002: Embracing Death and the Hope of Wholeness with Lore Wilbert

Episode 2: Embracing Death and the Hope of Wholeness with Lore Wilbert

Death is not always the end. In fact, it’s often a beginning and the doorway to a resurrection. Brian and Lore share the importance of embracing both death and life, the connection to nature, finding peace in the present moment, and navigating change and transformation. They also touch on the significance of liminal spaces and the process of shedding old layers to make way for new growth and discuss themes of grief, healing, and finding beauty in brokenness.

🔗 link to full Show Notes and transcript
—————
Episode Resources and Links:

• "Centering Prayer" by Andrew Peterson on Sanctuary Songs by Porter’s Gate
• How to Walk Into A Room by Emily P. Freeman
• "To Think of the Life of a Man" by Wendell Berry
• "Heavy" by Mary Oliver

—————
Guest Spotlight:

Website (Substack) | Instagram

Get The Understory  on Amazon | at Bookshop.org
—————
Don’t Miss the Next Episode!

Subscribe for free and never miss out on these conversations with old and new friends like Jenai Auman, Cait West, Tim Whitaker, Laura Barringer, Scot McKnight, and many others.

—————

We need your help. Your gift of just $25 will make a big difference and help us continue this work. Donate today.

—————

Sign up to receive our weekly Podcast Newsletter with new episodes, updates, exclusive discounts, and more!

Subscribe using your favorite podcast app:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube

Leave us a rating and review on Apple or on Spotify. This all helps us to grow and continue providing quality content for you and our community of listeners.

—————
As an Amazon and Bookshop.org affiliate, I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Lore Wilbert: 0:00

You don't know all the things that are about to unfold, all the things that are about to break, all the things that are about to crush you. They're coming for you, and you will be crushed by them. But the new arrangement, the new me, am I ever going to be not what I used to be? But am I ever gonna look in the mirror and recognize myself again and feel as myself and feel as whole and feel as alive and called and all of those things as I felt 10 years ago. And I think to answer that question, I have to believe that it's a yes.

Brian Lee: 0:34

Welcome back to the Broken to Beloved Podcast. This is episode number two. I hope to provide practical resources through compassionate conversations to grow in trauma awareness, set up safeguarding practices and prevent or avoid future trauma and move toward healing and wholeness. I'm your host, Brian Lee, and I'm so glad you're here today. We're talking with Lore Wilbert about her new book, "The Understory." It's a beautifully written story that's part memoir, part field guide for finding new life in the presence of death and decay. We talk about finding beauty and brokenness and navigating a path toward wholeness. Lore is an award winning writer, thinker, learner and author of the books the understory and a curious faith she's written for She Reads Truth, Christianity Today, and more, as well as on her own site, lorewilbert.com she has a master's in spiritual formation and leadership, and loves to think and write about the intersection of human formation and the gritty stuff of earth. You can find Lore on Instagram or on her kayak in the Adirondacks. And now here's my conversation with our new friend. Lore Wilbert. Lore, welcome to the Broken to Beloved Podcast. Thanks for having me. Brian, yeah, super excited to have this conversation at the time of this recording. Your newest book,"The Understory," has just released, so congratulations. Thank you. It's a beautiful book inside and out. I love the cover. Is it? Stephen Crotts, right?

Lore Wilbert: 1:56

It is, yes. Stephen has done two of my covers now.

Brian Lee: 1:58

Oh my gosh. I just love it so much. All the little extras that came with it, the patch and the sticker and the the wallpapers and the things and the discussion guide. It is a deep and masterfully woven tapestry of metaphor. For me, it was deeply affirming and nourishing for my soul. I can see how it will have an effect on me for a long time, like the compost and soil that you write about, which I just love. So just, thank you, thank you for your work.

Lore Wilbert: 2:29

Thank you for reading it, and thank you for those really kind words. I feel true. I yeah, I just, I'm honored. It really means a lot to me.

Brian Lee: 2:40

It wouldn't be possible if you hadn't put it out there. Thanks. We have good friends who, for a long time, lived by the phrase and the motto, life begins in the dirt, and they tried their hand at restorative farming during the pandemic and when everyone else was locked down. And I just loved the idea of that, that if we could restore the soil back to its good original nature, and just let it lie and do its thing, life can't help but spring forth from it. And as I think about our community and our audience of people who have walked through such pain, spiritual abuse, religious trauma, church harm, all these things. There's so much loss and death and separation and grief that comes with it. And this book and the way you talk about dirt and soil and compost and trees and life in death, not even after death. Life in death gave me so much hope for seeing things differently. And that's I just want to talk about that for a long time.

