Last week I was honored to receive the Spirit of Scouting Award from the Hawk Mountain Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Following is the brief talk I gave. In the photo at left is the award, which has a special place in my study, along with a Scout Handbook from the 1930s and a mug that was given to me by former Leesport Scoutmaster Smokey Wenrich after he visited the Baden-Powell House in England. Robert Baden-Powell started the Scouting program.
Some people know I like to preach.
My kids know, but they are grown up and on their own, so it’s difficult to preach to them.
I no longer am writing a weekly column for the newspaper, so my congregation for those messages is reduced.
So it’s good to have this opportunity today to talk briefly from this pulpit.
For those of you who understand how the Scouting program works, consider this my Scoutmaster’s minute.
There’s a lot I could say about the real meaning of the spirit of scouting.
There’s no better definition than this:
It’s doing the right thing.
Isn’t that true about everything in life? It should be about doing the right thing.
Some people may tell you it’s not always easy to do that right thing, but I will tell you doing the right thing should be easy. It’s a better choice than doing the wrong thing. It’s a better choice than doing nothing at all.
Lou Holtz, the football coach and motivational speaker, said:
There’s never a right time to do the wrong thing.
And there’s never a wrong time to do the right thing.
I learned that while growing up, was reminded of it in Scouting, and I’ve applied it in many other parts of my life, including in my job as editor of the Reading Eagle. It’s how I survived the stress of being a newspaper editor. It’s why I shared my faith with readers. It’s why I wrote about my experience as a caregiver for my wife, because by telling people about my challenges and trials in life, others were able to relate and gain hope in their lives.
In the process, I also learned to shape and understand what was important in my own life.
In Scouting, we put emphasis on the scout law – trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent – and the Scout Oath, which reminds us to keep ourselves physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.
That’ all part of doing the right thing.
During my experience as an adult at the troop level, there were two important principles we followed:
When there were conflicts, we always asked, “What’s in the best interest of the boys?”
And we reminded ourselves constantly to lead by example. And in life, just as in Scouting, it’s not about judging people or telling them how to live, it’s about showing others how to live through the way we live our own life.
So I will leave you with this poem, which shaped a lot of what we followed in Scouting. It’s “The Bridge builder” and was written by a woman named Will Allen Dromgoole about 100 years ago.
An old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fears for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your time with building here.
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way.
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head.
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followed after me today
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been as naught to me,
To that fair youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim —
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him.”
Let’s build bridges. It’s the right thing to do.
(Following is the link to the story published by the Reading Eagle.)
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