by David Hayward | Jun 29, 2014 | David's Letters, I'm okay
Good morning my friends. It’s been an exhausting week, but I finally saw the completion of my book, The Liberation of Sophia. I started drawing Sophia right after I left the church and completed 59 drawings and meditations 4 years later. There was an...
by David Hayward | Jun 25, 2014 | Exercises, Uncategorized
Something I do that keeps me feeling alive is to read a book that is over my head. Right now I’m reading the middle-ages German mystic, Meister Eckhart’s sermons and writings. Wow! There are TONS of books out there that linger in the shallow end of the...
by David Hayward | Jun 22, 2014 | David's Letters, I'm okay
I originally wrote these as two Daily Toasts (remember those?) quite a while ago. But many members responded to them so I wanted to redraft them into a single Weekly Letter for you guys and for any new members that didn’t see them. Here it is: You’ve heard the...
by David Hayward | Jun 21, 2014 | Exercises
I just watched a powerful documentary, “I Escaped a Cult”, available on YouTube, as well as Netflix. *** Trigger Warning: very honest and descriptive, including rape, sexual abuse, and explicit about mind-control techniques. I found it personally...
by David Hayward | Jun 20, 2014 | David's Letters, I'm confused
I know I’m probably preaching to the choir. You guys are amazing at speaking your mind. The level of honesty, vulnerability and openness and your skill at articulating complicated, intense and deep thoughts and emotions amaze me every day. I know we are seeing...
by David Hayward | Jun 20, 2014 | David's Letters, I'm confused
I want to write to you today about the three battlegrounds of deconstruction that you cannot surrender. (This reminds me of a totally unrelated story. Many years ago after we went through a horrendous church split, my wife went to see Francis Frangipane who authored...
by David Hayward | Jun 20, 2014 | David's Letters, I'm confused
Do you ever get the feeling your life is like the movie “The Matrix”? If you haven’t seen The Matrix, it is about the true, real world versus the false, controlled world. The red or the blue pill. The challenging or the secure. You either live in one...
by David Hayward | Jun 20, 2014 | David's Letters, I'm sad
I genuinely hurt a good friend many years ago. I regretted it as soon as I did it. He hasn’t really forgiven me. I’ve made every attempt to repent and repair, but it changed our relationship. We rarely, if ever, see each other anymore. There have been many...
by David Hayward | Jun 20, 2014 | David's Letters, I'm okay
As you probably already know, I think about TLS and TLSers a lot. It’s not a burden. I enjoy it because I enjoy you guys. We’ve gone through some rough times. That’s only natural. But we’re survivors and thrivers and I think we’re doing...
by David Hayward | Jun 20, 2014 | David's Letters, I'm scared
Right now I’m sitting looking over the river and drinking a Sapporo beer. Yum! What do we do after a tsunami hits? What do we do after the devastation of deconstruction of our faith, our beliefs and our religion? I was inspired by a video series I watched on...
by David Hayward | Jun 20, 2014 | David's Letters, I'm okay
Right from the start I want to say that I am only sharing my perspective from my experience and study. This is my journey I’m sharing. Not yours. However, I am not only a survivor of deconstruction, but a thriver. I’ve made it! I have travelled the...
by David Hayward | Jun 20, 2014 | David's Letters, I'm okay
I’m going to mention some scripture here. Hold on. It won’t last long. One of the most influential passages for me for my teaching career is the one where Jesus sees the people wandering like sheep without a shepherd. He has compassion on them. What did he...
by David Hayward | Jun 20, 2014 | David's Letters, I'm confused
Happy Easter my fellow TLSers! I’d been looking forward to working on this letter and sending it to you this morning. Many people have been asking me to write about this issue. Obviously it is an important one that occupies many of our minds and evokes concern...
by David Hayward | Jun 20, 2014 | David's Letters, I'm okay
Here’s a simple exercise to practice love. Specifically… How to love others. How to love your loved ones. How to love yourself. So, in a way, this is about kids. An upcoming weekly letter is going to be about what we do with our kids while we deconstruct....
by David Hayward | Jun 20, 2014 | David's Letters, I'm confused
One of the things I experienced when I left the church was moral confusion. I think this is something to be expected during the deconstruction of our religion, beliefs or faith. Like I’ve said before, for the first year after leaving the ministry and the church...
by David Hayward | Jun 20, 2014 | David's Letters, I'm sad
In last Sunday’s weekly letter I issued a gentle warning about how deconstruction can affect your relationships. So I want to develop this topic a little further to talk about how, even though you might be in relationships with family, friends or partners, you...
