The Understory: An Invitation to Rootedness and Resilience from the Forest Floor

by Lore Ferguson Wilbert

Publisher:

Brazos Press

, 2024

Overview

”Walk in the woods with me."

That’s the invitation award-winning author Lore Ferguson Wilbert extends to readers in The Understory.

On this journey, Wilbert shares her story of alienation and disorientation after years of religious and political unrest in the evangelical church. In doing so, she looks to an unlikely place--the forest--to learn how to live and even thrive when everything seems to be falling apart. What can we learn from eroding soil, the decomposition process, the time it takes to grow lichen, the beauty of fiddlehead ferns, the regeneration of self-sowing seeds, and walking through the mud? Here, among the understory of the forest, Wilbert discovers rich metaphors for living a rooted and flourishing life within the complex ecosystems of our world. Her tenderness and honesty will help readers grieve, remember, hope, and press on with resilience.

From the Back Cover

”Powerful, poised, poetic"

After years of witnessing religious and political unrest in the evangelical church, Lore Ferguson Wilbert felt alienated and disoriented. She found solace in the woods, where she discovered that the forest could teach her how to live--and even thrive--when everything seems to be falling apart.

In The Understory, Wilbert explores what we can learn from eroding soil, the decomposition process, the time it takes to grow lichen, the beauty of fiddlehead ferns, the regeneration of self-sowing seeds, and walking through the mud. Among the understory of the forest, Wilbert discovers rich metaphors for living a rooted and flourishing life within the complex ecosystems of our world. Her journey encourages us to grieve, remember, hope, and press on with resilience.

“A remarkably acute and resonant account."
--Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

”Rare and beautiful."
--Aundi Kolber, MA, LPC, therapist; author of Try Softer and Strong Like Water

“Powerful, poised, poetic. Wilbert preaches like a prophet and writes like a friend."
--Rachel Marie Kang, author of Let There Be Art and The Matter of Little Losses

“Part Wendell Berry, Eugene Peterson, and Madeleine L’Engle. The result is sheer magic."
--A. J. Swoboda, associate professor, Bushnell University; author of After Doubt

"Raw honesty devoid of cynicism."
--Amanda Held Opelt, author of Holy Unhappiness and A Hole in the World

"Concerned with the radical act of being."
--Drew Jackson, poet and author of God Speaks through Wombs and Touch the Earth

Read more

Contents

Contents

Part 1: Seen
Here Is Loss
Here Is Here: Space
Here Is Truth: Land
Part 2: Unseen
Here Is Hurt: Soil
Here Is Grief: Forest Litter
Here Is Time: Lichen
Here Is Protection: Nursemaids
Part 3: Revealed
Here Is Emergence: Weeds
Here Is Resilience: Mycelia
Here Is Movement: Forest

Product Details

• Title: The Understory: An Invitation to Rootedness and Resilience from the Forest Floor
• Author: Lore Ferguson Wilbert
• Publisher: Brazos Press
• Print Publication Date: 2024
• Logos Release Date: 2023
• Pages: 240
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781493446476, 9781587435706, 1587435705, 1493446479
• Resource ID: LLS:9781493446476
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T23:46:05Z

About the Author

Lore Ferguson Wilbert is the author of A Curious Faith and Handle with Care, which won a 2021 Christianity Today Book Award. She writes at lorewilbert.com. Wilbert has written for Christianity Today, Fathom magazine, and She Reads Truth and served as general editor of Broadman & Holman's Read and Reflect with the Classics. She lives in the Adirondack mountains in upstate New York with her husband.