Wendy VanderWal Martin: Hello and welcome to the Love, Henri podcast, produced by the Henri Nouwen Society. My name’s Wendy Vander Wal Martin, and I’m part of the team that seeks to encourage spiritual transformation through the work and legacy of Henri Nouwen. If you’re a longtime Henri fan, welcome back. We hope that you’re getting our free daily meditations. But if you’re new to Henri Nouwen, we encourage you to check out our website, henrinouwen.org. Check out all of our programs and resources, but especially the free daily meditations, where every day you’ll get a reminder that you are the beloved of God.

Now, this morning, I’m thrilled to welcome David Hayward, also known as The Naked Pastor, a longtime friend. So looking forward to our conversation. Thanks David, for being with us.

David Hayward: Thanks, Wendy. It’s good to see you this morning, and thanks for having me on your show today.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Well, I see your paintings behind you, and I have one right in front of me. That was my birthday gift from my husband. So, we’re surrounded by your art this morning. Now, for those of you who might not have encountered David, he is a pastor turned artist, painting, drawing, and thinking about what it takes to be free to be fully you. something Henri really cared about: the true self. As you can see, he isn’t actually naked, but the idea behind the name is to seek to tell the naked truth, no matter how vulnerable it feels. And, as someone who has followed his art for many years, I can attest to that, especially his Sunday morning series, which perhaps he’ll tell you more about later. Now, through his art and daring to ask and be mostly comfortable with hard questions, David’s been caring for online community, for more than 10 years – maybe even more than that, David, that at one point that was called The Lasting Supper. We’re going to dive into that and hear more about what is making you passionate about your work these days.

David Hayward: Sounds good to me.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: So what gets you up in the morning? What makes you the most excited to face the day and offer yourself to the world?

David Hayward: Well, that’s an interesting question because I like to wake up each morning and I make the decision to be helpful. I want to be helpful. And I go about my morning routines, which is a mixture of meditation, stretching, breathing, coffee, exercise all that stuff. But a part of it is in breathing in joy and exhaling love. And that sounds really corny, kind of cheesy, but that is real. I really do that every morning. And because I want to be a happy person that loves other people and helps them along in their own spiritual journey and their own endeavor to be free, to be their authentic selves. So that’s what gets me up in the morning.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Well, that’s wonderful to hear you say that. I’ve often used the exercise where I am inhaling that which I long for, and I’m exhaling kind of all the crud that I want to get rid of. So I might inhale joy, but exhale discouragement. But I love the idea of inhaling joy and then exhaling love. Like I’m a conduit for all that is positive and good for the world. So, Mm-Hmm,

David Hayward: We are.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Now this is a podcast produced by the Henri Nouwen Society. So of course, I’m going to ask you, how did you encounter Henri and what impact did he have on your life?

David Hayward: Okay. This isa pivotal point in my life. This is an important chapter in my own spiritual journey. Meeting Henri Nouwen, and not face to face, but through one of his books. This happened decades ago when I was graduating from seminary. I was a young man in my mid-twenties. And I had up to that point, I was going to be a biblical scholar. So I had taken biblical Greek, biblical Hebrew, even. I even took a year of Aramaic. There’s only one chapter in the whole Bible that’s in Aramaic. But, I took Aramaic. You know, started studying theological French, theological German so I could become a biblical scholar. You know, I was accepted into the PhD program for New Testament studies at University of Toronto, et cetera.

David Hayward: Anyway, I’m telling you that, just to give you an indication where my brain was at. And it was just totally kind of an analytical biblical studies kind of a person. And then when I was graduating, a friend of mine at the seminary gave me a gift, and it was a book. And he was in the pastoral stream at the seminary. I was in the biblical study stream – so academic scholar stream, super heady, right? And he was in the pastoral stream, M Div. and so on. And he gave me a book, and I glanced at it. And my attitude about the book was, “More of that new age, spiritual gobbled-gook kind of stuff.” And I know, I hardly even cracked it. I didn’t read it or anything.

David Hayward: That was all in the realm of spirituality, which  I had no interest in at that time.  I mean, even as I say that now, it was like really weird. because I’m totally not that way anymore. But at that time, it was like, no biblical studies and this book, I just sort of packed away. And so, after we were graduated and all that, I packed all my things. And I ended up going to serve as an assistant pastor in the church in Prince Edward Island. Charlottetown. I was assistant to the pastor there at Zion Presbyterian Church, big Presbyterian Church. And I was still there in my head, and even when I was preparing messages or whatever, I was doing sermons, I studied the Greek Bible did all the exegesis, all the commentaries.

