“Love Is Love”

The 2024 SDA Kinship Kampmeeting was enriched with cartoons and thoughts shared by David Hayward (known as the artist the NakedPastor). After many years as a Canadian pastor, he started realizing the needs and challenges of the rainbow members of his non-denominational church and faith. As he adjusted his own support and focus for those members, fellow pastors and church leaders resisted and increased pressure on him to pull back.

Many years ago, David decided to leave his pastoral position and church to become a valuable and genuine ally for rainbow people and their families. As a side note, my father often said, “A good cartoonist has a genius brain—with one or two drawings they can share a paragraph or full story!”

Carolyn and I deeply enjoyed spending three days connecting with David as he shared several presentations, ate meals with all of us, and offered more of his thoughts and genius artwork.

His Sabbath presentation focused on “Love Is Love.” He wove together the emotion and the act of love from many different viewpoints, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, science, philosophy, and even atheism and summarized that “love is the glue that binds us all together, holds us together, helps us stay together!” If you research the word “love,” it is a very broad and complex verb in many different languages. It’s used between 450 and 730 times in the various English Bibles. It definitely focuses and reflects on how we should emotionally listen, react, and support each other. It is a positive verb, not a punitive verb. Love is positive. Love helps us live better.

David continued to weave several different tapestries from various cultures, geographies, and leaders. He projected a drawing of a wheel on the screen with a small hole in the middle and spokes extending out to the outer rim (like a stagecoach wheel). Each area between the spokes was a different faith or belief. At the center of the wheel, these areas were the closest together and understood and supported each other better. As you moved away from the center toward the outer rim, the sections were farther apart and more different. Today, many faiths have reached their outer rims and are unable to move back toward the hub of love and support.

David said that he has seen “unity and love working together to start a new beginning!” We need to sow “love and support” to create understanding and acceptance within families. Every seed you plant can take root and blossom with proper fertilizer and love. Of course, there are many different soils to plant our seeds in, but don’t stop trying. Don’t stop sharing and spreading seeds of love.

Thank you, David, for planting new seeds at our Kampmeeting in Ottawa. You can see many more genius cartoons on his NakedPastor website and social media. As his website states, “David’s artwork celebrates the freedom of becoming an ‘open’ Christian, with the courage to ask questions and wrestle with some of the tougher challenges of faith.” Amen!!!

Remember, “Jesus never looked the other way and neither should we!”

— John & Carolyn Wilt, Families & Friends Leaders

families-friends@sdakinship.org