Noticing

7 hours ago
4 min read

Noticing is kindness… Courtney Ellis shows us how …

Elisa

Noticing

By Courtney Ellis

As a college student, I spent a semester studying at Oxford through a consortium program. I took a few seminar-style classes, but mostly my time was spent going to tutorials—one-on-one instruction—at the row home of an English poetry professor. He wasn’t so much eccentric as he was an unmade bed, his hair wild, shirt buttons askew, glasses smudged, and one sweater layered over several others to ward off Britain’s signature dampness. He sported a five o’clock shadow and a perpetually furrowed brow.

The professor’s brick flat was as tidy as he was not, lined with bookshelf after bookshelf of snug paperbacks and heavy bound volumes, his kitchen a perfect dollhouse version of America’s typical sprawling ones. He’d offer me tea and I’d always say yes, since yes seemed to be the polite thing to say.

I brought the professor rumpled essays that we would workshop together, sitting in his stately armchairs as the anemic English sun shone through the blinds. I wrote creative, cheeky nonfiction about the wilds of northern Wisconsin and the people I’d grown up with there. I’d read aloud to him as he drank his tea and made his notes, stopping me occasionally to interject or ask a question.

Every once in a while, my reading was interrupted with a bang, as he’d pull a paperback off the shelf just above his head and throw it at his cat.

“No, Tilda!” he’d yell. “Not on the furniture!”

One day, sitting in my armchair and choking down the tea of hospitality, I read to him that Lake Superior was the same size as Scotland.

Bang. I looked up. It wasn’t a book thrown at Tilda this time. He’d stomped both his feet on the floor.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “That cannot be true.”

“I might be wrong,” I said, having learned some academic humility.

“Maybe we can check?”

He pulled a heavy atlas off a shelf and opened it on his lap, turning pages until he got to the United States. He looked at the legend for scale, found the lake in question, and then flipped over to Scotland.

“Oh my God,” he said, staring down at the page. “Oh my God.” He then dismissed me just ten minutes into our scheduled hour.

“I need to ponder this,” he said. “I had no idea.”

Noticing can stop us in our tracks. A new perspective, new realization, or new encounter can change the way we understand the world. It may bring us to our knees with delight or anguish. Sometimes it will drive us to wonder. To prayer. Even to faith.

If the gentle curiosity of noticing what is outside and around us is one key to weathering change, tuning our attention to what is happening internally can be more transformative still.

“You seem like you’re struggling,” Daryl, my husband, will gently remark to me on occasion. Often our inner states speak louder to others than they do to ourselves. Those who love us well can usually tell if we’re out of sorts or troubled or angry or afraid. But looking at our own inner mirrors, learning to see ourselves as we are and not turn away, can be quite a challenge.

“Do you want to take a walk and figure it out?” he’ll ask, and I’ll retreat to the birds and the trails. A few blocks away, I often discover that yes, I am struggling. Struggling with the weight of responsibilities at church or at home, the pace of change, my own thwarted plans. I am struggling and Daryl and Jesus and the kids all knew it, I just couldn’t yet see it for myself.

Noticing is a kindness, both to us and to others. It helps us gather information, pause for a breath, and take stock before bumbling full steam ahead, fueled by assumptions that may not be helpful or even true.

Noticing isn’t just about paying attention to our difficult feelings, however. (Thank goodness!) The more we notice about the world around us, the more likely we are to experience awe. What a delightful emotion awe is. It’s wonder mixed with delight and seasoned with surprise. It can transform not only our minds but our bodies too.

Awe doesn’t necessarily need to be tied to earth-shattering realizations. Simply noticing beauty and wonder in our backyards, on our streets, and in the faces of our neighbors can be a start to a lower stress baseline. The lower our stress, the easier it is for us to lean into learning, health, and growth.

We may long for a voice from heaven—surely, we would listen then!—but more often we are recipients of the subtler signs of God’s glory. A bloom in spring. A dragonfly paused upon the pier. The aurora borealis over a frozen field. The soft cheek of a child. The extended hand of forgiveness.

As we begin to notice these small miracles, to take them in, we too will be transformed.

Courtney Ellis is a pastor at Presbyterian Church of the Master in Mission Viejo, California. She is the author of six books, including Weathering Change: Seeking Peace Amid Life’s Tough Transitions. Courtney hosts The Thing with Feathers, a podcast about birds and hope.