David Hayward: And it was in the winter. Here’s where the story begins, <laugh>. That’s just the backdrop. Just to give you an indication of where I was at, mentally, spiritually, all in my head. So it was in the winter, and part of the ministry of the church, we would serve, we would give food, like canned food non-perishables to unhoused people and they would come in, they knew we had a food bank there, and we would give out stuff. So this was Friday. There was a storm warning, there was a big snowstorm coming, and the snow had already started. And here, the secretary, messaged me, “David, there’s a person at the door wanting food.” And I’m like, “Oh, geez.” You know, I was trying to get things ready to get home before we got snowed in.

David Hayward: And so I came out and this guy was obviously inebriated somehow and wanted food. And I was like, impatient. I needed to get home before I got stuck there because we lived a little bit out in the country. And I put my arm around his shoulder, and I escorted him to the door. And I said, “You come back sober and we’ll talk.” you know? And I kind of hushed him out, rushed him out into the street. He was walking down the steps, and he says, “Oh, come on. Can’t you help a poor fellow out?” And kind of, and I’m like, “No, you come back sober and we’ll get you some groceries.” And he was going down the steps, and he turned around, and he looked me straight in the eye, and he said, “You’ll never be a pastor the way you treated me today.”

David Hayward: And it was like, he just shoved a knife into my heart. And I realized, oh, like, I realized how calloused and cruel and unfeeling, and all stuck in my head and had no heart. And I was devastated. I went back to my study and I was bawling. Like, I couldn’t believe I’d done that to someone. Anyway, I packed up, got my car, drove home, and I was totally just, I was just devastated. I shared with Lisa, my wife, what had happened. I felt like the meaning of life was gone. Like I’d lost my footing completely. Completely, totally destroyed. And in the evening, the snow storm had started, we were definitely getting snowed in. And for those of you who don’t know what snowed in means, it means so much snow that you can’t leave the house.

David Hayward: You know, the roads are closed, everything. And a friend of mine called from Boston. So I went to seminary in Boston, and here we are up in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. A friend from Boston called and said, “Hey, Dave, you wouldn’t believe,” – this is back when we had landlines – <laugh>. He said, “You wouldn’t believe who I just heard today.” I go, “Who?” And he says, “Henri Nouwen.” I said, “Henri Nouwen, I don’t know who that is.” He said, “Well, he’s a professor at Harvard and spiritual formation, is a specialty….” blah, blah, blah. And, he said, “It was amazing. It blew my mind. This speech he gave.” And he shared a little bit about the talk and all that. And I’m listening, and all the whole while, I’m thinking, Henri Nouwen. Henri Nouwen. And like, what? And so after we talked, hung up, I said, “Gary just told me about Henri Nouwen. Where do I know that name?” And we said, “Didn’t somebody give you a book when you graduated by that Henri Nouwen?” And so, I didn’t know. So we went looking in our boxes that were all packed and everything, books, boxes of books. And I found this book that had been given to me on my graduation was by Henri Nouwen and it was called Reaching Out.

David Hayward: And I devoured that book over the weekend. And I’ve been journaling now for a while, but I started, I was journaling through this whole book, and it was like, it was just what I needed at that very moment, just exactly what I needed at that moment. And it caused a huge transformation in my life reading that book, because from there, I was inspired and motivated to look for, like people like, Thomas Merton and other mystics. I started looking for a spiritual director, and I eventually found one who was a nun in a local monastery. And so on and so forth. It just totally changed the trajectory of my life. <laugh> That one thing. It was like a divine intervention, you know?

David Hayward: It really did feel that way. So that was my first experience of Henri Nouwen. And from there, like, he introduced me to a whole new world. And then that book I don’t consider that his best book, but it eventually led me to his best book, in my opinion, which is Wounded Healer. And that really, if anybody were to ask me, what is the number one book that influenced the way you pastor, it would be that book. And it just totally changed my life. And I have Henri Nouwen to thank for that. So that’s my story. That’s my Henri Nouwen story. <laugh>,

