Taboo Topics: Adoption – meet James Bradford

i met James at an improv group class i sometimes attend in Philadelphia and he was the first one to jump into sharing his adoption story. even though the story is pretty hectic, it seems like James has somehow come through it really positively without having any major adoption issues. Thankx for sharing, James:

Well basically I’ve known I’m adopted my whole life. It was never some shrouded family secret. In fact the entire process was made very transparent to me as a kid. That’s not to say that I knew all of the darker details until much later.

Essentially the story goes as such: my birth mother, who was relatively young at the time she got pregnant (around 20,) was schizophrenic. She was very naive about sex and wound up in a one night stand situation with a man she hardly knew. When she became pregnant she and her parents went back and forth about whether or not she was going to have the baby. They were a Catholic family and they heavily pressured her to not have an abortion.

Ultimately when I was born my birth mother decided she wanted to keep me. Social workers, however, felt that she was not mentally equipped to raise me. Thus at the age of 2 weeks I was put into a foster home.

I was placed with a family of four who were absolutely wonderful. You often seen foster families depicted as abusive or terrifying, but I lucked out. They became my family for 2 and a half years! What I now know from having unlocked my adoption records is that my birth mother refused to relinquish her parental rights until that time. She was given chance after chance to prove she could be responsible.

It’s really a tragic story on her end. She ended up meeting and marrying a man with whom she conceived another child. He was mentally well, and it seems like she would be able to get custody of me…but then he died suddenly from a blood condition. Now she had not one but two children whom she could not take care of.

The other sad thing is that by the time I as 2 1/2 and her rights *were* fully terminated, my foster family – who had been planning to adopt me all along – realized that their son was developing a problem with cocaine. They felt it would be irresponsible to split their focus on another child, so they allowed another family to adopt me. That’s the family that raised me.

People get very confused, but I always say that I look at it as having three families: my birth family (the woman who actually gave birth to me,) my foster family (who raised me to age 2 1/2) and my adoptive family, IE: they with whom I spent my entire life.
For the first 15 years or so of my life I had very intimate ties to my foster family, often staying with them several times a year for holidays and such.

I don’t have a lot of adoption issues. A lot of adopted people want to know why they were given up, but even before I knew the answer to that later in life I never really wanted to know. I unlocked my adoption record when I was 19 because I wanted to know if there were any medical issues in my family history.

What I found out is that along with the birth half-sibling I mentioned above, my birth mother went on to have two more children later in life who were also taken into the foster system. So in total I have three half siblings out there in the world. That’s sometimes hard for me to think about because I have absolutely no idea how to track them down.

It’s fascinating to me that people consider adoption taboo even in 2012. We should be much more focused on solving the problems within the foster care system than on the weird stigma associated with being adopted!

Aquaponics and other things that go blllloooop in the night…

so for those of you who missed my post on my ‘the simple weigh’ blog, here is a link to that and the story of the first week of aquaponics building that has been taking place at the simple way communtiy in kensington, philadelphia where we stay… aquaponics is like hydroponics but with fish [sustainable food growth]

click here to see…

protesting the protesters…

so i posted about the protest action we were involved in with regards to the outdoors sharing of food with homeless people on my ‘the simple weigh’ blog but i know a lot of people susbscribe to this one so thort i would stick the links here as well.

click here for part I dealing with what i was pertaining to.

click here for part II which deals with the picnic which was my beautiful wife Valerie’s greatly creative idea.

and then here if you want the part where everything went nutball shaped as we got inside for the meeting…

and here is a blog from a new friend of ours perspective – a man who drove over an hour to be part of the protest despite himself and personal fear and trepidation…

grow up and become a child

on Christmas day, tbV and i went to visit a church called Epic that our friends Cody and Lyndsey go to and really had a great time – they meet in a cinema and we were greeted with good coffee and donuts, so pretty much everything i look for in a church [harr!] and then we found the one thing we had been missing in a bunch of churches we have visited since being in Philly which was a great message…

using clips from Elf [which we watched later that nite with some kids from the block cos we were so inspired, what a fun movie] and Charlie Brown Christmas [Linus the evangelist, who knew] Kent preached a simple yet powerful message on the need for us to learn from and be inspired by and emulate a lot of what kids, and specifically his kids, live.

