A: So I'm like, I'm going to exhaust all of my birding stories right now. So we're going to be done, and then I'm just going to. I'm going to mute myself. But I've been noticing. So I would say we have, like, a little bay window by our breakfast table. And so that's the place, right? We have. I'm not a gardener, but the people who owned the summer before us cultivated things that have lasted for these ten years that we've been in the house without much work from me. Praise the Lord. So we have these wonderful flowers outside, and birds often come and visit and land on the roses, and they're very beautiful, and the kids always point them out, which is wonderful. Um, just this week, I was in a coworker's office, and there were a couple of us in there. In her window, there were these two blue jays. I don't know their real technical names.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: Courtney, but there were these two.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: That's what they are, blue jays, I guess, that were out, and they. And we were all just, you know, staring at them, and we're, you know, probably about to move offices. She's like, oh, I'm going to miss them so much. But she said, they're always there. And then, no joke, maybe less than an hour later, I had gone to pick up a couple of my kids. We were like, oh, I'm like, oh, sorry, we have to run back to the office just real quick. Went back, and my office is next to hers. Crazily enough, this little electrical box that they kind of used to go back and forth, I had never even noticed. In the corner window of my office again, that's just right next to hers.
Thankfully, I had left. My daughter was in there, and she said, can I left my phone in the car? Can I use yours to take a picture of these birds? We hadn't even talked about them, and she noticed them and wanted to take. She was like, I'm going to send them to myself. You know, send the, send the photos to myself. And it just thrilled my soul that, you know, to just be in the space where all of these humans are just captivated, you know, from the teenager to the middle aged of us are just sitting there captivated by these. They were just doing their thing in the window outside of our offices. And it was, it just brought me so much delight.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: See, you say that you're not a birder but I think the bar to entry for birding is, have you ever looked out the window, seen a bird and enjoyed it? Your birder?
[00:04:45] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: It's a very expansive hobby. So you can go to the ends of the earth with it. You know, you can get an ornithology degree. You can go nuts. You can see every bird in the world that you can see. But I think the bar to entry is very low. And that's one of the things I love about it. Children can bird. People with, you know, people who can't get out and about can bird just from their window. You can bird if you're old, you can bird if you're rich, if you're poor, like, just enjoy what's there. And that's it. That's the start. I love it.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: I love it so much. And I love how you tie together in this book, the act of birding. Maybe I'm going to fumble over some of this language, probably, but the act of birding with relationship to grief, because I think I'm reminded, even as you're speaking, that the bar is kind of low for birder.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: You know, who can be a birder? But in the same way, we all grieve. And Tish Warren had a book out a few years ago where she kind of references this, where she talks about, like, sometimes we feel like our grief isn't big enough. You know, oh, I haven't experienced this, that tragedy or whatever, but that we shouldn't minimize our own grief because it's real and it affects us. And so I'm kind of reminded of that interaction as you're talking. And as I think back through the book, that grief is something that we all experience. And I was scrolling through instagram the other night, and one of the comedians I follow, he's really hilarious, but he did this really short reel, and it was, it was intended to be funny, and it was, but he was just, it was a reel on how grief sneaks up on you. So in that way, you know, it's. It's, yes, it's something we all deal with, but it can also kind of like a bird just pop up out of nowhere, right? Like we're not expecting this moment, you know? And he was referencing his brother, I think, who had died, you know, over a year ago. And then he's like, I'm just sitting here watching tv, I'm laying down, and all of a sudden, you know, he's like, it's there, and I don't want to get out of bed. I don't want to do anything else. And the rest of my day, no matter what I had planned, is just kind of racked with this experience of grief that showed up when he was least expecting it to show up.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: It really is a universal human experience, and I think you're right. We sometimes want to say, well, my grief isn't as big as this other person's grief, and we want to have it on this scale. But the fact is, grief is grief, and you'll grieve different things in different ways. You'll grieve the fact that the ice cream dropped off your cone in a different way than you're gonna grieve the loss of a job or the death of a loved one. But that doesn't mean those smaller griefs aren't real. And I think one of the things we saw, especially going into and now coming out of the pandemic, was that we don't have a lot of tools for grieving. And everyone was grieving, you know, the loss of the end of school concert and the loss of the birthday party with friends and the loss of the being able to visit your. Your loved one in the assisted living facility that now was closed to visitors. And we didn't know how to deal with it. And we're seeing kind of the long tail of that lack of understanding of grief, acceptance of grief, kindness to ourselves in the midst of grief. And everywhere you look as a society, we are grieving poorly. And so part of what I wanted to do in this book was to issue a gentle invitation to befriend your grief, to acknowledge your grief, and to know that it's a universal human experience. There's not something wrong with you because you remembered the loss of your brother and couldn't get out of bed. But God is present to us in our grief and really deep and profound ways. And the birds, for me, are a reminder of that.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't often do this, Courtney, but when you were just talking, there was a quote that stood out to me, and I'm just going to reference it, but you say, because you said you wanted to issue a gentle invitation. And I think that the quote that stood out to me is you say, but Jesus is not an advice giver.