Lore Wilbert: 3:50

I love that. I love that you you pick up on that, because I think, you know, we can have two sort of extremes. We can, sort of want people to get through the death part really quickly. Just get to the life part. Stop talking about all the death, or we can just deny that the death is happening at all. And I just think it's really important to be able to hold both in tandem.

Brian Lee: 4:11

Yeah, yeah. There's so much more often than not in evangelical spaces than some other more traditional or liturgical ones, but there's just this compulsion to bypass grief and pain and death that even in a funeral, that you want to just point to the victory, or, Oh, things are better for them now, or they're with Jesus, and it's like, yeah, but it still also really hurts, and this is still really hard, yeah,

Lore Wilbert: 4:38

yeah. I think it's not even I think it's human nature to do that like it's we, don't we? We flinch from what hurts. And there's this great quote I think I shared in the book by another author, em again, and she said, at the end of the day, we're social animals. We go with the her. Word that harms us the least, and I think we go with the ideas that harm us the least, and we go with the environments that harm us the least, and sometimes that environment is grief, and grief hurts.

Brian Lee: 5:13

Yeah, it really does. It's really clear that you have a deep connection to the forest and to nature. Where does that come from for you? And what does that connection mean for you? Where

Lore Wilbert: 5:23

does it come from? Well, I, you know, I've never been asked that before, and I love that question. I was raised, I'm one of eight kids, the only girl, and was raised in the county, north of Philadelphia, on five acres in the forest. And so we, as you can probably imagine, we lived outside. We just were, you know, we had tick checks. Every single night we would come in. I wore all, you know, all boys clothes, and came in with, you know, we're just my mom would send us outside and say, Don't come back until it's dark and and we really that's the way that we grew up. And so I from a very young age, like I even my very first story that I ever wrote when I was like nine or 10, was, it's a long story, but was, was in the forest and came out of forest play. So I think I have always, I have always, that is that is probably the first place I feel at home, more than, more than anywhere else. Yeah,

Brian Lee: 6:33

I love it, and I love I have a million questions, and I don't know which order I'm going to ask them in, so I'm just going to follow my curiosity. I think I wrote this in my review, or at least I thought it in my head. What I really appreciate about the way that you write the understory is this simultaneous macro, micro view of the forest that you're literally seeing it for the trees and the moss and the lichen and all the little things that grow while at the same time beholding the whole thing as a interdependent organism. And I think so much of your childhood, so much of your life experience comes through in that but I also know lots of people who grew up near the woods or in the woods who don't have that same appreciation. So what is it for you that you think makes you notice it all well,

Lore Wilbert: 7:30

I think the word that you used when you were talking about questions curiosity is like insatiable curiosity, almost to the point of probably annoyance to some people. Like I just I've always wanted to know why things work the way they do, how they work, how to understand how they work, and not so that I can control them. I think because it makes me even more, I guess, surprised by awe and wonder when I when I get as close as I can to understanding something and it still doesn't make sense, then I'm like, that's that, for me, is that sort of limit, that sort of threshold space where it's like, Oh, I've gotten as close as I can understanding this thing, and I still don't understand it, or I still can't grasp it in totality, and that if I can get to that little space right there that is such a growth spot for me, because it makes me be behold instead of merely sort of keep digging it, either a wound or a grave or whatever it is. I happen to be dating. It's kind of a joke in our house how obsessive I am about Wikipedia, like I just constantly have it open. Yeah, it's just like sort of insatiable curiosity.

Brian Lee: 8:56

I love it. Same, same. You open and refer to the phrase, the Latin phrase, "ecce adsum," behold here I am, or behold I am here, and you'd return to it over and over in the book. You quote Wendell Berry, and you're right. We must arrive at the ground beneath our feet, at peace and in place. I have done neither, not completely. I'm perpetually homesick, and I wonder if God did that to me on purpose, so I would never feel too much at home on this earth. First of all, just appreciate your vulnerability and honesty. You repeat that phrase as well at peace and in place. For those of us who feel restless, displaced, whether spiritually, politically relationally homeless. What do you hope that means for people who read that?