Wendy VanderWal Martin: You know, I’ve been with the Society for about a year now, and Henri had a huge impact on me as well as a young person. And I have a lot of his books. They were very important to me, but like many of us, perhaps it had been a while since I’d done a really deep dive into Henri Nouwen’s writing. Of course, when I took this role, I was excited to re-encounter Nouwen. But a little part of me wondered, “Will it feel the same?” You know, I’m a very different person. I’ve journeyed.  And what’s been really beautiful is how much I have just been grateful to re-encounter Henri Nouwen. And at this stage and place in my journey, I’ve had some, ups and downs, like all of us do – some deep hurts, since my early years with Nouwen.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: And there is just this deep heart of Henri and that’s timeless. You know, whether we’re in the eighties or the nineties, or now years, decades later, our hearts need to connect and to press through the personas.  Henri was ruthlessly honest and rigorously vulnerable, which I know has become such an important practice for you.  In your art. And, I remember the, the blogging years, and you had comments <laugh> on your cartoons, but your Sophia series as well, of charcoal drawings, and you’ve corresponded with people for years. You respond to people’s comments, people connect with you.  And Henri kept up correspondence as a daily discipline, which this was before email, before blogs. It wasn’t online. He sat at his desk and wrote letters. Apparently there’s 16,000 letters in the archives now.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: I mean, Henri was very open. A lot of his journals ended up being published, so maybe he wouldn’t be surprised to know that his letters have also been published into a book called Love, Henri, which is why the podcast is called Love, Henri. And the concept is kind of to take a letter of Henri’s written decades ago and to see how it reads to us today to connect Henri to today. So this letter arises from one of his many speaking requests where he couldn’t go to be with them. And so he’s written to this denominational group, with these words in March, 1991. He says, “Dear friends, you’re gathering at your April meeting, and I want to express to you my great regret that I’ll not be able to be with you. I’m spending the month of April in Germany to do some writing. (I should look up and see what book it was he was working on then. But anyway….) Brian asked me to send you a few words to encourage you in your work, and to assure you of my great desire to be connected with you. (Such a huge theme for Henri.) As I think of the words that are your theme for your gathering, I realize how much I identify with these words. The longer I live in the ministry, the more I feel the call to become weak with the weak, vulnerable, with the vulnerable, broken with the broken. My life, with people who have a mental handicap (today, we would say intellectual disability) has confronted me more and more with my own handicaps, my own weaknesses, and my own brokenness. But the more I was willing to be confronted in a gentle, loving way, the more I discovered that God indeed chose to dwell where we can come together in a fellowship of the weak. There was a time when I really wanted to help the poor, the sick, the broken, but to do it as one who was wealthy, healthy, and strong. Now I see more and more how it is precisely through my weakness and brokenness that I minister to others. I am increasingly aware of the fact that Jesus does not say, “Blessed are those who help the poor, but blessed are the poor.” For me, this means that I have to come in touch with my own poverty to discover they’re the blessings of God, and to minister from that place to others. It is only as the blessed ones that we can be a blessing for others. And I pray that we all dare to claim the blessing that rests in our poverty, our weakness, our non togetherness. And that we can proclaim to others that where they are broken and in great need, the voice of God’s love can often be heard. It’s clear we need to heal. It is clear, we need to protest against violence and injustice. It is clear we have to do anything possible to avoid oppression, exploitation, and war. But this ministry of healing has to be a ministry in the name of the one who healed through his wounds, and who revealed his healing presence as the crucified one. Who took the marks of his crucifixion into his new life with God. So I pray that you embrace your own weakness and your own suffering, and your own pain with the trust that in this way, you can follow your Lord and make your own wounds a source of healing for others. Thus, you can also become a true light for the world and a sign of hope and a prophetic voice that calls for peace and justice.

Your brother in Christ, Henri Nouwen

David Hayward: Powerful.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Right? He just stands the test of time. Tell me, David, what resonates as you even now, just listen to me, read this letter.

David Hayward: Well, it’s that same theme of wounded healer, right? It’s, I think that book, even though it’s like a penguin pocketbook kind of a thing, it’s very tiny, but it packs a punch. And it’s the same with that letter, it’s strange to use that term, packs a punch when we’re talking about weakness and so on. But it is just powerful. I read Nouwen very, very early in my ministry, and that was way back when I started, my trajectory as a pastor, that started way back then. And he is in the foundations of my pastoral values and philosophies and ideas and practice. And even though I left the ministry of a local congregation in 2010, I still feel I’m doing the work kind of as a pastor online.

