Byrd's Chicks

Sarge learns not to take things for granted

Michele Chavez

In March, on my last day of bike mechanics school in Oregon, my husband fell at work and injured his left knee. He didn't want to worry me, so he didn't tell me just how bad the injury was.

On the night that I returned -- after 24 hours on an Amtrak train -- he had to pull the car over twice because of the pain and took hours to get to the train station to pick me up. That was my first indication just how bad the injury was.

Some background: Sarge is a marathon runner. He's been a runner all his life. Running came easy to him. When he was in grade school, there was only one person in the whole school who was faster than he was. I'm convinced that if his mother had let him participate in sports like track and cross-country, he would have gotten into college on a track scholarship. But he never had that opportunity.

Here's how easy running came for him. For years after we were married, he would run the Los Angeles Marathon every year -- WITHOUT training for it. That's right. He'd just run the 26.2 miles! And then not run again until the next marathon. I kid you not. That's what he'd do.

He is what's called a "Legacy Runner" -- someone who has run the L.A. Marathon every single time it has been run (24 times).

Eventually, as he got older, this became more and more difficult to do. I became so concerned that I decided to use what my former father-in-law called "reverse Sick-e-ology." I signed up for a marathon training group, the L.A. Leggers and started training for the L.A. Marathon, something I'd never done before and didn't really have any desire to do.

It took 2 years, but Sarge finally joined our training group. The thing is, though, that he then only trained on the Saturdays we ran with the group. I was doing the mid-week running, but he wasn't. He didn't have to. He could just go out and rack up the miles on the weekend!

Getting back to his knee injury. His boss took him to the ER, where they did x-rays and pronounced his knee as just slightly bruised. Nothing major showed up on the x-rays. But, it became apparent that this was not exactly true.

Sarge was not able to run at all, in fact, could not walk without a limp. After months of physical therapy, the Workers' Comp doctor decided that an MRI was in order. This showed an 80% quadriceps tendon tear. The quadriceps tendon is what lifts the knee, which is why Sarge could barely bend his knee.

Last Wednesday, we drove down to Studio City, where Sarge had knee surgery at a surgery center. It only took a few hours for the surgery and for him to wake up from surgery and then we were on our way home. Since then, he has had his leg in a brace, which is driving him crazy. The doctor and nurses advised us that if he removes the brace he risks infection and repeat surgery, but there are times when he wants to ignore the advice. Good thing he has me around to get on his case!

The good news is that -- if he follows doctor's orders to the letter -- he will be back walking soon and running within a few months.

Since he's off work, we've been chanting a lot of Odaimoku together. After one such session, he expressed to me that he will never ever take running for granted again. It's a gift to be appreciated and savored.

Crazy for God

Michele Chavez

Recently, I read a memoir called Crazy for God by Frank Schaeffer. Schaeffer's parents were evangelists who founded L'Abri, a Christian mission in Switzerland. He grew up in an environment where almost every conversation and interaction with others involved talking about God and/or trying to convert others to what his family considered true Christianity.

Schaeffer and his family became involved in the Religious Right and Pro-Life movements, which he ended up leaving, eventually finding a spiritual practice that he was comfortable with in the Greek Orthodox Church. Over the years, he has been a Christian documentary maker and a fiction author. Nowadays, he writes frequently on the Huffington Post, criticizing the Religious Right. His upcoming book is Patience with God, a book for people who don't like religion.

In an interview, Schaeffer gave his reasons for writing Crazy for God:

My memoir, Crazy for God, is an attempt to stop lying. I wanted to try and come clean. I wanted to admit my mistakes. I wanted to try to be the same person to everyone I met. You can be the world's biggest hypocrite and still feel good about yourself. You can believe and wish you didn't. You can lose your faith and still pretend, because there are bills to be paid, because you are booked up for a year, because this is what you do.

One morning in the early 1980s, I looked out over several acres of pale blue polyester and some twelve thousand Southern Baptist ministers. My evangelist father -- Francis Schaeffer -- was being treated for lymphoma at the Mayo Clinic, and in his place I'd been asked to deliver several keynote addresses on the evangelical/fundamentalist circuit. I was following in the proudly nepotistic American Protestant tradition, wherein the Holy Spirit always seems to lead the offspring and spouses of evangelical superstars to "follow the call."