Lore Wilbert: 9:47

Yeah, it's, it's really from one of my favorite poems by Wendell Berry, and it's called "To Think of a Life of a Man." That's the name of the poem. And it's sort of this, I. Again, going to that sort of macro and micro, the sort of like the life of a man, and yet also these, these sort of moments when we are, we sort of recognize our place. You know, in the moment right now I'm sitting in my sun porch office. This is the place where I am. And so I think, I think I wanted to just share that, because I think sometimes I say this in in evangelical spaces, but I'm sure it exists elsewhere. There's this sort of like demand for permanency. It's like demand for unchanging or unchangeableness, or, you know, we're always in search of our sort of quote forever home. Or, you know, we want to sink our roots down and be planted deeply. And there's sort of these, these metaphors that get used that really, I think, in some ways, are probably intended to encourage people to to be where they are, but end up sort of trapping us and shaming us for ever needing to or wanting to move or wanting to to leave. And I think the thing I like like about this idea of being at peace and in place is it's just like, Man, this is just where my feet are right now, and I can find peace in this place right now. And I, I think the thing that robs my peace so often is that I'm thinking about the future, or I'm thinking about the past, and I'm trying to put my feet back into a place, or I'm trying to push my feet toward a place that they aren't they aren't there yet. This is where my feet are and when I can just take a breath, take a beat, and just stand there. I can be I can find a shred of peace. Andrew Peterson has this song. I'm not sure if he wrote it. Actually, it's, it's on the new, oh goodness, I'm just Porter's gate. It's on the new Porter's gate album called centering prayer, and there's a line in it that's just says, I want to be where my feet are. And I think that's so that's just such a that's a good prayer. I want to be where my feet are, and it helps us when we can enter into that space. I think it helps us to grieve because we're we're not borrowing yesterday, yesterday's grief or tomorrow's grief, or hanging on to a bunch of other places, spaces, or just being where we are and letting that teach us what it wants to teach us.

Brian Lee: 12:43

I love that. Thank you. Liminal space, let's jump there real quick, because we're kind of hinted at it. And I'm also thinking of Emily P Freeman's newest book, "How to Walk into a Room." And I love that she uses the two word phrase for now, that wherever you are, that you can just add those two words, and it can lift the weight off of your shoulders, that wherever you are, it's just for now, or the decision that you make, it's for now, right? And so I love to do a lot of work around liminal space and just being in that threshold, and how much we're always more open to possibility because we haven't landed anywhere and we feel untethered and yet to recognize the amount of work that's happening underneath the surface, specifically in the season of winter, for so many people who go through experiences like this, there's another book called "Liminal" by Mike Brown, and he just writes about like when everything looks covered and dead and cold, life is happening under the surface. Right? The trees are storing their energy so that they can burst forth in spring. And you write about this restlessness in the bleak midwinter and wondering what to do. What do I do with the time and all that's happening now? Can you say it's hidden from sight, yet no less alive, simply being. And I love that so much. And you say, what makes the liminal space so important is that it's a place where we find peace within the dissonance we know we found one of these spaces when we can hold two competing truths in one hand, or when we can feel both profound grief and profound hope at the same time, recognizing things can be both true and complex is this very non binary, non dualistic thinking that just is open to possibility. I would love to hear just whatever you want to say about any of that.

Lore Wilbert: 14:35

I wish. I wish I could sort of teach that I don't think that. I don't think we can be taught to to hold disparate things or competing truths together. I think it's something that happens to us. I think it's something when we have either maybe it's part of our personality. I'm an Enneagram nine so. You know, considering all viewpoints, it's pretty easy for me, but I think, I think, you know, it's, it's not limited to Enneagram knights to to be able to enter into that space, but I think it is. Mary Oliver has this beautiful poem, it's called heavy where she's talking about grief, and then she gets to the end, and it's she's surprised by laughter in the midst of this grief, she's been carrying like bricks and like heavy things, and it's one of my favorite poems of hers. And I think that's where the liminal space often comes. It comes with a surprise, and it comes with the realization that I am carrying both incredible grief alongside some you know, maybe it's just a momentary moment of delight, and we realize, oh, like, this isn't going to last forever. I'm going to be able to come through this. It's just this. It's such a moment of hopefulness when we can be in that space. And I think, I think I say in the book like, you can't, you can't go to a liminal space. You can't you can't plan one out. You, more often than not, you kind of stumble upon one or find yourself in one already. And I think that's often times. You know, there's so much about pain we want to control, right? We want to, yeah, we want to fix it. We want to manage it. We want to get through it. We want to solve it for other people, we want to remove people we love from it. But there's so much about pain that needs to be it needs to be experienced all the way through as as painful as that is, it needs to be experienced in order to to come to that place of surprise, in that place of Yeah, growth, I don't think we grow without, without pain. Yeah.