He commands or comforts or invites. There is never any should. And you're talking about that in context of the beatitudes and exonances. The Beatitudes simply state what is. We are free to disagree, but I think that that also, I feel, is good to kind of set the stage for the rest of this conversation where you are not, and Jesus does not even specifically in this context of grief, say, it should look a certain way for you. So even though grief is a universal experience, how we experience comfort, maybe in that grief, how we process that grief, what that even looks like from day to day, is there is some universality in it, but it's not like a, well, first you do this and then you do that.
There's not these. There aren't these shoulds attached to it. It is.
I don't know. I think one of the things your book invites us to do is where do we see God showing up in these spaces where we are grieving? How do we see that physically? How does that come in? The birds are good reminders we've talked about.
How does that come in when we don't even have words for how we feel? Because the grief is very deep and profound, and that looks different for different people and may look different for us in different seasons, too.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And that's one of the things I've been serving as a pastor for 13 years now. And we do a lot of funerals. We do baptisms and weddings and all sorts of happy things, too, but we do a lot of funerals. And walking with as many people as I have through these valleys of grief and these seasons of grief, you really do realize that everyone grieves differently. But there are certain universal things that we all need in grief. We all need some gentleness. We all need some kindness. We all need some space. We all need community. You know, these. These things that you see people needing in different ways, but all needing in some way. And, um, it's interesting because I have walked with so many people through grief, but I write about at the start of the book that I had not lost any close family members to death. I was nearing 40, and all four of my grandparents were still alive. You know, I'd lost a distant great grandmother that I wasn't close to, you know, and great grandparents before I was cognizant of it. But to walk through it yourself after leading others through it is a completely different thing. And I'm so appreciative of the experience allowing me to kind of deepen my own understanding and heightened my gentleness and my kindness and just relearning things that I'd observed. But learning them from the inside, like, grief makes you forgetful, grief makes you tired. Grief makes you confused. I was interacting with a gentleman who asked me the same question three times in a row in the space of five minutes and re walking this road of grief for myself, I would have said, are you okay? But I realized he had had a tremendous loss two weeks before, and grief makes you a little confused for a while, and that's just a natural piece of it. So as much as I would love to still have everyone I love alive, I'm very grateful to what I've learned through the experiences of grieving myself.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And it shows in this book. And I do want to say that at the outset, or maybe not quite at the outset, but thank you for opening yourself up and sharing your story of grief in this book. The chapters travel kind of with us through the. What you realize at the time is gonna be the impending loss of your grandfather, and so through his illness and his death. And I wanna say that I anticipated that, you know, I'd read some, you know, kind of press release stuff, and I was, okay, I can do this. And then I, like, flip over, and I'm like, dang it. She started with vultures, Courtney. I'm like, they're supposed to be the last chapter. Like, how can you.
Why did you start us here? But then it was, I mean, wonderful and delightful, but still, I was like, vultures? Really? Like, we're starting with these. These guys and death at the very beginning. So. Okay, so I'm just curious. Like, tell me about that choice. But also, let's, like, let's actually talk about the vultures and how you connected this to this process that we've been talking about.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: I call myself a vulture apologist. I just love vultures. People think they're creepy and they're weird and whatever. They are amazing. Just.
They're just phenomenal. They're phenomenal birds, and they're very, very important to the ecosystem. And I liken them in the book to janitors, the janitors of the bird world, but also the priests. A group of vultures, when it's gathered on the ground, is called a wake. By the way, collective terms for birds are one of the delights of the birding world. It's a murder of crows. It's a wake of vultures. If they're in a tree, vultures are known as a committee, which, as a Presbyterian, I'm like, yep, that's accurate.
Originally the book began, there's an intro chapter, and then the vulture chapter is number two. Originally, I started chapter one with the vultures, and my husband was like, I love you so much. You cannot start off the book with a chapter about death. I was like, okay, that's fair. That's fair. We need a little intro, we need a little palette, or we need a little table set before we start with death. But I wanted to be honest about where the book was going. I think when people are grieving, you want to just be very tender in how you approach these topics. And so at the outset of the book, I wanted folks to know where we were headed. And my grandpa, hes elderly and hes infirm, and its pretty obvious where the story was going, but I didnt want anyone to be shocked or surprised. And I wanted to set some terms. I quote my wonderful mentor. I was a hospice chaplain for a bit before I was a pastor, who says its very important as a ministry professional that you say the right words to say, they died, they didn't pass away. They're not a ship. They didn't expire. They're not milk. They didn't get lost. We're not going to find them. She's like, it will help your people that you are not uncomfortable by calling things what they are. And I think about that every week in my current ministry. And I think it is so helpful in our effort to protect people from their own grief. We often skirt around the very topics that will minister to them the most deeply. And we need to say, in kindness and gentleness, in love, true things. You know, I think we're often afraid to bring up a lost. Here I go. Right. It's the common parlance, a dead loved one, because we think that's going to bring it up. The person's going to be so sad. The person's thinking about them all the time anyway, but they don't want to bring them up because it makes people uncomfortable. And then people say awful things like, heaven needed another angel. And we can press into these true things, especially as people within the church, because these are not things that we need to fear. These are things that we can walk toward together.