from Psalm 118.24 “this is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it” he spoke about the unbridled passion and abandon that kids often have about life and used the example of a child opening a present [the real way] by just ripping it apart and trying to get to the gift [whereas the adult is being all mature and old and worrying about saving the paper and the ribbon and so on]

then in the Message, Matthew 6.34 reads “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”

the focus is on ‘what God is doing right now’ – often we have ideas of how and where God works and often He throws that on its head by working in different places and differently to how we might expect and part of our job is to take time to be still and observe and listen and watch to see where God is at work right now and where He is wanting us to get involved – it may not look like what we would expect, but by doing what we expect He would say, we may well be missing what He is actually calling us to – are we really being led by God. i would never have imagined that tbV and i would be living and working in the Simple Way, even after being so inspired by the book years ago, but we took time to wait on God and hear and none of us have a doubt now that this is where we are meant to be living and ministering…

lastly he mentioned the story in Acts 16. 22-26 which starts with Paul [and Silas] being stripped and beaten with rods and goes directly to him praying and singing hymns to God – how do we respond to adversity? one of the things children love to do is sing – with reckless abandon, any time any place. why don’t we sing any more?

and why do we sing songs to God in church? is it because He has forgotten how good He is? No! It is because we need to be reminded regularly how awesomely good our God is.

Grow up and become like a child. Your life [and living as opposed to existing] might depend on it.

guaranteed way to get rich quick.

last night the beautiful Val and Monkman and myself went to a homeless memorial service in town where a bunch of different organisations who work with homeless people, such as project home where will [who runs our alternative seminary classes] works to specifically remember those homeless or previously homeless people who had died in the last year – more than fifty names were read out at one part of the service which took place outside in the gentle rain…

at one point in the service a friend of the simple way played Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Streets of Philadelphia’, one of my favourite and most moving of songs, which has never felt so apt [actually being on the streets of philadelphia] and the words are as follows:

“I was bruised and battered and I couldn’t tell
What I felt
I was unrecognizable to myself
I saw my reflection in a window I didn’t know
My own face
Oh brother are you gonna leave me
Wastin´away
On the streets of philadelphia

I walked the avenue till my legs felt like stone
I heard the voices of friends vanished and gone
At night I could hear the blood in my veins
Black and whispering as the rain
On the streets of philadelphia

Ain’t no angel gonna greet me
Its just you and I my friend
My clothes don’t fit me no more
I walked a thousand miles
Just to slip the skin

The night has fallen, I’m lyin awake
I can feel myself fading away
So receive me brother with your faithless kiss
Or will we leave each other alone like this
On the streets of philadelphia.”

[Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/bruce+springsteen/streets+of+philadelphia_20025067.html]

Jesus said, “There will always be poor people among you” and I think we often receive that in a resigned way – oh well, Jesus said there’s always going to be poor people so why even bother trying to make a difference. But i think He was speaking prophetically, not so much about what has to be the case [we do have enough resources for everyone at this present time] but from a place of knowing the heart of man – because you are greedy and put yourself first and choose your comfort over someone elses need, as a result of that, there will always be poor people among you.

this blog has the word ‘poor’ in the title so it is not going to get as many hits as say my relationship blogs [how can I do MY relationships better?] and the people who made it down this far are most likely not the ones who need to read or be reminded of any of this stuff, except maybe a little, and maybe it’s that little which counts. i know i need to hear it [and i have chosen to live in a poor neighborhood and work with poor people] because there is still a lot that needs to change in my own life.

but standing in the rain last nite with a whole lot of homeless people from all diverse backgrounds [poverty is not racist] and walks of life, and the people who work with them, i was moved once again that we can NOT SETTLE FOR THE WAY THINGS ARE – where those who have keep piling up more and more while those who don’t are left to suffer alone… especially as the church… part of our mandate is to look after the least of these.

“The night has fallen, I’m lyin awake
I can feel myself fading away
So receive me brother with your faithless kiss
Or will we leave each other alone like this
On the streets of philadelphia.”

how great my art?

let me start by being perfectly honest here, i am not an artist… not in the drawing, painting, nude sculpture making sense anyways…

when i was in high school i somehow managed to end up taking art as one of my choice subjects [i copied a monkey face pretty well back in standard 5/grade 7 and got accepted in art at westerford somehow that way] for grade 8 and 9 but very quickly found out that the teacher didn’t so much teach art as assumed art and so if you didn’t know how to do the type of art he held up you were pretty much screwed… which led to me and ray wright largely spending two years just mixing paint colours and unintentionally blocking up drains…

i was not allowed to choose art for grade 8 to 10 and so effectively i like to think that i was kicked out of art… academically at least.

