I hate change. I’ve been doing this ever since I can remember. When I was little, change meant upping the ante and moving to a new state every two or three years for my father’s military career, leaving home, friends, and school behind. As I grew up, change was often just as unwelcome: the death of a beloved relative or friend, the loss of a job, and all the troubling physical and mental symptoms that come with the onset of middle age. In general, I don’t have very pleasant associations with change.
Ellis is a pastor, and with that comes the eternal obligation to lead others to change. It is often the most painful type of change.
That makes me the target audience for my friend Courtney Ellis’ new book. Enduring change: finding peace amid life’s harsh vicissitudes. For someone like me, it’s comforting (pardon the pun) to open a book like this and know that the author has the same thoughts as me. “Change is difficult,“Whether it’s an unexpected change, an unwanted change, or a positive change. It rocks my world, but I’m mainly someone who prefers a world without rocks.”
But Ellis is a pastor, and that comes with not only a changing lifestyle for himself and his family, but also an eternal duty to guide people through change, the most painful kinds of change: divorce, illness, death. She has had to get used to being unfamiliar with things, which has allowed her to share her hard-earned wisdom on the subject.
Another strength she brings to this book is her deep love and knowledge of nature, a nature that is ever-changing and forever fascinating. her previous book, look up, He talked about how birdwatching helped him when he lost his beloved grandfather. In this new book, she also shows how to find help in facing unexpected situations in both the natural and supernatural worlds.
We’re not just talking about flowers and butterflies here. Ellis has spent enough time exploring and studying nature to get to know the harsher side of nature. So she knows that change is often just as messy and difficult for animals and plants as it is for us.
Ellis has a keen eye for the beauty and goodness that comes from pain.
Some of this awkwardness ends up being unintentionally funny, at least to us human viewers. Having witnessed the phenomenon so many times in my own backyard, I had to laugh at Ellis’s description of the northern cardinals’ shedding (they “look like Darth Maul after losing to Obi-Wan”). But sometimes change can be downright terrible. What happens to the caterpillar inside the pupa doesn’t seem to be for the faint of heart.
And it can be painful for everyone. Ellis returns to Cardinal to demonstrate this point. As an avid bird watcher, she has painted many of the most memorable illustrations from the bird world. While talking with an ornithologist about bird tagging, I learned that while some birds graciously accept being caught, held, and tagged, cardinals “try to steal their flesh.”
“Change? The cardinal does not agree,” she concluded.
But Ellis has a keen eye for the beauty and goodness that comes from pain. Her careful observation teaches her and us to find peace in the most difficult of transitions. She reminds us how birds listen to their inner urge to migrate each year, despite incredible distances and many dangers. She shows how much of it goes through different stages of life, from the stress of learning to fly to the resentment of shedding, even if it’s not immediately accepted. We watch as a baby bird violently protests his father’s invitation to forage for food on his own, and at least eventually submits.
We are burdened with having to choose to trust in the face of fear and uncertainty.
But what I can’t get out of my head is the image of Ellis’ fallen, rotting tree…for multiple reasons. As I write this, just such a tree is lying on the lawn outside my house (although it will be chopped up and disposed of before it rots). One windy afternoon earlier this week, it hit the ground, damaging the roof and heat pump and scaring everyone indoors out of the sun.
Changes in my life often felt like they came suddenly, without warning, and brought chaos and destruction. But Ellis’ depiction of a fallen tree in a forest usefully focuses on life thriving again after a catastrophe.
Fungi attach themselves to fallen trees, running web-like threads across the trunk, many too thin to see with the naked eye, each aiding in the delicate process of decomposition. As the wood begins to decompose, microorganisms, like larvae, ants, termites, cockroaches and millipedes, become active, walking delicately on their tapered legs along the fragile paths of decay.
What we see on the forest floor is both sacred and terrifying. The cycles of our ecosystem invite the remains of the dead, once mighty oaks, mighty bears, soaring eagles, and allow us to nourish the living. The remaining debris…will eventually become the soil below. And here we are, people, plants and animals, building our lives on and beyond those who came before us.
It may feel like the birds and trees have an advantage over us when it comes to change. After all, while we carry the burden of human consciousness and agency, even if the cardinals want to discuss it, they have little choice in whether or not to accept change. We are burdened with having to choose to trust in the face of fear and uncertainty.
But as our Lord knows when he told us to study the lily and the bird, we can begin to learn that trust by studying the natural world in which it places us and how it brings creation from destruction and life from death. And as we learn, our burdens may even become blessings.
Source: Christ and Pop Culture – christandpopculture.com
