Debbie Blue - Consider the Birds: A Provocative Guide to Birds of the Bible

Praise for Consider the Birds

A different kind of field guide! From the raven to the dove and the ostrich to the sparrow, Debbie Blue reminds us how rich the biblical account of the natural world can be, an endless source of metaphor and inspiration!

Bill Mckibben, founder of http://350.org

Debbie Blue is simply one of my favorite preachers and writers in America today. Consider the Birds is a singular work of devotion and beauty that will make you fall in love with that which you may have never bothered to notice before. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, author of Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint

Debbie Blue points to the sky and the trees and the grimy sidewalks of our world the way she points to the Word, saying: Wisdom: attend! And through the birds and their Creator and our stories about both, Debbie Blue does midrash on their lives, revealing mysteries and heartbreak, pratfalls and glory. This is a brilliant, astonishing work of scholarship and attention that will become a classic of Christian writing.

Sara Miles, author of Take This Bread, Jesus Freak, and City of God

I would read Debbie Blues grocery list. Thats how much I love her writing. So, yes, I want to read her writings on birdsin the world and the Bibleabout how birds are the currency of mercy, about eating quail until it comes out of your nostrils, about the killing prowess of eagles. This is a book to be savored, to be read while sitting next to a lake, to be read aloud to a loved one, to be shelved with the most beautiful books youve ever read.

Tony Jones ( http://tonyj.net ), theologian-in-residence at Solomons Porch, Minneapolis, author, blogger

Debbie Blue has a knack for noticing things, things of God and things of life. She not only notices, she sees. She sees the way spiritual guides see: with insight, clarity, wit, and truth. Debbie is at her best in Consider the Birds, and for those who are up for going on a journey of seeing the ways of the birds and of God, this book is a gem.

Doug Pagitt, pastor, author, Goodness Conspirator

Debbie Blue knows a lot about birds. Shes ransacked history and mythology, not to mention her own backyard, for a wildly entertaining trove of obscure, comical, and sometimes downright revolting bits of lore about vultures, roosters, sparrows, and pigeons that we hardly notice when were reading the Bible. But its what Debbie knows about our hearts, and about the texture of life in our world today, and about God, that makes this book a real treasure. Debbie has a keen eye for the inhumane, the self-destructive, and the really stupid stuff that masquerades as cultural wisdom, conventional religion, and common sense, and the way she laughs at herself, and us too, when we unthinkingly fall into line is a big part of the charm of this book. In Debbies sure hands, the Bible becomes a sly and paradoxicaland often very funnycollection of stories that doesnt say anywhere close to what we have been taught to think it says, and God becomes a presence so unrelentingly good that we can hardly believe it.

Doug Frank, author of A Gentler God

Why do Jesus and Debbie Blue both tell us to consider the birds? Perhaps because a corporate person has never seen a bird and never will. And perhaps because the visitations of spirit are very like being stunned by a wild bird and nothing like staring at a screen. Birds neither reap, sow, Tweet, nor Friend. They just fly into our lives with a powerless power rooted in the fact that beauty is truth and (as this delightful book and birdsong and Origen all agree) the fowls of the air are also within thee. To see or hear a bird clearly, for the duration of that clarity, is to be the Way.

David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and The River Why

Baby pelicans faint after feeding? A vulture collided with an airplane at 37,900 feet? How much there is to learn about birds! And, by following Debbie Blues meditations on them, how much there is to learn from birds about the Creator and our place in Creation. This book is a delight.

Marilyn Nelson, author of Carver: A Life in Poems, A Wreath for Emmett Till, and Faster Than Light: New and Selected Poems

Blues book is buoyant. We fly up like birds in a conversation about a supreme beingand I appreciated so the flight of this god-talk, a subject that doesnt usually fly anymore, encrusted as it is by gold, shadows, centuries...

Rev. Billy Talen, founder of the Church of Stop Shopping, author of The End of the World

CONSIDER THE BIRDS
A PROVOCATIVE GUIDE TO THE BIRDS OF THE BIBLE

Copyright 2013 by Debbie Blue

All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission can be addressed to Permissions, The United Methodist Publishing House, P.O. Box 801, 201 Eighth Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37202-0801, or e-mailed to .

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Blue, Debbie.

Consider the birds : a provocative guide to the birds of the bible / Debbie Blue.

1 online resource.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN 978-1-4267-4950-6 (epub)ISBN 978-1-4267-4950-6 (binding: soft black / paper / with flaps : alk. paper) 1. Birds in the Bible, I. Title.

BS664

220.8'598dc23

2013014556

Illustrations by Jim Larson.

Vultures by Margaret Atwood, used by permission of the Author and publishers. Available in the following collections: In the United States, SELECTED POEMS II, 19761986, published by Houghton Mifflin, Margaret Atwood 1987; In Canada, SELECTED POEMS 19661984, published by Oxford University Press, Margaret Atwood 1990; In the UK, EATING FIRE, published by Virago Books, Margaret Atwood 1998.

Vultures, from SELECTED POEMS II: Poems Selected and New 19761986 by Margaret Atwood. Copyright 1987 by Margaret Atwood. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations unless otherwise noted are taken from the Common English Bible. Copyright 2011 by the Common English Bible. All rights reserved. Used by permission. www.CommonEnglishBible.com .

Scripture quotations noted KJV are from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crowns patentee, Cambridge University Press.

Scripture quotations noted THE MESSAGE are from THE MESSAGE. Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

Scripture quotations noted NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations noted RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.