Brian Lee: 17:03

Agreed. And I think the other thing I love about sitting in that liminal space is that it can't be rushed, that if we were trying to force our way through a season too soon, we would do a lot of damage.

Lore Wilbert: 17:19

We do a lot of damage. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's Yeah. I think that's why, that's why we have people who have been wounded by the church or by leaders or by friends, because those who were wounding were trying to do something either too fast or too loud or to quote, I'm using quote to write, try and be righteous, over over, being gentle or kind. It's, it's, it's moving too quickly, ultimately, and hurting whoever's in our way,

Brian Lee: 18:01

yeah, yeah. We're trying to move out of time. Yeah, there are so many themes of that death and resurrection throughout the whole book, without being overtly preachy, which I appreciate. I'm glad

Lore Wilbert: 18:13

you say that because I, I didn't want to go to, I didn't want to talk about resurrection a lot like

Brian Lee: 18:20

to that need to really right? And I think we we've heard all the things that that, that we need to hear, quite frankly, about resurrection. I think what we don't hear about so often is the Friday or Saturday experience of having the experience in the death or the long in between of I have no idea what I do now, right? You write about trees dying in the forest to make way for and nourish new and more diverse life, which is such a beautiful and redemptive picture about the big hole that's left by tree 103, but now, because there's space in the canopy, all this other stuff can happen. Right? For so many who are listening, who have experienced that kind of death, abuse, trauma, death of some kind in their lives, right? You quote Madeleine langel, and she says, The coming of the kingdom is creation coming to be what it was meant to be, returned, renewed, reanimated, remade, and what we see now is not what will be someday. It's such a natural impulse to want to return to something, and I wish things were the way could just go back to the way they were, and yet they never will be right. And I think you also write at the beginning about just change. Like, why would I want to be the same person I was five or 10 or 15 years ago? Talk us through that, like, what does that death process look like for you? Or what is, what has change felt like for you? Kind of navigating the release of who you were or or letting go of the things that had to die or that it was whether it was time or not. Um. Help us walk through that for ourselves. Oof,

Lore Wilbert: 20:05

I might get a little teary here. Um, yeah, I think I will say it has been. It has been harder than I ever imagined, and it has involved not just my own pain, but the pain of others, more than I would ever, ever, ever want. Yeah, and it has taken longer, I think, than I you know, there have been multiple points over the past, I would say, eight or nine years, where I've just thought, Okay, it's finally done, you know, finally move forward, or move through this. And I'm I can breathe and I can remember who I am again. But I think the longer that time goes on, the more, you know, I talk in the book about one of my brothers who was killed in an accident, and his, his body is still, you know, this was 20 years ago, but his body has been totally reordered and into a new cellular arrangement. It is no longer, he wasn't embalmed. He was, he was buried in a plain pine box, and his, his body is, is a whole new cellular arrangement. And that is, that is, oftentimes, what has to happen to us through these periods of times. We need to shed a layer of skin. We need to shed a layer of, you know, our taste bud, like the the human body is so amazing. Like we're we're shedding skin all the time. We're changing our taste buds, where our hearing is is maybe getting either sharper or lesser. So there's these natural human things that are happening in our bodies all the time that I think echo the spiritual story of what's happening. But I need to shed, you know, maybe I had some thin skin about something, or some thick skin about something, maybe I had a taste for something that turns really sour for me in an experience. And I just need to have, like, new taste buds and new skin and new like I need to be, I need to have a new cellular, cellular arrangement, and that is painful. Yeah. Also, like, like, you read, like, why would I want that old thing back again, that old thing, that old girl who I have so much love for, like, I think about me in 2012 and I'm like, Oh, I have so much love for you. You know, there's so much you didn't know. There's so much you wanted to know and you were trying to learn. There's so much you couldn't have foreseen happening. There's so many people that you hadn't met yet and stories you hadn't heard yet. Like, why would I ever want to go back to that person as, like, full of life and in control, and whatever like she might have seemed at that time, I just like, I have, like, such a special place in my heart for her today, because I'm like, Oh, you don't know all the things that are about to unfold, all the things that are about to break, all the things that are about to crush you. You don't know them, um, and you, they're coming for you. They're coming for you, and you will be crushed by them. Um, but the new arrangement, the new me and I, I want to just be candid, like, I don't even feel like that new arrangement yet. Like I'm like, oh my god, is this? Is this? It like, is this? Am I ever going to be not what I used to be, but am I ever going to look in the mirror and recognize myself again and feel as myself and feel as whole and feel as alive and called and all of those things as I felt 10 years ago? And I think the answer that question, I I have to believe that it's a yes that I will but I also, I also believe that that within that sort of dissonance that I feel with who I am today and who I want to be there, the capacity for empathy and the capacity for love, love for others, love for all humans, love for Jesus, love for myself, like has just grown and and I think sometimes what I trade that, would I trade that capacity for love to be able to look in the mirror and say like, I know that girl and she's she's headed for great things. And I don't think I would. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not faced with it. Maybe I would, but I don't think I would today.