At that moment we Schaeffers were evangelical royalty. When I was growing up in the religious community of L'Abri (founded by my parents in 1954 in Switzerland) it was not unusual to find myself seated across the dining room table from Billy Graham's daughter or President Ford's son, even Timothy Leary. Only later did I realize that L'Abri attracted a weirdly eclectic group of people who otherwise would not be caught dead in the same room. My childhood was, to say the least, unusual.

Crazy for God charts my journey from being born the son of cultic religious leaders to the present, with detours into Hollywood and the movie business, art and (at last!) the lucky stumble into writing fiction and nonfiction -- in other words what I do for a living today.

It turns out it was easier to move beyond my parents' beliefs intellectually, than to abandon my gut responses. So who instilled those responses? In other words, who were we? It depends on what moment you choose to become a fly on my wall. People are not as one-dimensional as the stories about them. There is no way to write the absolute truth about any family, much less my family or me. The only answer to "Who are you?" is "When?"

I identified with Shaeffer, even though I didn't grow up Christian. The feelings he described felt similar to what I experienced being a member of and eventually leaving a large fundamentalist Buddhist organization. I could relate to how he found comfort in the traditional ritual of Greek Orthodoxy, as I now feel similarly at home with Nichiren Shu.

If you get a chance to read it, I'd highly recommend Crazy for God.

Buddhist Buckaroos

Howdy partners!

Welcome, this is xtnlion, back from a hiatus.

Today I just got back from a children's rodeo. My dad is in town, and I live in the heart of Cowboy land, so that is what we did. No, REALLY .

It featured kids from about 4 to 16, and such memorable events as the sheep riding competition. Imagine, if you will, a small kid clinging, ticklike, to the back of sheep. Then, of course, cow riding. We missed the goat roping, but saw the sack roping event.

I sat next to a mother who had 3 kids entered - one in the pole race, two in the cow riding competition.

Wow! I had to admire the tenacity and hard work of these kids.... even the ones that knocked over poles in the pole race, or who couldn't rope the cow, or stay on the bucking sheep - they gave it their all.

Next, this mom was so happy that her children had an passionate interest in something. She was all about supporting them in their dreams. But- she was mortified that her boys (who were riding cows) were doing something that could potentially harm them.

You are thinking, "What on Earth does this have to do with Buddhism?" Stay with me. From a standpoint of Boddhisattva vows, and the Lotus Sutra, there are numerous lines about not to harming living beings or engage in dangerous sports.

For instance:

"He should not approach dangerous wrestlers
Or makers of various amusements
Or immoral women"

I suspect wrestling cows in right up there with any dangerous sport (not to mention rather scary for the cow. And the quote is rather apropos in my county, since we have legalized prostitution, as well as cow riding).

Most Buddhist take some sort of vow to save all sentient beings (you all probably know these). I'm thinking that the cow and sheep riding is not so fun for the critters, and not so fun for the contestant who gets a hoof in his or her belly.

Another thing that floated up in my mind was the topic of right livelihood. The livelihood of many individuals in this area is cattle. Raising and killing them for food (and folks down here, cowboys and non-cowboys alike eat a lot of steak).

Frankly, I'm all for going vegetarian (so please don't rant at me) but my question is, say you've got third generation rancher, whose son will be number four. When you are in such a family, what kind of livelihood do you take on to support your young family? Then it becomes a serious burden to take up Buddhism, at least in worldly terms.

Thich Nhat Hanh discusses this in his book entitled "Anger", how we must come to understand, with compassion, where the ranchers, and turkey breeder are coming from, and work with them to move towards more wholesome livelihoods. (Plus, there is a magnificent couple of paragraphs about angry chickens on page 16).

Anyway, I'm curious about how other people think about this - how one engages in transforming the world into a more compassionate place - one buckaroo at a time....

Happy trails, all.
Kris