David Hayward: I kind of stole Wesley’s little sayings that the world is now my parish <laugh> instead of one little local congregation. And so he’s really totally influenced the way I think about serving, being a pastor. And as time went on though, when I became more and more familiar with Henri Nouwen, seeing that he was wrestling with his own stuff, and accepting his own self and his own struggling to be, like you said, his authenticity, his vulnerability and transparency, was such a model for me. That, and I think what’s powerful about that, and I often think about this, “Like what came first? The need to be vulnerable and trying to make God somehow fit that? Or did he have a huge, limitless idea of God’s love and grace, and that allowed him, that provided the space for him to be his most vulnerable and authentic self?”

David Hayward: And I think that that’s what has inspired me all the way through. And that even in that letter that you just read, it’s almost like constantly risk taking of being his most authentic self, most vulnerable and honest. And with sort of the presumption that it’s okay, that he’s okay, that we’re okay. Do you understand what I’m, maybe I’m being as clear as mud here, but it seems to me like, his understanding of God’s love and grace allowed him to be as authentic as he was.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: I have to wonder if it’s a bit of both/and, right?  I think, his great need drew him to God. It’s kind of a really stressful point in my life. I remember I just clung to this tiny phrase from the Psalms, “Whom have I in heaven, but you.” Like, I’m at the end of my rope. Like, I might as well try you. And not even just that, but like, “If you’re not there, nothing’s going to help me.” That I think we see that in Henri.  And we see in Henri that he found the lover of his soul. He found the one who called him Beloved, no matter what, didn’t matter what he did, didn’t matter what he thought, didn’t matter how anxious he was, didn’t matter how driven he was, even though he wrote about silence and solitude, <laugh> that he was called beloved. And it was the yin/yang of both of those things. His great need drew him to God. But then the God he found was this eternal, complete, unconditional lover. And I think that’s why he became so embracing and inclusive. Once in a while we’ll get an email into the Society that says, “Was Henri…” What’s the word I’m looking for?  Shoot, David, what’s the word? Where everyone goes to heaven,

David Hayward: Universalism

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Universalist, <laugh>. Okay. You know, once in a while we’ll get an email into the ministry that says, “Was Henri a Universalist?” And it’s sort of like the question asks about a position. Right. But for Henri, it was about relationship. Right. And the God he encountered was a God that loved beyond our imagination.  And so, of course, our dream of this God is that all are embraced.

David Hayward: I like the way you said that. It is that profound dynamic of his need, need and also the permission that was given for him to be his authentic self with the expansiveness of his idea of God’s grace and God’s love. I think those two created a powerful dynamic. It’s kind of like, it, made him such a great soul like great as in huge and you know, obviously impacted so many people in the world, you know?

I don’t know very many people really who are that vulnerable publicly. It’s, it’s not cool, you know?

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Well, and think of when he was doing it, right?  This is decades ago. So the whole idea of, “My narrative and my experience can be trusted and matters.” I mean in a lot of church circles, that was very revolutionary.

Now, Henri of course, studied psychology. And so one might think, “Well, his awareness of psychology and how our emotions and spirit co-mingle maybe that was part of why he was the way he was.” Or I’d like to get back to this, I think Henri’s soul was the soul of an artist. I mean, when he speaks about Van Gogh, it’s, there’s this connection there that draws out, you know an emotive spirituality that inevitably, if you’re going to be honest about that, takes you to a place of vulnerability. But I think a mystic is maybe born right? Like, there are just some people whose soul is drawn to, an awareness of God, even if they don’t know how to articulate that or have the language for that. And it seems that through Henri’s childhood, even there was this… he practiced giving the Eucharist to the neighborhood children. He just always had this draw to be a priest.

And I don’t think it was about a position in the church. I think there was this deep longing in Henri, and this is where I want to return to the arts, because I think, I’ve said recently I think his book, the Return of the Prodigal Son, which is one of his most beloved books, really is the fruit of a years long Visio Divina, where the first time he saw Rembrandt’s painting The Return of The Prodigal Son, it captivated him.  And he was like obsessed with the work in the best sense of the word, where he just entered it. So mystically. And you’re an artist. So tell me about this place of the arts – for having been such a heady guy who wanted to be a biblical scholar…  And I know you as an artist, someone who <laugh> in your cartoons, you’re sort of this critic, but in your paintings and in your charcoal drawing drawings of Sophia especially, there’s this mystical, emotive, deep listening and just responsiveness in your art that I think communicates something of spirit that goes far beyond the wordiness of typical spoken language.

