Hello, everyone, and welcome to Speaking with Joy, a podcast to fill your soul, challenge your mind, and make you brave.

I'm your host, Joy Clarkson, and an evangelist for all things good, true, and beautiful.

So make yourself a cup of tea, find somewhere comfortable, and let's dive in to this week's episode. Welcome back to this series on my new book,

You Are a Tree. This week's episode can be paired with the chapter, Love is Not a Disease. That chapter explores the different metaphors we use for love. But in this conversation with Brian Zond, we'll discuss metaphors for the greatest expression of love, the salvific work of the cross.

Brian Zond is the founder and lead pastor of Word of Life, Church, and St. Joseph, Missouri, and has written many

theologically informed books. Today we'll be discussing his book, The Wood Between the Worlds.

This book was inspired by Brian walking the Camino de Santiago. Along that long pilgrimage trail

running through northwestern Spain, Brian felt invited

to meditate on each crucivics he encountered in the churches along the way. And his book is the

ripened fruit of many years of meditations, a poetic theology of the cross. I hope you find

this conversation as enriching as I did. I've been so excited to talk to you today.

We're sort of book twins.

As we're recording this, your book came out just two days ago and mine will come out in two weeks. And, um, and it's,

your book is so beautiful. But let's start off. Why don't you share a bit about yourself and about

the book we're going to talk about today. Yeah. Thank you, Joy. I'm Brian Zond. I'm the pastor

of Word of Live Church in St. Joseph, Missouri in the United States of America.

And I've been the pastor for 42 years, and I've written now 11 books over the last 15 years, I think.

So I spent a lot of my time.

I'm actually sitting at my writing desk. You can't tell that, but that's where I am. So I spent a lot of my time. I'm actually sitting at my writing desk.

You can't tell that, but that's where I am.

So I spent a lot of time here, also writing quite a lot.

So pastoring, writing, speaking, that's a lot of my life right now.

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