Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Tadhg's Preferred Geographic Area 
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 19:40:05

    Pagan le Chaunster wrote:

 JG> I very much like the sound of Ordo Fraterculi Trinitatis. I can see
 JG> myself hating the 2 am rising for Matins, and I can also see that
 JG> being part of the re-creation.  I'd like to be part of something like
 JG> that.

 I've been gotten up at 2 a.m. for less entertaining reasons....
 
 JG> First, let me transform the order into something more like Abbess
 JG> Hild's establishment at Whitby, for in a double monastery I need not
 JG> worry so much about the gender incongruities of being a sister in a
 JG> brotherhood.
 
 As is common in Latin, the male noun is used in referring to mixed-gender
 groups. Hence "fraterculus" is quite non-restrictive.  Besides, gender
 discrimination is a Romish innovation; we Celts are agin it.
 
 JG> Then, well, I'm short-sighted.  I've worn corrective lenses since I
 JG> was six, and without them I get edgy and somewhat agoraphobic.  I feel
 JG> that if I'm doing this seriously that should be a part of my persona
 JG> play, but it is something I find unpleasant enough that it'd probably
 JG> prevent me from playing.  Glasses aren't appropriate that early on in
 JG> the piece, and fiddling with contact lenses at 2 am would really
 JG> dispell the atmosphere, which is counterproductive since I'd be in
 JG> this to learn something of how it *feels* and not just how it can be
 JG> made to look.
 
 This is at the heart of the distinction that I make between People Who Are
 Serious and People Who Are Just In A Play.  Most SCA folk are Just In A
 Play: They put their costumes on and drag out their props for a weekend,
 give an extended scene and speak their lines, and then go take a shower
 and change and bitch about everybody else's performance. Kind of like an
 amateur theatrical troupe. That's not why I'm in the SCA.
 
 I'm trying to understand medieval people. One path to such understanding
 is experiencing what they experienced, and then extrapolating from that to
 an entire lifetime. Being myopic is something that people in period had to
 cope with; and they couldn't put the glasses back on when the weekend was
 over. My eyes (before the surgery) were -4.25 myopia + .75 astigmatism in
 the left and -5.75 myopia + 1.75 astigmatism in the right. I can't
 remember a time that I didn't wear glasses. I take them off and try to
 cope. One of the reasons for my choice of persona is that the religious
 life would have been one of the few "careers" open to a person with my
 lack of visual acuity.
 
 JG> The second main concern is the one people kept telling me until it
 JG> finally made an impression: these things may be what you or I or
 JG> whoever would like the SCA to be, but we are not the only people in
 JG> the SCA.  The SCA is a heterogenous group, gathering together many
 JG> people who want very different things and trying to fit as many of
 JG> them in as it can (or so it seems: corrections are welcome, cynicism I
 JG> can do on my own).
 
 Heed not the sophistries of nominalists, and I do not say that in jest.
 The SCA is not just a generic organization that exists only as the vector
 sum of everybody's interests who happen to be in it at the time; it is an
 organization with a purpose, that purpose is stated quite clearly (even if
 not in great detail) in its governing documents. Those things that tend to
 promote its declared goals are Good, and those things that tend to
 undermine the accomplishment of its declared goals are Bad. That's the
 long and the short of it. Either the SCA is an organization devoted to the
 study and selective re-creation of the Middle Ages, as its governing
 documents proclaim, or it is not; I do not choose to be part of an
 organization that would have so great a hypocrisy at its very heart, and
 so I do not accept the "we can do what we want to because *we're* the SCA
 and we want to do it" concept as a legitimate viewpoint.
 
 JG> Who gets schismatic now and then, and gets told that the local area can't 
 JG> support competing groups ("No more splits!" is the cry).  Not sure that I 
 JG> agree, but don't currently have the energy to test this hypothesis.
 
 "People's Front of Judea, not Judean People's Front! (Splitters....!)"
 
 Tadhg, Obelisk
 
 --- Msg V4.5
 * Origin: Herald's Point * Steppes/Ansteorra * 214-699-0057 (1:124/4229)
 
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