David Hayward: Interesting. I remember reading, Image Journal is a journal that deals with art and faith. And I remember I subscribed to it, and there was an article in there by Henri Nouwen where he was talking about a certain sculptor in, I think in the Toronto area. And I was fascinated by that. He loved this guy’s sculpture, and he owned a couple of his pieces. And I thought because I always thought of him as kind of like this mystical, spiritual kind of thing. And then here he is fascinated by the arts, and then Rembrandt, and the Prodigal son and all that kind of thing. And it, it reminded me of, another experience I had while I was in Boston. We’d gone back to Boston to visit friends. This is after I’d had my, what I call my, I don’t know what I call that, [the experience] where everything changed.

David Hayward: And I met Henri Nouwen in the book Reaching Out. But we went to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and we were touring through there. And it’s fascinating. Of course, I love art. I’ve been painting and drawing all my life ever since I can remember. And so I love art, and we’re going through, and there was a painting there by Merson, M-E-R-S-O-N-A French painter, and it’s called the Holy Family in Egypt, I think. Something like that. And it shows a sphinx, it’s nighttime, I think there’s a sliver of a moon, and very, very deep, deep, deep, deep, dark, dark, dark blues. And there’s the sphinx. And there’s a donkey on the desert floor standing tethered and a little campfire. And Joseph is sleeping by the campfire. And Mary, with Jesus in her arms is cradled in between the legs of the sphinx.

David Hayward: I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. It was so powerful. And for me, I just stood there and stared at it for like a couple hours. I’m serious. Like I just could not take my eyes off it. I ended up buying a poster of it, a big a print of a painting. I still have it, because to me, what that communicated in just one image was the universality of the gospel, let’s say The Good News. It’s like, it’s in Egypt, it’s everywhere. You know, that’s what it communicated to me at the time. And just that, how one image can so powerfully open up one’s mind or provide a different way of thinking or transformation. It was a transformational moment for me, just looking at that painting. And Henri Nouwen, of course, experienced the same thing with the prodigal son, Rembrandt’s prodigal son, and so on.

David Hayward: And, I think that I took that lesson with me. I do my paintings and I do my drawings, but with my cartoons I try to convey in one picture as much meaning as I can. Like they say, a picture’s worth a thousand words. And so if I can put a picture in front of somebody and in one split second, they get what I’m saying, and it can change their life, then it’s, to me, it proves the power of art. So, and you know, I get the same thing from people with my Sophia images, and there’s the Timber series and my Images of Christ series and my watercolors. I did a watercolor recently, well last year of a person carrying a child through a snowstorm.

David Hayward: And I called it, “Carrying my Inner Child to Safety.” And I couldn’t believe the response to that painting. To me it was just I was inspired to draw somebody carrying a child through a storm to safety. Now I call it, I’m going to call it, “Carrying my inner child to safety.” And oh my goodness, so many people wanted a print of it or something because it just spoke to them. That’s their experience with one image. It captures how they’re feeling about themselves or whatever. So long answer, you think about short question <laugh>

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Well, you think about the artist who’s trying to create a sense of meaning that is significant to them in their creation. And then they may be saying even more than they know that they’re saying, which I’ll return to that phrase, because then as people interpret that piece of art, they bring their sense of meaning to it.  And it’s more than the artist thought or imagined. Like Carolyn Arends, who’s a musician/ songwriter, recently recorded for us our 2024 meditation series, and that’s going to be released the Saturday mornings in September. And it is about the gift of the arts in spiritual formation. And she tells the story of playing a song and it was a concert. And after they were packing up their gear, the janitor came over to them and said, “When you were playing that song and the sunlight was coming through the window, you was saying even more than you knew you was saying.”

Wendy VanderWal Martin: And Carolyn tells that story because I think there is this power when we… it sometimes happens with spoken language, if you hear a poem…. it can take you places that the poet didn’t even imagine. You can hear music and it can take you places that the composer never imagined. And visual art, it can take you places that the artist wasn’t aware of. And so, the arts as a way of practicing opening ourselves up. One of the things about your art is that I think it frees people especially who’ve been bound up by religion. I want to say a bit more about that. And the kind of folks who, who seem to be drawn to and connect to your art. We throw around a word like deconstruction, but tell us about that freeing, healing, releasing part of what is, I think, your current vocation.