And I just, I so appreciate her wisdom and I've carried it with me all these years.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, that's good. I appreciate that as well.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: But vultures.
[00:16:16] Speaker A: Vultures?
[00:16:16] Speaker B: Yeah. You want me to talk about vultures? Yeah, I do.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: I do. I do want to talk about vultures because I'll tell you what, what I, what I jotted down about vultures, that, and it's because this, this word, so this is, this is a me thing, but this word, it's been probably the last four or five years, I've just been like, anytime I, I read something or I think, I think about something and I, and I encounter this word witness, I think, okay, what. What does this mean in this context?
[00:16:48] Speaker B: What?
[00:16:48] Speaker A: You know, because to me, it's just such a rich term. And I think that that's one of the things that you say about vultures, unless I wrote it down, the wrong chapter, is that they. But they bear witness.
And that struck me big time. So that was where my head was when I'm saying, talk about vultures. But because you love vultures so much, I want to give you all the space in the world to talk about vultures. Vultures as a committee, vultures as a wake, an individual vulture. I want. I mean, yeah. And we. I mean, I'm thinking here, I'm like, I have boys. I mean, you're not going to gross me out, I guess, is what I probably should say. I have, and I have one middle school boy, even at that, so you're not going to gross me out. But, yeah, let's talk about vultures.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Okay, vultures. Vultures 101. In the US, we have a few species of vultures. Here in the southwest where I live, we have turkey vultures, which are pretty universal around the country, especially the southern parts of the country. There are also black vultures. One of the coolest kinds of vultures does not live in the continental us. But the hooded vulture, their diet is only bones. They have evolved to just eat bones. Can I say the word badass on your podcast? Because they are. Okay, fair enough. But vultures are so fascinating because they are not traditional predators in the sense that they hunt other animals. They only eat the dead. And so without vultures in the ecosystem and other scavengers like coyotes and things like that, you can think about how the forest would smell and how long it would take things to decompose and how gross that would be, um, how much bacteria could spread. So they do this wonderful service, and because of how their bodies function, they are able to ingest things that would take down any other animal that would just destroy our digestive system. They, the skin of their heads, that waxy red skin that you see on the head of a turkey vulture, is designed to repel bacteria. They have this special membrane in their eyes that blinks up, so our eyelids blink down. They have those eyelids, too, but this is called a nictitating membrane, and it protects their eye. It's kind of translucent. They can sort of see through it. It protects their eye from when they've got their head inside the rib cage of a deer or something, which could potentially poke them in the eye. And a blind bird does not live long, so they're just so beautifully evolved. They're feathers. They find ways to dry them in the sun. That kills off the bacteria. Sun is a great disinfectant, so you'll often see them in their early morning, stretched out their wings on a rooftop, on a tree branch so that they can dry off the bacteria. But also they need to warm up in the mornings. MaNY birds, hummingbirds included, lots of birds, go into a state at night called torpor, where their body temperature cools almost like that of the dead. It helps them maintain or it helps them preserve energy, not need as much food.
But it means they are very, very vulnerable at night, and they cool down like that. But in the morning, then they need to warm up. So it's almost like unfurling some solar panels. You think of, like a satellite that unfurls its solar panels or the Hubble telescope. Vultures do that in the morning to warm up, to dry off that bacteria. But they're very, very gentle birds. They have this reputation because they're on the side of the road. They're eating dead things. That seems creepy. But they are very, very gentle. They don't tend to fight with other birds. They don't tend to get into squabbles. They can't sing. They don't have that usual avian voice box, which is called a syrinx, that songbirds have. They can only really hiss or grunt, but they have very orderly societies. When they come upon a dead animal and they all kind of gather around it in their wake, they take turns. There is a pecking order. They often allow the oldest and the most infirm birds, the elders of the group, to go first in order to kind of watch over them. They're fascinating.
We could talk a whole hour about vultures. I won't do that to you, but that's vultures 101.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: I mean, I almost want to to, though, because I'm. Because. Well, because in part, I'm thinking these are the things that. Especially this, you know, kind of this pecking order thing, right? Like the. The gentleness. Like, these are things that we really work hard to. On ourselves, but to teach one another, you know, these kinds of things, this was a very natural thing. So it's. It's not. I'm not throwing shade on anybody, but, you know, I was. I was volunteering in the kids class, right, at church. And it's like, yes. And then we had a larger class than normal and realized, oh, my goodness, we don't have quite enough of everything. Glue sticks and, you know, this particular coloring sheet, and I am telling you, I am not, I'm not a teacher by trade, like a, like a elementary school teacher. And so I should have done something different than put the supplies in the middle of the table.
Like that was the wrong choice, you know, because anyway, the table was not acting like a table of vultures, I guess, is what I should turned into.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: Lord of the flies is what happened. That's right. That's right.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: You know, there's six glue.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Six.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: And, you know, 14 kids, and then you do the math on that. But I. But it is. But that is fascinating to me. And for me, it is a reminder even kind of going back to your hospice mentor of, you know, death is a natural thing.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: Say they died, and then it's so much of a natural thing that built into this ecosystem, we have all of these creatures, these birds included, who were designed to deal with death.
