These are the things I find of Importance within our club:- Fun: This is what a hobby is supposed to be
- Friendship: The moment that it all clicks into place and you realize that you have come home to a family who love you, no matter their relation via blood.
- Passion: falling in love with an art, fighting, service or some corner of the SCA or medieval period which you may not have even known existed before. Or meeting the medievalist of your dreams.
- Learning: keeping our medieval arts, martial arts, crafts, sciences alive through continual teaching and learning with information always moving forward.
- Respect: Meeting people of so many different background, abilities, real lives, knowledges, and learning how to work with them. When you give respect, you get respect.
- Service: If we're gonna have a game, someone needs to do some work. Pitch in when you can and be thankful for those who pitch in the rest of the time. Say thank you. Say it often, loudly and in public.
- Stewardship: Leaving the SCA better than you found it: event positions, offices, new ideas, regalia, recording our own history and training those who follow us in these positions.
- Medieval Ideals: Chivalry, Courtesy, Courage and more. This is what we are here for, right?
However, if we are very, very lucky- we find a nexus of a few of these Important factors (which are likely different in ranking for everyone) and that's when there is a true magic. We work, we serve, we enjoy, we laugh, we come together and we are all at our best.
- An electric socket
- Sketchy extension cords that probably violate a safety code or 5
- Gasoline generators (also sketchy)
- A breaker box (sometimes full of spiders)
- A knife switch beside the breaker box (quite satisfying to throw that switch)
- Powering that AC which makes us that sweet, sweet cold air
- Lights during night courts (heralding by torchlight truly sucks)
- Air mattress pumps
- Professional kitchens at campsites (triple double ovens- oh yeah)
- 10 Norse lads (and/or lasses as we are equal opportunity raiders) crewing a viking boat. Rowing is a lot of work and you have to have some tough arm and chest muscles to pull those oars and still move the next day.
I am, however, thankful for all of these as well. (Especially the AC and lights in the bathrooms at night).
If you believe there is actual Power to be had in the SCA- it's time to check yourself. If you attempt to use that imagined Power as a bludgeon, especially towards those of lower rank- it might be best to go find something else to do for a while.
7 comments:
Very thoughtful, relative post. Peers shape the Society. They should be aware before they overbear.
This. Exactly this. Precisely what power do you think you think you have? This is why I had a quarter sewn into the back of my first white belt - to remind me that I only had enough power to make a phone call to someone who gave a damn. (And this shows how long ago I was knighted...)
thank YOU! May I share?
Very well put. SCA "power" is no more than whatever respect one has for another. No more, no less.
Sharing is welcome, please just provide a link back to the blog.
Kristen/Maol
I was told sometime before I was squired that the difference between a white belt and 5 dollars is you can buy a cup of coffee with 5 dollars. Some folks in this game forget that it's a game and let their ego's over the color of a leather belt blind them from it.
-Cenewulf
Maybe when someone gets elevated in any way part of the ceremony should involve giving them a shiny replica coin. Have the presenter explain that while this coin is pretty and shiny on the outside underneath the shiny guilding its core is just basic pot metal. That this coin represents the new knight/baron(ess)/etc, shiny on the outside but their core is no different than the rest of the populous and that this coin should always remind them of this that we are all in this together regardless of how shiny our outer skin is .
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