Questions are the Answer - the search for understanding.

David Hayward, aka the Naked Pastor, introduces his new illustrated memoir Questions are the Answer ...

I am just a boy sitting on the floor in a large Sunday school room in an old church. We were given an assignment to draw a picture of the bible story that the teacher just told. It was about the Hebrew people crossing the Red Sea with the Egyptian army in hot pursuit. I already loved to draw, so this was something I was happy to do. I still see that large sheet of paper on the floor in front of me. I also see a man in robes sitting beside a woman. I suppose the woman was my teacher and the man was the priest. I remember the feeling of satisfaction as I sketched and colored the scene I saw in my mind. I drew with great drama the Egyptian army drowning in the Red Sea, horses with wild eyes and men with desperate faces sinking to the muddy bottom under the weight of their sinful armor. There were blood and bubbles and beasts and brine because their deserved death had to be a horrible one.

I looked up to see the priest and woman looking at me with concern. I now think it might have been a mixture of wonder and concern … wonder because it might have been a decent drawing for a boy my age, and concern because it was so brutal a depiction of the biblical story. I recall the look on their faces and that I turned back to my artwork. I was a little embarrassed but also a little stubborn. This is how it was drawn and it was too late to change it just to satisfy them! I looked up at them again and they were whispering to one another and looking at me while they were talking. I was being analyzed and I knew it.

This is my very first memory of me as an artist. It is important to me because it seems to serve as a prophecy of things to come. I’ve always drawn in my own way, with as honest a self-expression as I dared. Maybe the teacher and priest might have wanted to tell me that even though it was a decent picture, perhaps it was too direct, too candid, too honest. I also still know what it means to put my work out there and have it and me analyzed as a result. I draw something I think is true, and others analyze my art with interest and concern and draw conclusions about me.  There exists within me this tension between not wanting to draw attention to myself but doing the things that accomplish exactly that. I find it strange how that little boy is still alive and well within me. I continue drawing what I want, but under constant fear of it or me being analyzed. Yet I’m still driven to draw. I’m still impelled to see things my way and depict them as I imagine them. In spite of my own fear, I can’t help being candid, direct, and honest.

I suppose I’ve always been a religious person. Or do I mean spiritual? Let’s say I’ve always been interested in spiritual things and religion. I was baptized when I was a baby. But I got baptized again as a teenager when I really got saved. A few years later my family switched to another church. This is where I spent the rest of my youth. I then went to a Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, where I met my wife, Lisa. After I graduated we got married. From there we moved to Boston where I earned my Masters in Theological Studies. After I graduated I became an assistant minister in a larger Presbyterian church in Canada for three years. When I finished there I went to McGill University where I earned my Diploma in Ministry. I was ordained and served various kinds of churches as a pastor until 2010. But, in March of 2010, I suddenly realized I was finished. I knew beyond a shadow
of a doubt that my days as a pastor were complete and I left the ministry immediately. I haven’t been a member of a church since.

I have visited some churches and have even spoken at a few. But since 2010 I have not been a part of the institutional church. More of the juicy details will emerge during the telling of my story. Much of my writing and many of my cartoons issue from this very intense journey I am about to share with you.

I’ve drawn many cartoons on the subject of questions and their value. Most of them are in this book. Questions not only open the door for answers, they also open the door to mystery and trouble. In fact, as many of these cartoons depict, asking too many questions or the wrong kinds of questions can get you into plenty of difficulty. So over the course of time I eventually came to detect that there are three stages of questions that I’ve journeyed through.

I picture a door on a hinge. The door is closed, swinging, or open. Like questions!

The first kind of questions is closed questions. The answer to these questions is a simple yes or no. There are no other options but these two. It’s a very black and white world with no grays or shadows in between. It’s one or the other. I would characterize this period as a time of certainty and conformity.

The second kind of questions is swinging questions. The answer to these questions is yes and no. There are two options. Or maybe there’s another one we haven’t even considered yet. It’s still a fairly black and white world, but this world is getting more complicated with grays and shadows in between. I would characterize this period as a time of confusion.

The third kind of questions is open questions. The answer to these questions is that there isn’t an answer. Oh, there may be an answer, but we don’t know what it is, we don’t pretend that there is, and we remain open in order to discern it when or if it should arrive. I would characterize this period as a time of contentment.

This is my journey through these stages of questioning. Even though we may revisit the different kinds of questions at different times in our lives, I see these stages as delineating different passages of my spiritual journey. Closed questions represent my immature spirituality. Swinging questions typified my growing spirituality. Open questions belong to my more mature spirituality.

I am not totally pleased with the word “stage”. These aren’t really places, but ways of seeing. Reality is not in the future waiting for us to catch up and arrive. It is here all the time, giving us clues to its truth if only we would see and embrace it. So, it is not reality’s elusiveness, but our resistance to it that is the problem. When I observe myself, I can say that I have been very reluctant to see throughout my life. I’m a slow learner. The clues were always there, but it took time to detect and then follow them to where they were leading me. This is the journey I want to talk about.

I hope you enjoy the journey with me. Some of the cartoons may be funny. Some may be angry. Some may be poignant. But I hope they all provide a little scenery along the inquisitive path my story leads you down. Right from the beginning, though, I want to give a kind of disclaimer. One of my favorite writers, Wendell Berry, says it best, so I’ll just quote him:

“But it’s awfully hard, when you write arguments, to avoid the tone that implies that you know what other people ought to do. My work is best, I think, when I talk as a person who’s not an authority on anything but his own experience.”

(Grubbs, Conversations with Wendell Berry)

This is about my own experience.


This is the introduction to Questions are the Answer: nakedpastor and the search for understanding by David Hayward, available now priced £9.99 in paperback and eBook.