The Trials of Ted Haggard

For the first couple of months since we've been back, we were given free HBO as part of our dish package. Now it's costing us, so it's time to cut those channels! However, I'm glad I hadn't done that yet, because I was able to DVR a documentary called "The Trials of Ted Haggard." As HBO's website describes it:

"Once upon a time, Ted Haggard had it all: prosperity, a doting wife, five kids and a ministry that reached 30 million followers. The larger-than-life founder and pastor of Colorado's New Life Church and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Haggard was one of the most formidable forces in America's Christian evangelical movement. But in 2006, it all fell apart. Pastor Ted admitted to "sexual immorality" and buying methamphetamines from a male prostitute, which abruptly ended his career, sending him and his family into free-fall. The bombshell not only rocked the ministry, but everyone who knew him - especially his wife and five children.

A film by Alexandra Pelosi (HBO's Emmy®-winning "Journeys with George"), THE TRIALS OF TED HAGGARD takes an intimate look at the life and hard times of the ex-minister. "

If the name Pelosi seems familiar, it is: her mother is Nancy Pelosi - speaker of the House.

Anyway, watching this documentary was hard. I grew up in Colorado, just 30 minutes north of where Ted Haggard's former the evalution of halloween in americachurch is in Colorado Springs. I had obviously heard about all the things that happened with Haggard's ministry and had tried to keep up with the story as much as possible, but since moving back to Ohio I hadn't heard much. There were many things about The Trials Of Ted Haggard that made me sad.

First, I feel sad that a man of God has done what he has done. I'm not here to debate homosexuality or drug use or any of that - yet a Christian leader (rightfully so) is held to a higher standard and the phrase "the bigger they are, the harder they fall" is definitely true in church circles.

Second, I feel sad that Christian leaders are isolated and alone in so many ways, and when they do struggle with something, they feel like they can't share it or reveal it out in the open because they will get crucified for doing so. It's like we have such high expectations of our leaders, forgetting that they're human, and because we put them on a pedestal, there is absolutely no room for failure. Several times Haggard in the documentary talked about how he felt so trapped because he knew he had a problem, but because he was a pastor of a church of 14,000 people and because he represented 30 million Christians as the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, he couldn't get out from under the pressure.

Third, I feel sad at how he and his family were treated. They had to leave their church - understandable I guess - but also had to leave the state of Colorado. I don't understand that part. He tried to get another job but couldn't find one. Here's a man who led thousands of peotravel around mexico on halloween and join the paradeple and I'm sure led a huge staff, but couldn't get any kind of regular job. I think the documentary said at the end that he was selling life insurance now. Thankfully, he was allowed to move back to Colorado. But still - I grieve that this man who has influenced so many lives is now friendless.

Please understand that I am in no way condoning anything that made Ted Haggard fall. However, I just think that no matter what we have done, whether we are a church leader or we are a church janitor or we are a church attender - we should be treated with dignity, respect, forgiveness and love. You could see the pain on his face when he talked about the way people treated him after the scandal, and how low he and his family felt. I hope that true restoration can take place in his life, and in the rest of his family's annual north halsted halloween parade in chicagolives - and that people can forgive and move on.

UCL Parent & Family Day

Register for this event on Eventbrite

HOW TO BOOK   (Please note booking closes at midnight on Sunday 8th March)
Please choose the number of adults attending the evengetting married on halloween and to be another corpse couplet and then click on the "Order Now" button above to register for the UCL Parent & Family Day (Due to popular demand we can only offer TWO tickets per family - plus your student studying at UCL).
Please choose which Provost's Welcome and which lectures you would like to attend.  We will send your tickets and further information approximately 2 weeks before the event.
We look forward to welcoming you to UCL on Saturday 14 March 2009.
WHAT'S ON OFFER
0930             Registration opens
1030-1130     Provost’s Welcome (morning session)  
1200-1300     Taster lectures (morning session)                    Lecture 1 - Advice giving in the media – is there a place in the 21st                      Century for the Agony Aunt?  Dr Petra Boynton, Dept of Primary Care                     and Popular Science (Consultant to the Dept. of Health and featured on                    Radio 5 Live, Men’s Health, Grazia Magazine)                     Lecture 2 - The London Project to Cure Blindness: Stemming visual loss                     with stem cells.  Prof Pete Coffey, Directannual north halsted halloween parade in chicagoor to the London Project to Cure                     Blindness and Institute of Ophthalmology                    Lecture 3 - Victorian illustrated magazines and the limits of Art History.                    Dr Tom Gretton, UCL History of Art.                                        Lecture 4 - Seven years to save the planet.  Prof Bill McGuire, UCL Dept                     of Earth Sciences                                        Careers lecture - Demystifying the graduate labour market.  UCL                     Careers Service                    History of UCL lecture - Prof John North (Dept of History)1200-1500     Student Showcase - a selection of entertainment from our Student                     Union societies   
1430-1530     Provost’s Welcome (afternoon session)
1600-1700     Taster lectures (afternoon session - as above)
ALSO ON OFFER ALL DAY
Self-guided tours - Petrie Museum (Egyptian Archaeology), Grant Museum (zoology), Strang Print Room (Arts Collections)Guided Library tours - Mainrunning through corn mazes lost and scared on halloween Library (Arts and Humanities and Flaxman Gallery), Cruciform Library (Medical library), Science LibraryFree Tea & CoffeeFaculty FairStudent Advice CentreCareers Advice                        UCL Cafés - Bloomsbury Theatre Café, Print Room Café , Engineering Building Café, Cruciform Building Café

