So pleased that Alex has joined the Boy Scouts and was invested on Friday evening. Dan and I went with him to watch the event, in a tucked-away Scout Hut, where an old boy scouter, Terry, who must be 70 if he is a day, manages to corrall a crowd of scruffy boys, make them stand in their patrols, make them all salute him, and then gives them a ton of fun every Friday evening. I take my hat off to him. It was only Alex's third time going, but his friends who have been there for a while rave about it. The moment the evenings get a bit lighter, all the meetings are held outdoors and involve being in the woods, lighting fires, learning outdoor skills. For now they seem to play wild games in the Scout Hut, and build things.
The investment included having to walk across a rickety plank bridge set up across some chairs, and then the usual exchange of questions and the promise, said with right hand held up by the ear in the three-fingered Scout salute.
"Do you know what your honour is?" "Yes"
"So you can be trusted?" "Yes"
"Do you know the Scout Law?" "Yes"
"Do you know the Scout promise?"
"On my honour,
I promise that I will try my best
to do my duty to God and the Queen,
to help other people,
and to keep the Scout law."
In this very secular country where we now live, it amazed me to hear not only Alex but several other boys as well (!) promising to do their duty to God and the Queen. OK, they probably don't mean it... all of them... but, there they are, forty boys on a Friday night, laughing, playing, saluting an old man and showing him respect, inspecting their gangly green-cloth arms patched with tens of badges,
under the banner of promises of honour and trust. This is Good.
I am so glad Alex is a Scout. And I am grateful for Terry and others like him, who give their time, to give boys a chance to live well.
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