That's hard and beautiful.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: Yeah. But hard 1000%.
Yeah.
The circle of life, you know, and they, they find their food by smell. They have very sophisticated sense of smell, and they, you'll see them often soaring overhead. They don't flap a lot because they ride on thermals, so those warm currents of air, and they'll just kind of gently soar overhead. But I think it is such a beautiful test to the God of creation that this ecosystem is set up from the very beginning to the very end to take care of all of these different things, you know, what else do we need? Oh, we need bacteria not to spread through this population of animals. Okay, well, we need an animal designed to be able to take care of that, to digest it.
Vulture poop? No, we're going to go there. Vulture poop is actually pretty, like, first.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: Time we've ever talked about vulture poop on the podcast. Just saying this is the first time.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: Moment because their gut biome is designed to handle all of these gnarly, you know, toxins and bacterias. It's totally disgusting. You do not want to get pooped on by a vulture because it's like, they are large birds, there's a large volume, but it's pretty, it's not sterile, but they kill off most of the gnarly stuff. So you're not going to get sick and die. If a vulture poops on you, you will want a shower.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. I. Okay, okay, I'm cracking vulture poop. But this leads me to one of these, to one of the other notes that I had, and you alluded to it, and you specifically said it about vultures being gentle birds.
And I think that speaks to grief as well. And what we all want when we're grieving is to experience someone else's gentleness. And when I think about vultures being one of the creatures who were designed to clean this up, I mean, you know, you think if we use our imaginations for just a moment, you think, okay, how else could God have designed this to happen? You know, like, maybe the earth cracks open and swallows up the carcass, right? That would be kind of scary. I mean, vultures are kind of creepy looking, like we've talked about, and they're kind of scary, but their gentleness and how they, you know, how they approach this, you think there could be lots of other things. They could. Carcasses in the forest could spontaneously combust. You know, there could be lots of things that could clean up this death.
And one of the creatures that is tasked with cleaning this up also is a very gentle. And even, you know, I can't personify them too much but say they're kind, but. Right, but their systems, as you described, they're. They care for their community even, you know, in this. And what a beautiful picture that is of what we want to experience and what we want to give when someone else is grieving is this gentleness. That was one of the other word pictures that stood out to me in this book was that grief is like a bruise.
[00:25:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It really is. It was surprising to me. You know, I. I loved my grandfather so much. He was. He was very beloved. And also, there's kind of an expectation when someone reaches 89, you know, their time is limited. And so I was surprised by the profound weight of grief that happened that moment and in the aftermath of his death. It shocked me, but it really did feel like I was going through life extra tender. And I think I appreciate we're going to get off the vulture train in a second. But one of the other things I appreciate about them is that they are largely silent, because in grief, often people think I don't know the right thing to say. And so we say the worst things to people in grief. We say terrible things. We start sentences with, at least if you're starting a sentence with at least to someone who's grieving, just stop talking like it's not going to go anywhere good.
And often, what that person in grief needs is just your silent presence. The people who ministered to me the most deeply in the few days right after my grandfather died, and I share this in the book, one of my friends who lives in Texas, far away from where we live here in southern California, just sent me this really soft blanket in the mail. And she said, I can't hug you, but this can hug you. And there was no. At least there was no heaven needed an angel. There was no. It was just your grandfather. And folks say that to me, and I'm like, don't do that.
But that blanket. And then another friend who texted me at the airport, I just got in the news, and she was like, how did it go? And I don't drink, but I made the joke, I think I need some vodka. And she had a bottle of vodka door dashed to my house. And it made me laugh, which is what I needed in that moment. And so just to be, even if you're just dropping something on the porch, even if you're just. The person's not up for a visit, but that silent presence, that gentle act of love, because you do, you feel like everything is harder, everything is worse. You know, someone cut me off in traffic, and it made me cry. I don't cry when people cut me off in traffic. But you're just. It's like all of your nerve endings are on the outside. Eugene Peterson once described himself after preaching as feeling like he had no skin on. Like, he was just so tender after he delivered this message. And I think grief is very similar. It's like our skin has been stripped away. And so things that normally don't hurt hurt a little bit, and things that normally would hurt hurt so much.
So often the best gift we can give is to be gentle and to be kind. And if we don't know the right thing to say, it's okay to not say anything, but then do something, because the not saying anything and not doing anything also communicates, and it doesn't communicate what we want. So drop off the plant or drop off the meal, or. I don't know that I advocate dropping off the giant bottle of vodka. That might be the thing that's needed.
And grief is.
Yeah, grief is the great unveiling of many things, too. And if we have not dealt well with previous grief, that will come up again. And so, in a culture that is very grief averse, the story is often, keep going, keep swimming. It's fine. You're okay. Get over it. But then what happens is, when the next tragedy hits, we haven't dealt with the previous one, and the weight of grief is doubled. And so there are no shoulds. Jesus doesn't give advice, but we are given a choice to enter into grief or not. And if we choose to not, two things will happen. It will hit us again later with the next tragedy, and it will come out sideways. Suddenly we're really short with our kids, or we're really grumpy at work or we get sick.
It will hit us different ways.
[00:29:21] Speaker A: I want you to say more about that, and it's fine.