Brian Lee: 24:58

Yeah, I. Thank you so much for going there. Really appreciate it like you. I'm not from an environment that values feelings. It's been a big part of my own work over the last few years,

Lore Wilbert: 25:12

hard work.

Brian Lee: 25:13

It's so hard learning that naming things is such an important part of that recovery and healing work, and as you've been learning to identify and name those feelings and emotions, I love that whole section talking about with your counselors, like, No, you're you're thinking about them. You're not actually feeling them. I was like, that's exactly what I do, or I research the feeling so I know how to label them, but then don't do anything with them. Yeah, I just want to diagnose what I'm going through. I don't actually want to feel it right. It Right, yes, and yet, and then later, you talk about the courage to mourn is closely related to the courage to challenge injustice, and how you spent a whole year crying over all the things and recognizing that tears are like a mirror reflecting what matters. And when I finally began to cry, I began to see the layers of brokenness that lay within and without me. And man talk about floodgates, right? That just kind of burst once you finally tap into it. I know I'm definitely still a major work in progress. Where do you find yourself today?

Lore Wilbert: 26:17

A major work in practice. I mean, you see tears in my eyes right now. You know, for years, I'm not joking when I say in the book that I prayed for the gift of tears, like I could not make myself cry. I could not I like terrible, terrible things were happening, and I just was stoic or resolute, or maybe I would have called it resilient at the time, um, but I had to get on my face and beg God for the gift of tears. Um, to weep over what was broken and to feel anger over what was in just and and people are going to try and take that stuff from you. They're going to try and take your tears from you. They're going to try and take your anger from you. They're going to try and take it by telling you to calm down, or telling you how you acted was wrong, or you don't need to cry over this thing. And if you can't find, not just like, the strength and the courage in your own self to mourn or feel anger or those things, if you can't find the strength to legitimize to say to yourself, my anger over this injustice matters, my tears over this matter and to, like, believe that all the way through, like, I don't, it's, it's gonna be really hard to cry. It's gonna be really hard to be angry about things. Because you're, you know, so often, and I don't want to, you know, typecast people, but so often, people who have been wounded are people who are soft were people who are maybe a little sensitive to things, and God made us that way. Like, God loves that we're sensitive. He loves that we're soft. Like, that's beautiful to God and so, but that softness has this like shadow side that's that's really tender to what other people say, or their judgments against us. And so when we're feeling our feels, and other people have thoughts about that, it can be really tempting to just second guess or shut down. And obviously, we don't want to sin in our anger. We don't want to sin in our tears. But I think there is, I'm going to say there's a pretty big, wideness in God's mercy when it comes to anger over injustice, yeah, and and tears over grieving, what is grievous? Yeah,

Brian Lee: 28:50

yeah. When you look, I look at the strength of the words all throughout the Psalms, when there's a lament or an imprecatory prayer, it's like, God, could, God can handle it. I mean, he's they're just throwing words out there, and it's like, how dare you do this and do this to this person? It's like he can handle it. Yeah, I so appreciate your conviction to tell the truth, right? You write, I learned to tell the truth even if it hurt me, and to tell the truth even if it hurt others, and to pray with all my might that even in the death, in the hurt, there might still be something of life. I also feel such a strong pull to be that truth teller, often to my own detriment, right? I walk into jobs saying, Hey, listen, I'm not going to be a yes man, because I'm going to push hard and I'm going to ask why a lot. And so I also recognize the great cost that often comes with telling the truth. And you quote Anne Lamott, who says you own everything that happened to you, so tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better, which I love. And you also borrow the phrase from Emily Dickinson to tell the truth, but tell it slant, because that's the way that, that's the only way we know how to tell it, right? So as you write about speaking. Truth to Power and to the system and the process of taking that really courageous step, because it does cost us a lot. If there is someone listening who's trying to decide if, when and how to do the same, what would you say to them?