til i heard about this thing called First Friday in Philadelphia where i currently live and move and have my being. our summer intern and friend Beth took a bunch of her really good art to the streets and came back with money – lots of it.

so i schemed with monkman aka A-Ron aka Aaron, another housemate, to make some art and take it to first friday and take irony for a joy ride cos surely if i could make some art and someone could buy it for real money then that would just throw art on it’s head…

last saturday i spend the whole day painting on a window within a frame that Jamie from across the road [one of the original members of the simple way] gave me and came up with something some people would call art, at least until they looked at it. Monkman came home after being out the whole day, took about thirty minutescreating his minimist art piece [also on a window frame] and it looked 1000 times better than mine.

there were bits of mine i liked. tbV liked at least two parts of it and i think i liked three of the four corners or at least ish. but as a whole it was going to take some irony walking by.

two things happened tonite at first friday which made me happy. the first was two quite trendy girls walking past [and we had my painting next to monkman's and a bunch of t-shirts and patches he was selling so a decent amount of stuff] and the one turned to the other one having indicated my painting and said ‘that’s good’ or ‘i like that’ or something to that effect. job done.

the second thing was that i sold my painting for 20 dollarbucks. like money. real money. that you can buy things with. oh irony, your head has been bruised by this ‘art’ this nite… or something. this girl really dug it and i didn’t know what to charge her for it and she said twenty bucks? and i said sure [i'm a kick-ass haggler] and she gave the twenty bucks and walked off [and is theoretically going to claim it later - she had just arrived and wanted to check out other things - pretty trusting in these parts]

so all said and done i think that makes me officially an artist.

be where you are

at this present point in time my wife valerie [aka the beautiful val] and i are living and working and interning and ministering with the simple way community in philadelphia…

before this i was a youth slash student pastor [disclaimer: no youth or students were slashed during my time there] at a vineyard church in stellenbosch, outside cape town in south africa for 6 years. i remember the one staff meeting we had in the first year or so of my being there and my boss chris-the-boss asked me if i could be doing anything in the world what would it be? without skipping a beat i responded ‘i would be doing this’ and i meant it…

my second last year there i had a sense it was my last year at the church and told chris so but then during that year i met tbV and we were going to get married and she still had a year of study to do and so i ended up doing another year at the church because it seemed to make sense. and it was a very tough year in many respects – SO MUCH GOOD stuff happened and great relationships with people and so i don’t think i’d change it, but i definitely think that i would not have been able to answer that same question with as much conviction and really meant it or believed it. and looking back, i don’t know how i could have played it differently, because i don’t know where else i was meant to be, but maybe i should have been more focused in making sure i was in the right place.

i say all this in introduction because if my friend chris-the-boss flew over to philadelphia and took me out for coffee and sat across the table from me and asked me if i could be doing anything in the world what would it be? then the answer would be – living and working and interning and ministering with the simple way community in philadelphia – with absolute truth and conviction.

is it easy here? no. is it always comfortable? not a chance. are there times of being frustrated and wondering what we’re doing and what impact we’re making and could we be doing this a lot better? absolutely. but there is a knowledge deep within me that this is where val and i are meant to be at the moment, and that feels amazing.

i know too many people who are simply in a rut of doing the thing they’ve always been doing. a bunch of my friends feel pulled to something else and yet they continue on day in and day out going through the motions of what they’re doing. some of them will get to that new thing place, i have no doubt of that. but i worry about the ones who ten years from now will be sitting in the same place doing the same thing [nothing wrong with that if it's the thing you're meant to be doing, not talking change for change sake] and talking about the thing they should be doing.

which is why i get super stoked by my friend chris lindemann. and my friend bruce collins. and my friends kleinfrans [he's not] and michelle. and my friend megan giggles. and my sister dawn and her husband glen who just moved back to south africa when the easier option i imagine would have been to stay in the uk. and my folks who continue to live life and not simply exist or settle.

what about you? if you could be anywhere in the world doing anything in the world, would it be that?

Comedysportz – like TheatreSports with a ref [and more spitting!]

so last nite A-Ron and i joined Steve and Kristin and friends for a 10pm showing [what a great time!] of Comedysportz, Philadelphia’s longest running [similiar to us, 18 years i think they said] improv show.

and had a really good time.

Kind of a cross between Whose Line Is It Anyway?, TheatreSports and Stellenbosch’s Ad Lib show and with a little more emphasis on the sports than we have the show starts with the Voice [one of the players who does voiceovers, some announcements and friendly banter with the ref] welcoming the ref [in full ref gear] who did a great job of mc’ing the show, making sure everyone knew what was happening all the time, collecting suggestions and enforcing penalties.

