Some time ago I wrote an essay about how serving as the Minister of Arts and Sciences in the College of Bellewode, a small branch of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) located in northern Missouri, had changed me for the better. I took the job so that I would have a voice in shaping the group after a number of members I looked up to moved away. I was scared of the responsibility and unsure if I could live up to it. I realized pretty quickly that I’d taken the job for all the wrong reasons, but that the role I was in was far more important than the role I’d thought I was taking. Being in a leadership role wasn’t about empowering me, it was about empowering other people. My job was to encourage and lift up the people around me, and when I understood that I realized that though I wasn’t perfect, I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I love my people fiercely.
Tomorrow morning the members of Bellewode will get up early and start setting up for their yearly event, a day of classes on heraldry, illumination and dance followed by a ball. I wish I could be there, both in my old role as a member and in a new role as a guest, a visitor without responsibilities, there just to enjoy the day. Instead I am hundreds of miles away, missing the people I left behind.
Learning about leadership wasn’t the only gift the four years in Bellewode gave me. When I joined the group, I thought I had wandered into a dream. Part of me had been looking for the SCA all my life, and there it was. The girl who had attended two dances during the whole of middle school and high school and refused to actually dance at either was not just dancing but would eventually be teaching others to dance. The girl who never talked started rattling on to strangers so that she could share these activities she loved.
It was not all rainbows and kittens. All groups inevitably have conflicts. I had to sort out arguments between other people and make amends for my own missteps. I had to study my values and weigh those with my responsibilities. I discovered that many of the people I’d looked up to had moved away, and suddenly people were looking up to me. College is a microcosm of life, where you go from being the youngest recruit to a seasoned veteran in four incredibly short years. For me, Bellewode was a huge part of that growing process.
Anyway, if you’re anywhere near Kirksville Missouri tomorrow, go and dance for me. I’ll be dancing with invisible partners in my kitchen. And when post revel comes around, if you listen hard enough you might just hear me singing from Vermont.