Lore Wilbert: 30:16

You know, they can't see me shaking my head right now and taking a breath, I don't think, first I'll say this, I don't think you can possibly imagine the cost until you're you've gone through it, like I just and I, in some ways, I wonder if that's God's grace, like, if, if we could really, truly imagine the cost, if we really knew what would follow, would we speak up. I'm not sure. I don't know. Yeah, I think to get practical, if we can, for a minute, and then maybe, well, trying to think of how to answer this. I think the first thing to know is that it's going to your I just want to say as as optimistic as you are that when you speak truth to power, that that your words are going to make the difference and they're going to change. I want you to know right now that that is not true, maybe in point 1% of the time, or point zero 1% of the time. It might be true, but oftentimes, whoever is in power needs to go through their own process of grief and instability and falling apart in order to change. And so while your words might contribute to that for them, to that process of falling apart. For them, it's not going to be the thing that makes them wake up and say, Oh, you're right. You've been right all along. I was wrong. I let me make it right and and you tell me how I can make it right, like that's just it's not going to happen. And that's because we're all humans, and we're all in process, and we don't know we don't know what we don't know until we know it, and that process is different for everyone. So I think the first thing is to know that when you speak up, it is probably not going to make a difference for the person who has harmed you or made, made a decision that has harmed those you love, however you speaking up and doing it in a way that is um, as humble and truthful and as non inflammatory as you can is incredibly empowering for other people who maybe it hasn't occurred to them to ask the same questions you're asking, or they haven't known you know that they can speak truth to power, or they haven't known what to do and To see you modeling what it looks like to to to take a position that says, I could be wrong here, but I think this is the heart of God, and I think this is what is right and and so this is what should happen, or should have happened, that's that's very empowering to other people who might feel powerless in this situation. So I'll say that I think, and this is like showing my cards a little bit. I think, as much as possible, we to consider what we think is right, consider what our convictions are about, how to speak truth to power. We also need to consider what the Bible says about how we address wrongs in someone else or sin in someone else. And and the passage that normally gets brought up there is Matthew 18 and so like go to your brother if he doesn't listen, and bring more people with you, and if they don't listen, then go to the church and tell the people. And I think that for a lot of us, we are doing that, and it might not appear like that to other people, but we are doing that process, and it gets maybe turned around on us and told that, you know, you didn't do this. And it can be easy to believe that, but I think as as close as we can, as much as we can, that's that's what we should do and and then I think the third thing that you consider is, what's the what's the way if I truly want, not just retribution or revenge here, if I truly am for my brother or sister in Christ, this, this image bearer of God who I think is bearing the image of God poorly in this situation, if I truly want their good, and I truly want them to to change and repent and and be in. Agent of healing for other people, what is the best way that I can think of to do this in a way that they would respect? And sometimes we can't do that, like sometimes it's just not possible for us to do that. We don't have the access. We don't know. We don't we feel powerless. But I think considering those three things, what is in line with my convictions? What does the Bible say, and what is the way that I can, that I can as much as possible before this person's I'm going to use the word discipline, like before their discipline before God, to move them into the the right space and to move them into imaging God rightly and those, those three things are really hard to do. I think this goes back to the time thing. I think sometimes we we just need more time than we originally planned on. So I know that was a really long answer, but I hope that that's that's hopeful in some way, yeah,

Brian Lee: 36:08

yeah, yeah. Thank you. And I think especially I appreciate your validation of people who have been trying to Matthew 18 all along, because it's so often, like you said, it gets weaponized against us, as if we haven't followed it or haven't tried it. And I also want to be careful to to help people to remember like Matthew 18 was written for brothers and sisters, for people who are peers. So when there's a power differential, guess what? It goes out the window. And I often point people back to Luke 17 as well. Yeah, because, because Matthew 18 is often weaponized to force forgiveness or reconciliation on someone.