David Hayward: Can I just make, share one insight about where art is communal? Like where I’m one of the players, but the observer’s also a player, and that is, I’ll give one example. So in my Sophia series, there’s like 62 drawings. I have a book, The Liberation of Sophia, where they’re all in there, and each one has a meditation. But one of the images I call, “Suspended.” And so there’s two evergreen trees up against the moon. And in between these two trees is a hammock tied. And Sophia is lying in the hammock between these two trees against the full moon. And it’s one of the most loved Sophia images. But I drew that, and those images I drew over a period of two years. And I drew that though, and shared it. And somebody pointed out, “Did you ever notice that one of the trees is alive and one is dead?” And I didn’t notice that. Like, it wasn’t intentional. Like, I actually sat down to draw each of these Sophia images and just started drawing. I didn’t have a plan. It was just sort of like a conscious unconscious flow, or whatever you call that. Spontaneous writing, spontaneous drawing. And I mean, that insight that one of the trees is living and one is dead, and it’s called suspended. So symbolically, she’s suspended between life and death, you know? And isn’t that how many of us experience life? Right. So, I mean, that’s our acting as communal centerpiece. Right. So I found that very powerful.

But about your, your question about how art is helping people. I hear from people. I get a lot of hate. I do. But I hear from people every day who are just so grateful for my art. And [it’s] helping them through their deconstruction, questioning their beliefs or changing their relationship to their religion or their church or whatever. And how it’s helped them, LGBTQAA+ people who, reach out and say, “I just feel I need to thank you because your art helps me feel accepted and loved, and validated and affirmed and understood and seen.” And that to me is…  When I sit down in the morning to draw a cartoon, I try to draw a new cartoon every day, I’m not thinking, “How am I going to change the world today?” And one simple drawing. No, that’s not how I approach it. I just say, “I’m going to draw what I’m feeling right now.”

David Hayward: And I draw it and I put it up. I have no idea if it’s going to be liked or if it’s not going to be liked. I just sort of <laugh>, I think of the sower who just throws out the seed and you don’t know where it’s going to land. But I put my cartoon up and I see what’s going to happen. And sometimes they fall flat, but sometimes they resonate with so many people out there. And it means a lot to me when they do, because I hear from these people who feel that they’ve been seen and understood and loved, and that it’s possible even that they can be loved. And that to me means the world.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Well, and circling back, right, Henri’s book, the Wounded Healer. You’ve been wounded in institutional church. And I don’t want to project onto your story, but it might be fair to say religious trauma is part of your story. Would that be fair to say? It’s part of my story. Yep. And I think you are taking that woundedness and offering it to those who are wounded in similar ways, and bringing your belovedness into the process.  I think it’s just ironic, but sort of hilarious that you thought you were going to be this heady biblical scholar, and now you’re creating art from your heart on a daily basis, sometimes deliberately trying to not be too heady at all, just kind of letting the art flow.

David Hayward: It’s funny, you know after we’d been married a while and I’d done all my studies and all this kind of thing, and I was at the University of Toronto and starting to pursue my PhD in New Testament studies. And what happened, we ended up getting pregnant and then couldn’t afford to continue. And the easy way out was I was offered a student pastoral charge, and I took it to save to save my family basically from extreme poverty. And so I ended up becoming a student pastor, and then I was on a new track all of a sudden. But I was at home visiting mom, my mom and my family, my mom and dad, and I came across my old year book from when I graduated from high school, and I didn’t do well in math and all that stuff.

David Hayward: I had to go to summer school every year, every summer for math and things like that. I sucked. But in art and music, I excelled. And I was looking through the yearbook and I was seeing how I was in this band. I was in that band. And then, at the back of the book, all my friends were writing in there, “One day, we’re going to hear you on the radio”, or “One day we’re going to see your art hanging here or there”, and blah, blah, blah, and going on. And I got so angry at myself that I threw out my yearbook. I threw it <laugh>, I threw it out because I obviously had somewhere along the line gotten derailed from my creativity and chose to live in my head. And here I was reading about how musical I was and how artistic I was, and my art and my music and blah, blah, blah, going on.