Please note: In the instance of your first choices not being available, we will contact you to offer an alternative.
 




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When: Mar 14, 2009 9:30:00 AM to Mar 14, 2009 5:30:00 PM
Where: UCL
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PRICE: £ 10.50







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Helping others help themselves

My Uncle Chuck has spent most of his life so far working for the steel companies in Detroit. When they started to fall on hard times 5 or so years ago, hechose to retire and begin working for PIME Missionary in Detroit. He has gone to India a couple of times, visiting the poor and the sick through mission activities.He has also helped to set up the Mission Store. Following is an article he wrote to help share the story of the Mission Store and the people behind it.
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The Mission Store continues to explore opportunities for our sponsors to help the people help themselves. Fr. Franco Cagnasso tells us of an ambitious group of young ladies from one of our missions in Bangladesh who have handcrafted some of the beautiful jewelry that has been marketed and sold through the Mission Store.


And the leader of this enterprise? Martha...a young woman of about 30 with two beautiful children - an 8 year old girl and 5 year old boy. And a cruel drunkard husband who is in jail.

Fr. Franco shares this story about Martha...

Some time back, Martha appeared at one of the PIME houses in Dhaka. Weak and pale with a high fever, and bleeding from a kidney operation that she had the previous day. The Sisters of Mother Teresa were contacted to address her needs. Having received the care that she needed, she left the Sisters only to return a few weeks later to say "thank you" and to offer some of her handicrafts in gratitude.

Born in the south of Bangladesh to a poor landless family, she came to Dhaka as a child with her parents and three sisters looking for a better life. Her father used to pull a rickshaw, work that killed him in a few years. Her mother collected wastepaper from door to door in an effort to make some kind of living, and the children helped by rummaging here and there along the streets. Martha and her sisters were fortunate to have learned a little bit of reading and writing that would help them along the way.

When her mother died, Martha took the lead, struggling like a tiger for her life and for her sisters, by doing any kind of work. One such job included housekeeping for a British family, where she picked up sufficient English to make herself understood. She read old fashion magazines, providing her with design ideas for handicrafts.

Martha lives with her two children, her younger sister Purnima (meaning 'full moon') and a colorful little group of girls whom she accepts in her small house when they get into trouble for any reason. She teaches them how to use a sewing machine, how to create Christmas decorations, to clean a modern house, to make rosaries and necklaces, and to print cloth for saris.

"With me," she says, "they often starve, but we starve together. I do not exploit them. They learn hgetting married on halloween and to be another corpse coupleow to make a living...and they feel accepted."

Martha has a strong. simple faith. "I am a sinner," she says. "I tell lies... But only to survive."

She says that Pope John Paul II smiled at her in a dream. She keeps a photo of him in her house and feels protected by his prayer.

Martha and the girls continue their struggle. They put on the only sari they have or their best "punjabi" and go to sell their products in the rithe tradition of wearing costumes on halloweench areas of town, knocking at the doors of clubs, schools, fairs and exhibitions, convents and parishes. They keep cleaning houses, washing clothes, and occasionally being babysitters and cooks. From time to time, Martha is called to teach school children how to decorate their classroom or to prepare gifts for their parents. They starve when there is no money; they feast when they earn some.

PIME World magazine has supported the efforts of these ladies by offering some of their handicrafts in the October 2006 issue and again in this issue. Life is still difficult, but Martha and the girls are morunning through corn mazes lost and scared on halloweenre confident and they boast: "We sell our jewels even in America!"

Help us help these hard working ladies help themselves through your support.
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You can help Martha and other women like her by purchasing handcrafted, fair-trade gifts through the PIME Mission Store Online. They have a nice selection of handmade jewelry, as well as handpainted Christmas cards. All of the proceeds benefit the crafters and PIME Missionaries.