They began with a familiar game of what we call story, story die altho every time the person pointed at could not continue the story exactly, it prompted a double clap and reverse hitch-hike [two thumbs backwards over your shoulder] ‘he’s/she’s outta here’ – a lot more intense than ours normally are with the ref making some brutal switches and with the players literally taking up words mid-syllable – getting a movie someone had recently seen [Die Hard] and a book someone had just read [Anna Karenina] the story they told was called ‘Die Karenina’ and an audience member was nominated to shout out the title every time he was pointed at and so every time a player was “outta here” the ref would move the story forward a few chapters to chapter 7 of [point at audience member] “Die Karenina” and so you would be reminded of the title the whole way through which was nice… as a whole they were really brilliant at this game.

Two teams of four players were brought on to stage with a hand clap that started at 0 [hands moving toward each other but not touching] to 3 [little bit of clapping] to 7 [lots of clappin g] to 10 [clapping, foot-stamping and screaming] and ran around high-fiving audience players and just generally being energetic until they were introduced one by one [as they were introduced they came to a painted square front centre stage and did some mimed action so a huge golf drive or a stage roll or award receive or whatever] with a lot of fun and energy.

the two ref penalties they introduced last nite were the groaner for when someone makes a really awful lame pun or joke on stage and the ref throws a fluffy thing type piece of material on stage and they keep playing the game til the end, but then the offending player has to stand in the square at the front of the mat and apologise to the audience and if the apology is not received their team loses a point [sadly we didn't see this] and the other one is the brown paper bag over the head for a player or audience member who says something foul [sexual innuendo, something racist or sexist or otherwise inappropriate] and an audience member who suggested sex as a sporting activity got the treatment while the ref continued the explanation of the game – all done with much fun and a tsk, tsk type “shame shame” from the audience…

one thing this show had that was a bit different to ours back home was a lot more audience participation – not on stage playing games so much [altho they brought a rather mute chap on for a game of sound effects which the players handled really brilliantly] but a lot of call and response so when the ref says “loyal” the audience responds with “fans” and the ref often called for a 5 or 10 count clap to welcome the captains or the teams to the front to hear what game they are going to play – a variety of suggestions for game elements were taken from different sections of the audience [left hand side, back two rows etc] and it was a pretty suggestion-filled show with a prize of two free tickets to the best suggestion of the nite [well the one they thought was best cos i didn't win - possibly cos they didn't use my golf dimple ball guy or noose tester when they were asking for unusual jobs during intermission]

yes, intermission, cos that was a different thing to our show but it completely worked – they had a half time halfway through the show where you could go buy snacks or merch and sign up for the lucky draw comp [slash get email addresses for the database scam, the winner got a water bottle with comedysportz on it, great idea cos they got thirty to forty entries] and then all the ads we try sneak in at the end happen here [school shows, improv classes, upcoming auditions, corporate events etc etc] before the players return once again with high energy high fiving and performing until the serious competition continues…

A new game [to me] called four corners where the four players stood on the four corners of the mat and each pair [front two] got a suggestion [a country, relationship, mystical place like Narnia or Hogwarts - they got Istanbul - etc] and then the front two start a scene and whenever the ref feels like it she buzzes and calls rotate and everyone moves one corner across and starts or continues that scene – so each person is involved in two different scenes and the four scenes keep switching clockwise – much fun…

Then came historical replay where they asked for a historical event [civil war] and played a scene [some poetic licence as they made the whole war about race, but a running race] and then replayed it in two of the three suggestions of tarentino, romance and hate that they got.

Joyride saw four chairs set out and the teams alternated – they got the initials JO from the audience and then one team sat in the car and the other team would shout the line “hey those [insert word starting with J for the one team and O for the other team] have stolen our car” and then the team would do a couple of lines as whatever they had been endowed and then the buzzer would go and the other team would take the car – we saw Jalopy dealers, Old people, Jonas Brothers, Jurassic Park scientists and Olive oil salespeople among others – quick and fun and a little hit-and-miss…