My first instinct is say more about that as a pastor, but, you know, that doesn't have to be where this comes from for you. It could be say more about this as a person or as a mother or as a granddaughter or as a, you know, a sister or wife. But how. I think that because we're so averse to this, we don't know how to enter into it, you know? And again, like, you're right. There's. There's not a should there. So I'm not. I'm not necessarily asking you for, for, you know, some sort of steps, but it's, you know, one of the things that also stood out to me. I think somewhere you said it's average for people to get, like, three days off of work in the US for the, for the death of a spouse. Right? Like, I don't care if you have a. If you have a checklist or not. You can't do anything in three days. You know, like, you can't do it. You can't plan a funeral in three days. There's. You can't do. You can't enter into any sort of grieving at all in three days. So I'm partially asking, like, I think, and I will speak for myself, this is a weird statement to say, but I'm a. I have been. I'm learning more how to. How to not be. But I spent so much of my life being afraid of grief.
Like I was, you know, I had a lot of anxieties as a kid. I had a lot of fears as a kid. When we were first married and first had kids, then I had a lot of, you know, oh, my goodness, what if something happens to members of my family? And that kind of thing that sometimes felt. Felt very paralyzing. Um, and there was a part of me that was, yes, like, afraid of losing this person, but almost as much and maybe even more sometimes there was this. I'm afraid of what that will look like. Like, the grief. I don't want to feel that way.
And I think that there might be some of that with us. It's like, I don't want to enter into grief because I am afraid of how that will feel if I let myself feel it.
So how, like, how do we get past that? Like, how do we go through that?
[00:31:51] Speaker B: I love that question. And I think it's a. It's a very common one and a very common experience because it feels like someone's asking us to lock ourselves in a room with a rattlesnake. Like, you got to deal with your grief and you're like, great, it's going to bite me and then I'm going to die. Like, this is going to bite me. It's going to hurt. It's going to be horribly unpleasant. It's going to get me nowhere.
But I think grief isn't a rattlesnake. I think grief is an elephant. And it's big and it's there, but it's not going to bite, but it's big and it's there. And when we run from it, it will come out other ways. And the temptation and I think some of the unhealthy coping mechanisms that are pushed by things like workplace policies that give you three days. Like, the shock hasn't even worn off in three days. In three days, you might still be feeling kind of okay because it hasn't hit you, especially if it's a big loss. You just can't imagine that it's actually true. Yet are to distract ourselves by continuing to push, continuing to do, continuing to go, or numbing behaviors. So things like addictions or just. I'm going to go home from work every day and I'm going to watch 14 hours of television until it's time to go back to work again. And those make sense. And I don't want anyone listening or anyone who's done those things to feel like I'm heaping guilt or shame. Those are perfectly normal responses to something that's really painful. We spend our whole lives being taught that pain is a sign of something bad that needs to be dealt with, that needs to be addressed. If you're walking around on a broken leg and you're like, I've just decided I need to get through the pain. Something is wrong. Something is wrong.
And so it's a very different thing than anything we've ever experienced. It's like landing in the middle of a foreign country, and no one has taught you the customs and no one has taught you the language. And so most of us try to get back home as fast as possible. I'm to get back into my routine. I'm going to do the things I do that used to make me feel good. Why aren't they making me feel good. And so it is a courageous thing to say. I'm going to enter into this, and there's no map. Often what I tell people is, listen to your body.
Your body will tell you a lot. Your body will probably want a lot more sleep than it usually does. Grief is exhausting. Even if you lost someone two weeks ago and you're not thinking about them at all and you felt okay today, you may need to go to bed at 08:00 and that's not your norm, so listen to your body. And then the other thing I tell people is, give yourself some space.
Because for me, that was bird watching. Those were bird walks. I got the news that my grandfather had died. I came home, I did holy week, and I was okay for a couple of days. And then about Wednesday, it all hit me. And I said, daryl, I have to.
I have to go outside. You know, I'm supposed to be in the office. I have to go outside. And I spent the afternoon. I'm tearing up. We knew this would happen.
I spent the afternoon at the Bolsa Chica wetlands, which, if, you know, southern California is one of the best birding spots to go. And I sat there with about 200 pelicans and just watched them, and I watched them fish. And my grandfather was a fisherman. And that connection and that space was what I needed on that day. And I'm blessed to have a flexible job and a boss who was like, yeah, you're no good to us in the office today. You know, love you go.
And not everybody is. But if the impulse is to keep running, the grief will catch you. And so some of that decision is, do I give my body what it needs and do I lean into the space that my soul and my feelings require, or do I let it find me when I'm not ready and when I haven't made that choice? And we see that so often in our church. You know, someone will lose a spouse and they do okay for a few months, and then they get really sick, or then, you know, they. They start struggling in some other way. And God is very kind. We can run from the grief for a long time, and God will give us repeated opportunities to sit with it. And God will always be present when we finally decide. Okay, today's the day I'm going to start on this journey. Um, programs like grief share can really help. Our church has a wonderful grief share program where you're going through this process together.