Lore Wilbert: 36:48

Oh, it's not about forgiveness, though, exactly, exactly, yeah.

Brian Lee: 36:52

And so I point people back to Luke 17 three. It's like it also says, If your brother offends you, yeah, go to them. And if they repent, forgive them. So it's not this forced forgiveness I have to reconcile with them, because sometimes when it's my abuser, it would be immoral for me to be in a room alone with that person, to face them one on one. And first, Timothy talks about going straight to the elders and all these other pieces. And yet it's there is so much beauty in there, yeah. And there is so much hope for restoration, like you said, when it is possible, right?

Lore Wilbert: 37:29

And again, I just want to say Brian like that, when it is possible. Oh, I love that optimism, but it is. I am not the only person in the story. This other person through their, their their process, and so that when it is possible, might not happen for 510, 15 years for this. Yeah, that's good. That's that's really hard. It's

Brian Lee: 37:55

really hard to be in that space. Yep, yep. And it goes back to what we're saying about being in time? Yeah, I have a million other questions that I want to ask about the soil and monoculture versus diversity, but I think I'm going to wrap up with these two questions. Instead, you talk about sitting with sorrow, hurt, pain, grief, loss, unexpected, about refusing to look away and befriending it, and you talk about a different kind of hole on the other side of it. And you write, just as death fundamentally changes the one who has died, grief fundamentally changes the Griever. And in order to heal, we need space to breathe, permission to weep, and the presence of a friend who will make help us make sense of it all air, water and living things. Or, as Diane langberg says, trauma healing always requires talking tears and time. And I appreciate sharing your story about your brother and just this idea, like, at a cellular level, he's being remade into something else. And you say, I cannot just sit with my grief and ask it to teach me something. I think that's so important, I must be willing for it to make me into something new, to reform and reorder me at a cellular level, and to change what is perishable into something imperishable. And I'm reminded of Kurt Thompson's words, I think in the soul of desire that he talks about this need for us to create something and to put ourselves in the path of oncoming beauty. And there is this optimism that you have in writing about death and decay, about finding beauty in the weirdest little places, if we're willing to look for it or find it right. So for those of us who feel like we've been sitting in this sorrow and hurt and pain and grief and loss without bypassing all of those hard things, how do we do something? How to create something new out of that in a way that helps us to process that grief and turn it into something beautiful?

Lore Wilbert: 39:53

Yeah, I think the temptation is to tell ourselves to look up when we're in the middle of grief. But. I would say, look down, because that's where the death is. That's where, like, that's where the pictures of death are happening. You know, when we look up, it's when I look outside, right now, it's just brilliant green everywhere. But if I were to go outside and really get close to the Earth and look down, what I'm gonna see is, is the process of death and and so I think that that can translate also to sort of being where your feet are. Like, look down at where your feet are, instead of looking up and trying to, like, bypass that pain, look at where your feet are. How can you just tend this place where your feet are. How can you tend your feet? How can you I don't know. Sometimes I think maybe it's helpful to even play with what's dead or dying, like go into the forest and scoop up some soil in your hand or or put your hand on, I'm such a fan of like embodied practices, like put your hand on a nurse log and feel sort of the the softness of her and the permeability of her. And just get your hands, you know, Robin wall Kimmerer says we have to put our hands in the soil to feel whole again. And I really believe that there's something so I mean, not just like this, this is gonna get too much in the science, but like, it's good for our microbiome to be go for it in the dirt, and it's good for our like, it's good for our IT grounds us. Like it's scientifically grounds our bodies when we put our feet on the dirt. And so I think there's just so much goodness and power physiologically when we look down and be where our feet are in the dirt, but also when we just, like, put our hands in the soil. And so I would say, you know, you can do all kinds of things, but I do think that acting our grief is so important. Think about the Old Testament women who would like they would hire people who would weep and wail, these mourners, they would hire mourners to walk through the streets. And so sometimes that's what we just need to do. We need to act our grief instead of just feeling it or thinking about it or ruminating on it. We need it. We need to act it. And I describe a practice that I did in the book, but I think gardening can be a really good practice for that. But really, I just think getting outside is sometimes one of the most helpful things you can do when you're breathing? Yeah,

Brian Lee: 42:42

thank you. I want so badly to talk about that, the soil and the compost and the monoculture stuff, but we'd be here for another hour. I have a dear friend who's also on my board. But anytime we're out on a walk and we happen to see lichen anywhere, we just snap a picture and send it to each other, because it's a small moment of joy and it's a glimmer. And I love that you say that there's room enough in this world for everyone to become whole, and you write about a lichen kind of unity, where different things in symbiosis for the betterment of the whole. And that's kind of speaking to the whole monoculture versus diversity thing. It's such a statement of hope and courage that there is room enough for everyone to become whole. As we close out, what do you think that looks like?