David Hayward: And that wasn’t me anymore. I thought. And it took some crises, some moments in my life to get me back in touch with my creative self. And to see that it’s not either/or. That you can be creative and smart too. <laugh> You can be an intellectual and creative. You can be a writer and an artist. You can be a speaker and an artist. You can read Greek if you want and be an artist. So it was sort of that binary thinking that got me in trouble. And when I began to feel compelled to become more of an individuated integrated person…. I do try to write thoughtful stuff, but also I’m a creative, I’m a creator, and I love how this has all turned out and it’s like with Henri Nouwen, and you know, I think of others Thomas Merton, he even got into making art with his sort of zen style ink drawings and stuff. And like, I think that’s a powerful, powerful mixture that was inspired by people like Henri Nouwen and Thomas Merton and so on.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Well, and their dogged determination to release and reveal and live out of their truest self. That truly the path of vocation for Henri was that even more than being a Catholic priest, though he took that vocation incredibly seriously and maintained his vows through his life, sometimes with great struggle, the vocation actually to be the beloved of God is the deepest and truest vocation. And I think as I’ve been following your art all these years, I think it comes out of that place that somewhere David Hayward knows that he’s the beloved.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: I ask every guest this, as we conclude our conversation. And that is, “What spiritual practices help sustain you in your life, but also help you to flourish?” You’ve mentioned a few already in this conversation, coffee. No, I’m kidding. But <laugh>. But what are, what are some of the practices as original or innovative or creative or whatever they may be? What, what keeps you grounded and flourishing?

David Hayward: Well, that’s the word, grounded.  My struggle has been, I’m realizing now throughout my life has been to be present. And I’ve, it’s really dawned on me even more so and even my wife Lisa’s once in a while, “Like, where are you right now?” <laugh> Meaning I’ve drifted off or I’m not present. And so I make that my practice now is to just be in my body. And so I’m breathing and cold showers and exercising and not drifting off, and being present in the conversation. That to me is my biggest spiritual challenge is to be in my body. Because spirituality, one of the biggest dangers of spirituality is it can be anti-body and anti-grounded.

David Hayward: And so for me, my struggle is the opposite, is to be in my body. Totally. And to be present and to feel and to enjoy and to love and to touch. And so like when I go for a run and I don’t have earplug plugs in or anything, I just take in the wind and the birds and the traffic and everything. I just try to be totally present and to be here now as Ram Das said, and Eckhart and all these guys, they’re all, and women, they’re all saying the same thing is to be present in your body. And I was reading a book recently on tantric sex. This is a little bit of a bunny trail. But the whole point of it is to be present. That’s the whole point. That’s all it’s about, is just being totally present in your body at every moment and not being, not fantasizing or drifting off. It’s just being totally present and being here now. So that’s my answer. Is just to be present and everything I do or try to do that my practice is to just to be here now.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Thank you. It just sounds so incarnational in a way, right?

David Hayward: Incarnational this perfect word. Yes.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: We are in divine Union with the one who took on flesh and moved into our neighborhood.

David Hayward: And the danger of that, in my opinion is when we think it’s somehow spirit embodying like a container, when for me, it’s, they are intricately interwoven. You cannot separate them. . .   I just, I was just reading a book by Alex Hutchinson called Endurance, and he was studying and doing all the research going on in endurance running and adventure, like long expeditions to the North Pole, or all these kinds of things and what gives us endurance, what makes it happen, genetics, muscle, air, fuel, practice, mind control… what, what is it? And he basically comes to the conclusion that the mind and body are one thing, and that they both affect and influence each other. And so that to me was just another reminder that applies spiritually as well, that being totally present, being here now in my body is spiritual practice.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Absolutely. I love that co-mingling.

And it seems to me that art is creation, right? Like we, we actually have to use our bodies

David Hayward: Yes.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: To be in the creative process.  So that perhaps for some of us who don’t think we’re very creative or don’t think we’re artsy, that connectivity of our full being in the creative process can really become that place of connection, especially if we’re a bit stale or a bit dry in some of the other typical practices that we’ve been faithful in for a long time. Sometimes it is something like the arts that can open a new, a new pathway for us.

David Hayward: Exactly. I agree.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: David, it’s been wonderful to have this conversation with you. Thanks for sharing about your encounter with Henri and the pursuit of your truest self, which has really offered a great gift of your art to the rest of us who have followed the Naked Pastor. If you have never heard of the Naked Pastor, we’re going to have David’s art and his website and everything in the show notes for this episode. So check that out. And again, if you’re new to the Henri Nouwen Society, we’d invite you to look at henrinouwen.org, sign up for those daily meditations, and never, ever forget you truly are the beloved of God.

Thanks for being with us.