Um, but, yeah, we. We all have a choice in grief. And it's not just a choice, it's a thousand choices. And some days you may not be able to face it and you may need a law and order marathon to get you to tomorrow. And that's okay. Jesus is fine with it. He and I talk all the time. He's fine with it.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: But, you know, I think you're right that just to name that, it is a really brave choice.
When I have experienced moments of profound loss, you know, events.
And it came to my mind as you were talking, I'm like, yeah, my body probably does need to go to sleep at eight. But that's the scariest thing, you know, for me, is to let my mind, like, to turn off the lights, right. And just be with myself. That feels like being in that room with a rattlesnake, you know, that feels like the scariest thing. And even though, you know, I'm like, even if I can't physically keep my eyelids open and my body is telling me I need sleep, it feels like the scariest thing to do. But I think it's important that you note that Jesus is always present with us in those spaces, whether it's outside with the pelicans or in our, you know, bed in the dark, you know, that Jesus is present with us in those spaces. So thanks for that. I appreciate that.
As I maybe, maybe I will call myself a birder now. I don't know, I'm kind of thinking, but I'm thinking about these, you know, kind of what we talked about earlier, like those moments when they come out sideways or when it. When we just think about it and we're not expecting it and the birds being kind of similar, what delight can come? Because even the subtitle of your book references hope. And so grief is very real and a normal part of life and a natural part of life, and so is hope. And Jesus leads us to hope. And so I'm wondering if you want to talk about the pelicans. That would be amazing. If you want to talk about other moments or just other even places.
[00:38:52] Speaker B: The.
[00:38:52] Speaker A: Birds that you highlight in the book, these moments where we can see hope through these creatures.
I want to pause before I completely let you answer that and say this.
I grew up in my paradigm for kind of closeness to God. Now, this will not shock you. I think we're similarly aged. And so I was a teenager in like Bible belt evangelicalism, american evangelicalism. And so my paradigm, as I was youth grouped, was to feel close to God. Was like a 15 minutes quiet time in the morning.
[00:39:44] Speaker B: So only 15 minutes. Come on, Alexis.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: Well, you know, we were Baptist. I don't know if we were, like, super holy. Probably not holy enough, but it was this time, right? So I had, you know, and this was my paradigm for feeling close to God. And there was, you know, and, of course, in. In my mind, because especially then, I've, again, grown out of it a little bit. But I do like structure and rules and things like this. And so that even had, like, a place in that quiet time and anything else probably wasn't quite as holy as that.
And then.
I know this is going to sound so weird, but we're talking about creatures. We've already talked about vultures. And you might. Well, you probably can't see her behind me.
And then we got a mastiff.
So we have this big, wrinkly, stripey, striped english mastiff in our house, and she drools and she farts, and she is so much fun.
And I remember just sitting with her one day, laughing myself to tears because I just thought, I couldn't stop thinking about how much joy this ridiculous dog brought me.
And. And not just how much joy this dog brought me, but how hilarious God must be that this creature that brings me so much joy must bring him delight, too, because he created her.
And that that moment was so holy for me. And I reflect on it often because I just think about how much God loves creation, you know, and we're a part of creation. So that's kind of where my headspace is when I'm saying, okay, you needed to get out and be with the pelicans, and I can't get by pelicans where I live, but we have a little place close to our house where we get next to the flamingos, and sometimes I'll just stand out and just watch the flamingos. So, um, I don't know. I think I am. I am going to ask you to answer this kind of as a pastor now, but, like, you know, my 19 year old self wants you to give me permission to experience God and the birds.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: I will write that permission slip for you, Alexis, for your younger self. Yeah. The ties to hope in the book, for me, are very, very centered in creation. And I think I also grew up reading the Bible and not really the book of nature. And God has created both, and they both have lessons to teach us. And when I go out into creation, two things rise to the surface. The first is the reminder that I am not alone. And I think in grief, we often feel so isolated. But it's. I go birding because it is this constant reminder that someone is always watching. And the more you bird, the more observant you become. And the more observant you become, the more you see God's fingerprints all over the world. Just the whimsy and the glory and the interest of every different species. And that reminder that we are held in love. That the same God who created the kingfisher created you and created me. And people laugh when I say birding is my favorite spiritual practice, and it's the one that works the most for me, but it is profoundly true. When I go out and bird, I'm forced to be still, I'm forced to be silent. I'm forced to wait, but actively so I'm not just twiddling my thumbs and making a grocery list in my head. I'm looking into that tree and I heard something. But what was it that I heard? I need to tune in more.
[00:43:53] Speaker A: What?
[00:43:54] Speaker B: You know? And every bird that flies into my field of vision is pure gift and grace. You can lure birds in, you can make bird calls, it's called pishing, or you can put out feeders and things like that. But even still, every bird that comes is gift and grace. So the first is that reminder that I am not alone, that we are not alone. And the second is that reminder that God delights in creation, that God delights in us. There is no reason for there to be a dog as big as a mastiff. And I did see him when he wandered in behind you and as stripey and as wrinkled, except God was like, this is amazing. There is no reason that giraffes have seven inch long purple tongues, except for the fact that God is amazing. And the more I learn about birds, the biodiversity and how unique they are. I was going off the other night about molting, and my husband was like, how much molting do we get at the dinner table? And I was like, no, no, you don't understand. It's amazing.
