[Ansteorra] Keeping the Dream alive

[Ian Dun Gillan]

In my time with in the SCA I have learned that there is not one dream that 
is followed but many brought together by our society. Our goal should be to 
share with each other in those dreams. We should seek to create a time and 
place where chivalry, honor, integrity, and glory are more respectful and 
romanticized behaviors upheld by us all. We should all hold ourselves 
accountable and pursue bettering this game we play. We should strive to be
 more than people in funny clothes having a party.

 It is my dream to walk the fields among the pavilions and see people being 
more and better then what they are in their everyday lives, to see friends 
gathered together in good company and good fun that follows the tenants of 
this romanticized medieval life that we pursue. It is my hope that we all 
realize that we have a very special opportunity to take part in something 
special within the SCA, that this is a special place where inside each of us
 is a special dream and that we might come to honor and respect those dreams 
as much as we should honor and respect each other.

 To much of late I see people showing disrespect, or participating in lewd 
acts, I see people not taking the special efforts that those who went before
 took to make an SCA event a magical place, a place of knights and kings, 
where every woman was a lady and every man was chivalrous. We need to strive 
to change ourselves in little ways, ways to be a little kinder, to have more 
understanding, and to show it in acts of kindness, respect, and patience's.
 We need to learn to strive for and promote the humble grace, honor, and 
nobility in each of us. We need to to do more than recognize those qualities
 more than that we need to revel in them.

 Look to yourself search your heart of hearts to see if you are upholding 
the ideals of the SCA, I would challenge each of us to become a more noble 
and
 honorable person one who gives kindness, and respect with grace and 
humility. Answer this challenge and see if your idea of the dream does not
 become bigger and better and shared by others.

 Kindly,
 Ian Dun Gillan
 Baron Of Northkeep