Reversing the gaze

Despite the stacks of "regular" books on my nightstand, it is rare that I make time to read a book that is not a required text for one of my courses. I made an exception, however, with Culture Keeping: White Mothers, International Adoption and the Negotiation of Family Difference by Heather Jacobson.

I was contacted by the publisher and asked if I would read and review the book. I'm so glad I made the time. In light of a lot of the discussions I've been part of (as subject, link, or participant) lately in the blog-o'sphere, especially with the young teen starlet who likes to make "goofy faces," this book is all the more relevant in the whole context of international and transracial adoption discourse.

Altchoose halloween mask to make the perfect halloween costumehough I'm not personally mentioned (she mentions adult adoptee blogs and forums), Jacobson does mention the huge influence that adult Korean adoptees have made on the way in which adoption agencies now think of "culture keeping" and the encouragement they give adoptive parents to engage in incorporating their internationally adopted child's ethnic culture into the family. Jacobson writes,

"These cautionary tales from the past have had a profound effect on how the adoption community (and industry) approaches the ethnic socialization of internationally adopted children. Contemporary adoption practices, policy, and international adoption discourse now emphasize the importance of culture keeping."

I thought it was interesting that in this study Jacobson compares the culture-keeping of White adoptive parents who adopt from Russia with those who adopted children from China. The practices and extent of culture keeping vary quite a lot between these two families. A big part of why this is has to do with race; the visible differences for the Chinese adoptive families compared to the Russian adoptive families, who can choose whether or not to disclose the adoption, means that for the Russian adoptive families the lack of racial differences (although the cultural differences are huge) could be a reason to not engage in culture keeping.

I liked that Jacobson ties in the responsibilites of culture keeping as an expectation placed on the mother, and that definitely is what I've seen in my own practice experiences. Whether it is in the contexts of adoption or in parenting in general, there exists a noticeable silence about fatherhood and fathering. Jacobson writes that she did not specify in her call for participants that she was looking only for mothers and in fact, shares that often times adoptive fathers who were contacted "handed over" the project to their wives almost as if there was an acknowledgment that it was their wive's job to do the culture keeping (Jacobson's sample had 46 participants - six were fathers. Single parents and GLBT parents were also in her sample).

One of the findings from this study (and although it is no real surprise to me, it is still somewhat shocking) is how much the adoptive parents of Chinese children did not consider having a racially and ethnically Asian child to be problematic in the same ways as if they had adopted a Black or African child.  Those who chose not to adopt a Black child often did so because of racist family members who would not accept a Black child but didn't object to an Asian child; often the "model minority" stereotype was a factor, and some seemed to encourage that stereotype. To me, this reinforced the perception that there is little or no racism towards Asians, which is false. This is also worrisome to me because it seems to suggest that adoptive parents actively encourage stereotyping and promotes a racial hierarchy.

I was also interested 10 halloween costumes in 2008to read Jacobson's critique that although parents of Chinese children often participated in culture and language schools and camps, FCC, and participated in what I call the "tourist" version of cultures (that which can be purchased), that

"the China-adoptive mothers I interviewed did not look to Chinese or Asian American mothers as role models for how to raise their children, nor did they see themselves as connected to earlier international-adoptive mothers (with children from Korea, for example) or interracial (biological) families. Rather, they...considered themselves "pioneers" when it came to raising their daughters."

Jacobson also finds in her study is that despite the heartfelt attempts to recognize the importance of keeping their child connected in some way to their ethnic cultures, many of these adoptive parents struggled with how much and in what ways to do so. Some, it seems, felt pressured by other FCC families they know who seemed to be doing "more" in terms of culture keeping. However, as Jacobson recognizes, these attempts towards "authentic" Chinese culture that many of the adoptive parents wanted reflected only a certain kind of "Chinese" culture - that is China as in the country of China (far away) or Chinese immigrant communities. Jacobson found that China-adoptive parents determined that Chinese immigrants practiced a "more genuine Chinese culture" and not homemade cow halloween costumesa "watered-down version of Chinese-ness" and furthermore, these adoptive parents were disinterested in current modern, Chinese American history or politics.

Overall, I thought this book was definitely thought-provoking and highly recommend it. One thing I was thinking about as I read this, was the idea of "reversing the gaze."* Reversing the gaze here in this context is about how the adoptive parents construct ideas and activities around culture and race rather than looking at how the adopted children construct their identiies in terms of culture and race. Frankly, I'm getting kind of tired reading about how we adoptees are doing; I'm interested in how adoptive parents are doing too.

*thanks to Indi for the information on "reversing the gaze."

* ETA 3/2 - Although this book is based on a research study, I wanted to let people know it's a very accessible and easy to read book!