And every species is different. Every sparrow that looks identical to us, to every other sparrow, does not look identical to their mate. They can tell.
And the more I go into this world of birding, the more I realize it is just this bottomless bowl of delight. And there are about 11,000 species, different species of birds in the world. And that pales in comparison to the number of fish, which pales in comparison to the number of insects. God is amazing in creativity and in love and in delight. And when I go out into the natural world and I spend time with birds, it's much more than, oh, you know, that was a cardinal that was so pretty. That is how it starts for people. And that spark is a beautiful thing. But then you learn more about cardinals and you learn that they molt their head feathers all at once and they look like tiny red vultures. I posted a picture of them on my twitter a couple days ago. They look terrible, they look ill. But there's a reason for why they do this in this pattern. And so the farther you go, the more delight there is. And I just want to encourage anyone listening who thinks maybe I'm not a birder. Take one more step farther because so many delights await you. I'm an evangelist for two things in this life, Jesus and the Merlin bird id app from the Cornell lab of ornithology, which is free.
You can id birds by sound. There are no in app purchases. You can send your kids out with it, and youll go out to your yard, youll turn on Merlin and youll realize, oh, my goodness, there are twelve species of birds I never knew. And once you know theyre there, youll start to see them. And once you start to see them and know their names, youll start to love them. And it will change your life. And you're welcome.
[00:46:32] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. Okay, I will make sure after we hit the end record that I have the right link for that app because I just, I'm just going to receive that evangelism.
[00:46:43] Speaker B: It'll change your life.
[00:46:44] Speaker A: And even in the back of the book, I just will say, you have resources like that. I mean, the apps and magazines and things like that for folks who want to really, you know, even just like dip their toe in birding, I think.
I don't. I kind of want to do this. Let's see. I'll ask you what you want to do and then be reminded that, you know, my husband can always edit out whatever we don't decide, but I almost want to. And in a similar place to where you started, because this evangelism for the bird app, your book is called looking up. And you have a poem near the beginning of the book. And you, in your commentary on the poem, is that maybe sometimes Jesus is kind of like the root under your sleeping bag, inviting you, inviting us to look up.
And that can feel a bit uncomfortable even to think about, for some of us to think about Jesus in that way. But I wonder, as we start to wrap up, if you might describe a bit of how you interpret that invitation from Jesus.
[00:48:10] Speaker B: I do think it's one of the best verses in scripture where Jesus says, look at the birds. So I wrote on Twitter a while back. Not enough of you sinners are out there birding, and it shows.
But Jesus says it in reminder of his care for us that look up. Look at the birds. They were likely just common sparrows, old world sparrows, probably house sparrows.
There are more house sparrows than any other bird in the world, so everyone has seen one. They're little brown jobs. They're not that interesting to look at. And Jesus points to them. In Luke, Jesus says, look at the raven, so we can talk about that.
But it's this reminder that the same God who cares for them, cares for us. Are you not worth more than many sparrows? And the more I get to know about sparrows, the more I realize how much God loves the sparrows. So it's not disparaging about the sparrows. It's not like these don't matter, but you matter. It's look at these, and look how much they matter. Get up close and look at the intricacy of a sparrow's feathers. Look at the way they partner up. Look at how they raise their young. Look at how I provide food for them. They're not out there going to the mall. They're, you know, they're reliant upon me. I'm caring for them. How much more do I care for you?
And I cling to that. And it's been very interesting to me. I, you know, I bird. I talk to a lot of birders. I have a little birding podcast that I do. And I would say the majority of people I talked to about birding got into it because of grief. They didn't intend to become birders, but life smacked them really hard. And suddenly they started to look out their window because they couldn't go to work or because they weren't able to read or they just were in this place of desperation. And so they would hike or they would walk or they would sit by their window.
And I think that's one of the reasons God created the birds.
But it's interesting, that path between grief and openness to new lessons. And I think that poem I shared, which is a poem by David Wright, who is a former Wheaton College professor and one of my favorite poets of all time. So go look up his stuff. David Wright. W r I G h T.
But he talks about wanting to give his students a good research paper topic and how they chose the way we all do, and they chose the most for the least and the easiest possible thing and the low hanging fruit. You know, one of the lines is, you know, giant plastic bottles marked soda, like just, you know, you're at Walmart shopping for a paper topic. And he said, if I had to do it again, what I would tell them was, choose the topic that will wake you up like a root beneath your sleeping bag because you pitched your tent at the most breathtaking spot and not the flattest. I don't quote this part in the book, but the poem goes on to say, you know, read a book and get pissed off at the author and write her a letter, even if she's dead. And this idea that wrestling with these deep things is one of the privileges of what it means to be human. And that if our goal is to escape grief, we can escape grief in a way. But we will miss out on these deep, beautiful lessons of having our hearts broken open and remended by the creator of the universe. If we want to run from grief our whole lives, we can. That is our choice. But if we will sit with it, and if we will sit with Jesus, who is described in scriptures as a man of sorrows acquainted with grief, there is so much beauty and healing and hope there. And even if you work through grief, it's still going to come out sideways sometimes. You're still going to snap at your husband and be grumpy with your kids. But you will learn over time to carry it differently and to carry it in a way that allows you to minister to others and to carry it in a way that when the next loss comes, it is not compounded. But it is a familiar country where now you know some of the language and you're reminded that Jesus will go with you every step of the way.
