by David Hayward | Jul 13, 2015 | David's Letters, I'm scared
Good morning my friends. Have I ever told you my analogy of the trellis? If I have, bear with me. I want to share it again because it’s meaningful and helpful to me right now. First I have to tell you how I came up with it. Many years ago, my spiritual director,...
by David Hayward | Jul 6, 2015 | David's Letters, I'm okay
You don’t always have to do something. When I left negative beliefs and toxic relationships behind, I realized I was feeling a lot more peaceful. One of the things that religion likes to do is pound it into our heads that we have to change. You have to change the...
by David Hayward | Jun 30, 2015 | David's Letters, I'm okay
This last weekend Lisa and I were invited to a community is Chessetcook, Nova Scotia, to give a talk Saturday night. We have known many of them for years. We were there five years ago. So it was refreshing to see them again. The community meets at the house of John...
by David Hayward | Jun 22, 2015 | David's Letters, I'm okay
Good day my friends. Today I want to talk about compassionate speech. It was inspired by one of our members posting this quote of Domo Geshe Rinpoche: ”There are many who are interested in gender-neutral language, as well as practicing open-ended statements in...
by David Hayward | Jun 16, 2015 | Podcasts
Today’s Meet a Member podcast is with Timothy McPherson, who is married, has 3 sons, and is a Salvation Army officer. There are some pretty interesting twists to his remarkable story! Thanks for being so vulnerable, honest, humble, and kind Tim! If you want to...
by David Hayward | Jun 14, 2015 | David's Letters, I'm confused
Last week, someone in our Facebook group brought up a question about how to deal with family and coming out to them theologically. (*** If you’re not in our Facebook group, please just reply to this letter and ask me to get you in. That’s where a lot of the...
by David Hayward | Jun 7, 2015 | David's Letters, I'm confused
So, you are totally confused. Your journey does not make sense. You have difficulty understanding where you are and therefore even greater difficulty in loving yourself and articulating yourself. You’re feeling a mixture of shame, frustration, and maybe even guilt....
by David Hayward | Jun 2, 2015 | David's Letters, I'm sad
How do I deal with loss? Not very well. I’m human. When I experience loss, I don’t pull out my trusty roadmap for suffering and loss and follow the guidelines. No one has written such a book because each and every response to loss is unique to that individual. There’s...
by David Hayward | May 24, 2015 | David's Letters, I'm sad
I want to share with you all a very personal story of mine. Please bear with me. I think this will be a short but to the point letter. As many of you know, I’ve had a very tough couple of weeks. It’s been grueling actually. It threw me into a funk that was very...
by David Hayward | May 18, 2015 | David's Letters, I'm confused
I want to talk today about being misunderstood. There have been many people on TLS who have felt misunderstood. I have felt misunderstood. In fact, we are all misunderstood at some time or another. I won’t attempt to describe how someone else felt misunderstood. I am...
by David Hayward | May 11, 2015 | David's Letters, I'm sad
Lisa and I just celebrated our 35th anniversary by going on vacation. We had a wonderful time. We’ve been through a lot. We’ve experienced a ton of stuff, under a great deal of strain, and been through tremendous joys. Most of the time we believed it was so wonderful...
by David Hayward | May 3, 2015 | David's Letters, I'm okay
Hi guys. So, Lisa and I are getting ready to go on a little trip today for a week. It’s our 35th wedding anniversary tomorrow… May 4th. I never realized until the day when someone said, “May the forth be with you!” that it is a cool date to get married. Lisa and I...
by David Hayward | Apr 26, 2015 | David's Letters, I'm okay
I’ve come to the conclusion that The Lasting Supper is made up of two groups of people: 1. those who have been wounded by the church; and, 2. those who intellectually moved on from the church. This is a generalization, but I think a pretty accurate one. Actually, when...
by David Hayward | Apr 19, 2015 | David's Letters, I'm scared
When I left the ministry and the church in March of 2010, I had the very distinct impression that my next stage of learning was going to be about becoming responsible for myself. Let me explain what I mean. One day I was watching “3:10 to Yuma”. The sheriff calls for...
by David Hayward | Apr 14, 2015 | David's Letters, I'm okay
Appreciating the Seasons of Your Life I live in a geography of four dramatically distinct seasons: fall, winter, spring, and summer. And I’ll have to admit to you that this last winter was the hardest winter I’ve ever endured. It was brutal. In fact, almost every day...
by David Hayward | Apr 5, 2015 | David's Letters, I'm sad
Every Easter I’m reminded of a Keith Green song I used to love that I would sing this time of year. One of the lines are, “Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and you can’t even get out of bed!” Yes! I just loved that judgmental attitude, although I didn’t think it was...
