As my time in Latvia is drawing to a close I find myself asking what legacy I will leave behind if any. The Youth I have been working with for 18 months are changed, but will they stay on the path? Will they continue to grow in freedom and express their diverse callings loud and proud? Or will they grow quiet and sink into tradition and liturgy?
Will they continue to become more chivalrous and become a new generation of modern day Knights in Latvia and by their virtue change the temperature around them or will they compromise their commitment and settle for less.
Either way I find myself in a race with time to impart the last it of my knowledge to these teenagers, hopefully empowering them to take a few steps on the path and maybe giving them a thirst for more that will last them a lifetime.
So as I am trying to take measures to ensure their growth spiritually I am also hoping that they will continue the martial training I have started with them, both as spiritual enrichment for themselves but also as an evangelistic tool for the future.
In mid June I am hosting a WSD Instructors camp consisting of three days hard core instructors training designed to empower the youth to continue running the WSD schola and the SSG Schola as study groups when I leave. In doing so I am also preassured to finish my WSD Instructors manual in the next three weeks. It is a huge job to convert, compress and refine all my martial knowledge into writing and then researching the WMA base to find the equivalent techniques referenced in medieval manuscripts.
The hardest bit is the ground fighting wich incidently is my favorite part. I am struggling to build a Fiore based (or even WMA version) of any ground work, it seems they all stopped fighting once their opponent hit the ground. Colin Hatchers reply to this is “well since they all carried a dagger once one person was grounded it was over”. Although I give this train of thought a lot of credit I doubt that there was no wrestling going on in the italian barriers, I also doubt that there was no training in it. We just haven’t got any of it recorded.
So I am facing a dilemma, in the absence of medieval refernces, do I just fill the void with modern MMA techniques or do I make assumptions based on the techniques we actually have documented and say, well if Fiore did this standing up, it kinda makes sense that he would be doing it on the ground only turned this or that way to account for the floor being in the way.
Whatever way I’ll be going with this it proves to be an interesting summer, with blue knees and sore muscles.
VIVAT!