Lore Wilbert: 43:39

Yeah. I mean, I'll say this. I think it's really hard for us to envision the wholeness of another person while, while we're still walking wounded. And so I do think that if, if someone is struggling to see that, to wish that wholeness on someone else, that's okay. You're there's still some work to do. There's still some healing to do. You don't need to be ashamed of that. That's okay. Like, that's really okay. There's time enough for that. And so work on your own healing. And then one day, you'll wake up and you'll find, I want their healing too. I want their wholeness too. And I think when we can get to that place, that doesn't mean again, that doesn't mean that we need to put ourselves in close relationship with someone who has harmed us previously, especially if they haven't repented all the way through for that harm. I would never say that, but I do think that it means we can, we can trust that a new organism is being made as we are all on a path and a journey toward wholeness. Something new is happening. And I think when I look at the church right now, the state of a church right now, and I there's so much grief associated with that, but I when I have a lot. Hope, because I see a lot of people becoming whole. I see a lot of people facing themselves in the mirror. I see a lot of people dealing with their grief, naming their grief, naming their anger, and I'm like, Oh man, I'm excited. I'm excited for the new kind of like symbiosis that's about to happen, because we are each on our journey of healing and wholeness, and that that just excites me, that excites me, I don't feel sad for the state of the church. I feel sad for those who who are deeply wounded and who need to be healed, but ultimately, we all need to be healed, yeah, and this is the process that we're specifically in to get there. Yeah, yeah.

Brian Lee: 45:47

Thank you. If people want to connect with you or find you, where do they do that? Online? Yeah,

Unknown: 45:54

I mostly hang out on sub stack these days. Lorewilbert.com my name is spelled L, O, R, E, and then Wilbert, W, I, L, B, E, R, T.com, that's where I hang out, mostly. And if they want to see, you know, pictures of my dogs and the river we live on, they can follow me on Instagram. I love it. We'll

Brian Lee: 46:18

provide those links for everyone in the show notes, along with stuff that we've talked about and referenced, everyone needs to go get a copy of "The Understory" everywhere books are sold. If you want to support independent bookstores, go to bookshop.org or just go walk into an actual bookstore. If they don't have it, request a copy. Or go to the library and request a copy. Lore, this has been such a gift. Thank you for being with us today.

Lore Wilbert: 46:42

Thanks for having me, Brian.

Brian Lee: 46:44

I loved that conversation. We went so many places. And isn't Lore just great? If you enjoyed it as much as I did, be sure to head over to Instagram. Follow Lore and thank her for being on the show. You can find the show notes on our website at brokentobeloved.org for links, resources, transcripts and more. Subscribe or follow the show to get new episodes automatically. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating or review or share it on your socials and tag us. Here's a recent review from Laurie: "Thank you for addressing such a needed topic that goes unspoken too often. Thank you for being a kind voice where the many of us who feel broken and hurting find understanding and where today's church can learn to grow in awareness, empathy and increasing health. Now that we know better, can we do better? I sure hope so. Thank you for helping put language around spiritual abuse and religious trauma. The awareness, understanding and empathy you're bringing into the world makes a difference." Laurie, thank you so much for sharing that, and it makes a world of difference that you took the time to write and share it with us as a 501c3 nonprofit, our work is made possible by our generous donors. If this has been helpful to you, would you consider joining us? You can give a one time gift, or choose to support us monthly. You can support us today at brokentobeloved.org/support. Coming up next on the show, we have Laura Barringer, Kate West, Tim Whitaker and many more. Next time, we'll be talking with Jenai Auman and her brand new book "Othered." It's an eyes wide open kind of look at her own experience with spiritual abuse, the ways the church has become more and more divided and divisive, and what we can do to resist that for ourselves. Thanks so much for listening. I hope it's been helpful. Here's to moving toward healing and wholeness. Together. I'll see you next time.