Lessons in Fencing

Today I was preparing a lesson for our FHE (a night students get together and have a spiritual thought and activity), based on the thought of scripture study. I found a talk that brought up some very valid points, and found some suggestions to give to the other students on how to tailor their scripture study to themselves. One of the ideas that was given was to define the unknown terms, so you understand what the scripture is saying.

In fencing, we recently learned a lot of different attacks, parries, and defences. The first day of class, she had some of the TA's demonstrate what we would be learning, and called out moves for them to do, and I sat back and wondered "will I ever get it all strait?" Today in class, I was thinking "I should find someone to practice with that can help me." I thought about it and realized that I don't know anyone who could help me practice. No one knows how to do anything I would need practice with. I could go up to my good friend SG and say "Hey, I need help with practicing fencing, so do an advance, and then feint four to six, then do a ballestra, and I'm going to retreat, then parry 4 and 6, and to a Passata-sotto. Ready, go!" but he would have no idea what any of that was, and no idea how to help me out. Even just a basic idea of what the term meant wouldn't be any help.

And then I put the two together.

Fencing can be like scripture study. There are a lot of terms in both that people might not understand. those people who have more practice with scriptural terms understand more of what is going on, and don't need to learn as much. similarly, I have a friend L (she got married recently, and I don't know her new last name), who has been fencing from the dawn of time, and understands what a passata-sotto, a bellestra, and many other things that I've never heard of are. As we get more practiced, we understand more, and can do more without help.