The path back to me

Andrew Lang on gratitude, wonder + unmasking the inner critic

Dear readers —somehow it’s already November. For some, this month is Christmas, part one. A trip to the store this week reveals that leaning. For others, it’s about counting blessings and practicing thankfulness. For others, the painful complexity of Thanksgiving for indigenous siblings is real. I encourage you to follow incredible humans like Kaitlin B. Curtice.

Here at The Thread, we’re all about soul-based practices that help us show up to the life in front of us, in all its complexity, pain, and beauty. Gratitude and wonder can do just that.

A month or two before the pandemic shifted the ground under our feet, I met Andrew Lang at a conference where we both spoke. He talked about spirituality and life in a way my heart understood. We’ve stayed in touch the last few years and when thinking of who I wanted to talk to about gratitude and wonder, Andrew immediately came to mind. I’m delighted to introduce him to our community today!

Andrew is an educator by day and an alumnus of the Living School for Action and Contemplation, where he had the great honor to sit at the feet of modern mystics Richard Rohr, Cynthia Bourgeault, Barbara Holmes, Brian McLaren, and James Finley. Andy spends his evenings facilitating workshops and gatherings helping people to examine their inner stories and explore their sense of identity and spirituality. Connect with Andrew here.

Enjoy this conversation!

Jenny: I’m fascinated by how we grow in gratitude and wonder practices over the course of our lives. Throughout your life, is there a moment where choosing gratitude and wonder shifted your story? What made you choose wonder when it could have been easy to go a different way?

I think heartbreak can be an incredible gateway for wonder to emerge. I’m sure this resonates with folks who have experienced loss (which is all of us, to differing extents). I think of the moment when one’s grief and anger at the disastrous opens us to a new way of being in the world - one that is more open-eyed and present than before.

Several years ago I went through an elongated and painful breakdown of an engagement with my then-partner. It was the loss of a dream: a hoped-for future, vacation plans, wedding vows, kids, the whole thing. And since we continued living together for almost a year, every day represented the inescapable and intimate truth of that loss.

I remember one night when my body couldn’t take the stress of it anymore. I hopped on my bike and I rode and rode and rode; I just angered at the world. It was the first time I became deeply acquainted with how my body holds tension - and it was clearly telling me something I needed to hear.

When I finally came to a stop, that’s when I felt the wonder overtake me. I didn’t choose it at first; it seeped out of me from the cracks in my armor. I stood with my legs resting on the ground, straddling the bike, and I just stared into the darkness of the night: the silhouettes of trees, the hard-to-see stars, the glow of folks’ kitchen lights.

I felt this unbelievable load fall from my shoulders - the load of expectations, of grasping, of clinging to a dream - and I just watched the world for a moment. All I could think was: what a beautiful world, even in the midst of the muck of life.

And that’s when I made the active choice to lean into wonder and gratitude as a spiritual practice and as a survival practice. I chose it because I think I knew, on some level deep in my bones, that learning to experience wonder and gratitude would be the path back to myself: the path back to that part of me that James Finley named as “invincibly precious” - my soul or True Self, whatever you want to call it.

The ending of the relationship and the loss of that dream was still brutal and terrible and painful. But I felt connected with that part of myself for the first time in years - perhaps for the first time since childhood. Sitting with the pain and exploring the subtle textures of it in my body and in my story brought me back into communion with myself and the beauty of the world around me.

Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash

What did you learn about gratitude and wonder during your recent travels in Europe?

Where to even start?! There’s nothing quite like backpacking in a country without a smartphone, without a full grasp on the language, and even without a map. I’m pretty sure we were the only ones we met while on Camino de Santiago walking it quite that way. It was certainly an exercise in giving up control!

One thing that just kept popping up for me was the amazing kindness of strangers. Everywhere we went, people seemed to come out of nowhere to help us. There were numerous days when we had left the path and folks would direct us back to it or moments when we would clearly need to rest and people would ask how we were doing.

Everything about the walk was gratitude and wonder. Gratitude for every drink, for every arrow pointing the way, for every fellow traveler, for every stranger; absolute wonder at the world moving slowly around us and our bodies’ ability to keep going. And to walk it with my dad - it just a beautiful experience.

What one thing would you encourage our readers to embody when it comes to gratitude and wonder?

There’s a saying I really love: “see the world with soft eyes.” If we can learn to see the world with soft eyes, it’s my experience that openness and curiosity naturally become more present in our posture and the ways we experience the world.

So that’s a practice I’d offer folks. Whenever you’re out for a walk, or looking in the mirror, or talking to someone at work, ask yourself: how can I see the world - this person in front of me, the trees, this moment - with soft eyes?

You’ve got a book coming out this week! Tell us about it and where can we get a copy?

I do! Unmasking the Inner Critic: Lessons for Living an Unconstricted Life is a guidebook for how we can explore and move beyond some of our most challenging fears and negative inner narratives.

In the book, I look at nine core fears we often wrestle with - for example, I’m not good enough, I’m not lovable, I’m not in control - and I weave together the teachings of mystics, saints, poets, and trauma specialists with reflection questions, body practices, and action prompts to help us work with these constricting narratives. 

It’s certainly not a read-it-and-leave-it book; my hope is that people will write all over it, take time to process the teachings, go for long walks in between reading sessions, and explore what’s emerging in them as they engage with it.

You can grab a copy on Amazon and if you buy it before the 9th and forward me the receipt, you’ll also get access to a free 3-week series on the core concepts of the book! All the details on that can be found here!

Reflection Questions

Where has heartbreak opened the door to gratitude and wonder? Could gratitude and wonder be seen as a survival practice? How might you see the world with soft eyes today?

Welcome to New Readers

We’re two months in and delighted to welcome lots of new faces! Check out posts on one great question to ask someone grieving a loved one, what it means to show up scared, and a few origin stories about me. We’re planning to keep all content free for as long as we can. Love what you’re finding here and want to enable this community to exist? Upgrade to a monthly or annual subscription as a way to say this work matters in our world.

Upcoming Offerings

Christmas Text List: Let’s journey through the holiday season together as we ground ourselves in rest, love and wonder. Details coming in mid-November.

The Thread Retreat: A weekend women’s retreat January 6-8 on Camano Island here in Washington state. Let’s take your next step of healing together. Six spots left. Details.

Palms Up Path: Ready to ask some brave and bold questions in your life? Need to take a deep breath? This course gives you a spacious framework that holds you while you journey inward. Details.