[00:52:16] Speaker A: That's beautiful, Courtney. Thank you so much.
[00:52:18] Speaker B: You made me cry a bunch. I'm out of Kleenex on my desk.
[00:52:21] Speaker A: Alexis, I am so sorry. And I cheered up, too. And I really thought it was going to be me. I really thought it was going to be me. I'm just grateful that we're both here for it.
[00:52:31] Speaker B: You're a very good interviewer.
[00:52:34] Speaker A: We're both here for it. Thank you. We're both here for it. But I think, too, you know, I remember one of my first spiritual direction sessions ever, and I am snotting. Like, I mean, it's so gross. And the director sitting, it was like at a retreat. So she wasn't, she didn't become like my normal, you know, like my regular director. And so we're sitting across from each other and like there's. I'm feeling so. And she doesn't.
She didn't do anything. Like, she wasn't afraid of it, and she didn't even offer me a tissue, but I was unfamiliar with this. And so later she said, I just don't want you to think I'm trying to get you to stop. Right. Like, I'm just. I'm here for it. I'm here for it. And I think that was very beautiful, and I'm grateful that you shared your tears with us today, because I think it's a good reminder that Jesus is here for it.
[00:53:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:30] Speaker A: And that's part of what leaning into this looks like, is just being present with each other and being here for it and not trying to get you to stop.
[00:53:40] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think we often believe if I start crying, I will cry forever. If I enter into grief, I will never get out of bed again. But often the opposite is true. We get to the end of the tears, and we may need to cry again tomorrow, but we're done for today. And we feel that release and we feel that relief and don't be afraid of it. It will not go on forever. No matter how deep the grief is.
There. There is another side to it.
[00:54:08] Speaker A: Gosh, that's really. That's.
I'm grateful for that. Again, I think now that's the headspace I'm in is like, oh, my goodness. And God created tears, right? Because. Exactly. You just said, like, it gives us this release in our. Our bodies. And we could have probably a whole other conversation about dualism and how, you know, these kinds of things. We're, you know, kind of. Some of us have been discipled to. To not connect our bodies to what is really, you know, happening with our emotions. So even when you gave, you know, helped us, invited us really to listen to our bodies and do just allow our bodies to guide us in some of those spaces is really helpful because God created us in bodies where we're bodily creatures.
[00:54:52] Speaker B: I think it was Cs Lewis that described us as amphibious creatures, like, what we do with our bodies affects our spirits. And he was writing in terms of, this is why you might want to in prayer. But it's also true that, you know, sometimes the holiest thing you can do is eat a snack and take a nap. Sometimes that's what grieving looks like. That's in the Bible, too. That's what God does with Elijah when he's at the end of his rope, gives him a snack, gives him a nap. He wakes up, he gives him another snack, gives him another nap. Sometimes I tell my husband, Elijah got two naps. I need two naps.
[00:55:19] Speaker A: That's right. Because Elijah was really grumpy.
He was really grumpy.
[00:55:24] Speaker B: He'd been through some stuff.
[00:55:25] Speaker A: He had been through some. Now let's not even. I don't want to. I don't. I'll take Elijah's nap. I won't take what came before Elijah's nap. I'm not interested in what came before Elijah's nap, but I'll take his nap. I'll take his nap.
Courtney, I'm wondering sometimes, and if you're comfortable, I would invite you sometimes when I have pastors on, I just ask you to pray for us at the end of the conversation.
I think this is a heavy topic and a really hopeful topic, and I think, you know, it, it's. It brought some stuff up for me, which makes me think it probably brought some stuff up for folks who are listening, too. So to close us out, would you mind just praying for us as we, as we maybe enter into these spaces that have been. Have felt off limits for us?
[00:56:22] Speaker B: Absolutely. I'd be honored. Thank you, Lord Jesus, thank you for the opportunity to talk about some of these deep things, to remember and cry over my grandfather again over two years after writing this book. And Lord Jesus, I thank you that you are the God who meets us in our deepest places, that you are patient, that you are faithful, that you are gentle, that you are kind. I pray for anyone listening who is in the throes of grief, who has refused to get in the room with the rattlesnake because you don't get in a room with a rattlesnake. We all know, and I pray, Lord Jesus, that you would continue issuing that gentle invitation. Come to me, you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
Give us permission to be gentle with ourselves and gentle with one another and give us many birds. In your holy name we pray. Amen.
[00:57:25] Speaker A: Amen.
Many birds. Amen. Thank you so much, Courtney. Again. Courtney's newest book is called looking up a Birder's guide to hope through grief. Thanks so much for being with me today.
[00:57:40] Speaker B: Thank you for having me. What a joy.
[00:57:43] Speaker A: The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show notes, music and podcasts production by Seth Buscetti. Be sure to give us a review on iTunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also visit us at that makestotalsense.com dot.