5 things was a crazy energy game that kinda combined our long chain murder with environment and possible scandal… one guy leaves the room and a five to ten minute suggestion taking time happened [altho didn't feel long and boring cos of the energy of the ref and taking suggestions from different parts of the room and the voice involvement] they got 5 sporting activities so rugby, american football, surfing the net, jiujitsu and kayaking and then made each one weird by adding two elements so for example there was playing rugby on meatsteak with the muppets [they actually used the real muppet band name which is Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem which i have never heard of and which the dude guessed exactly] or kayaking on cream wearing google [yes the internet search engine, they did not make it easy] and jiujitsu in the circus against johnny cash…

an audience member went out with the player to make sure he could not hear any of the suggestions and when he came back the team had to get him to guess all five things [made it through three and a half but they were really tough] in four minutes [timed by the ref] – only thing is the whole thing is done in gibberish and the players can’t act out the actions but have to get the guy to do it… the team could choose the order they did the suggestions in and both teams had them written down on whiteboards so every time he went to the next suggestions they would write it out and show the audience to remind them… very fast paced frenetic game and as i said he only got three out of five but got a bonus point for knowing the muppet band name and it was a fun game to watch…

during the intermission the voice came and got some suggestions for events, occupations and products from various people around the audience which they used in some of the later games – one of the coolest things of the show was the energy and the variety – so they had three judges with a blue card and a red card [blue and red team] and after three of the game rounds they held up blue or red and team with the most got five points [which they scored on an electronic scoreboard behind them] and for two other games the ref got the whole audience to clap for which team they thought did better and scored them on her clapometer… for the last game the voice tallied the good jokes from each team and added them in afterwards…

after the intermission the teams returned and sang an impromptu song to the people whose birthdays it was [if it's your birthday month and you're on the mailing list you get a free ticket to the show] and then continued with the ‘fierce competition’.

They played a game called Laugh Out which is like our corpse challenge and our stand-in-a-line exercises we do in class – so a player from each team starts a serious game [they did a funeral for a pet] and anytime someone laughs they get “laughed out” with the buzzer and someone else takes their place – team with least laugh outs wins the points…

They they played the sound effects game and took a team photo with the volunteer after the game which was really cool – hand held point and shoot, quick pose and photo for the web.

Then thay played what i’m sure will cause eyes to roll back home but which i thort was pretty cool a game called spit take which is like double take excepting that each of the four team members had a bottle of water and at any point of the game would take a swig of water and someone else on stage would say something like “i have pictures of you” at which the person would spit take [oh yes!] – was very funny cos the one dude filled his mouth with water and then looked up and saw that his team member had already filled his mouth and so did an actual spit take which wasn’t intended – very cool – and the audience got a “don’t worry, it’s only water” if they got sprayed during the game…

Last up was a game of world’s worst like they play on Whose Line? as Scenes from a hat. So the ref reads a world’s worst suggestion “things to say at a Christening” “events to compete in at the olympics” and when someone has an idea they step forward and give a one liner and get either a whistle for good laughs or a honk for dead silence vibes and score points for the whistles…

the show ran for 90 minutes but with the intermission and a lot of ref/audience banter and some longer games or explanations it seemed about the length of our shows back home, if not shorter [no long game to end off with, most games 4 min on the clock] and ended with everyone on stage just vibing [sword fights, high fives, wrestling, rolling on ground, celebrating victory etc] in slow motion and as their names were announced they would come to the front and wave and head out until just the two captains were left and finally the ref – really cool way to end the show

no light person [so constant lights], no music [except played by the voice in between games or occasional sound effects] and yet it didn’t feel empty and the endings to games didn’t feel forced… very much looking forward to auditioning end of the month [not sure i'll be able to play schedule/time-wise but would be nice to know if i can] – got a special deal 8.50 for this show but normally $15 or $12 for students so don’t know how often i’ll be able to go as we don’t have a lot of extra cash… but definitely a worthwhile evenings entertainment…

all of the actor peoples were decent with four of the eight standing out for me as really good/fun to watch…

so for those of you who haven’t quite figured out or gotten involved with my life at the simple way blog yet, here are my first three links to some wild goose festival blogging that i have just done… this week tbV and myself are back in the ‘hood and will be getting going with our specific work…

http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/the-wild-goose-part-overall

http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/the-wild-goose-part-shirt-and-sign

http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/the-wild-goose-part-guns

follow us as we simplify…

i have started a separate blog for posting ‘the simple way’ adventure related stuff so that people who are wanting to follow our journeys and have an idea of what’s going on can simply sign up there and read whatever i get to write about things that are part of our philly trip – if that’s you, you may want to bookmark this link where i have written a basic idea of what it’s all about for those of you who don’t know but more will be written as we arrive there and start to live on the other side… http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com