Last night I spoke to a group of Boy Scouts that meets out at Paul Smith’s College. <\/p>\n
The young men of Troop 12 were holding their awards ceremony, handing out badges, remembering their accomplishments of the last half-year.<\/p>\n
It was pretty cool.<\/p>\n
Here’s a confession: I was a lousy Scout. It just wasn’t my cup of tea. My group’s scout leader deserved more than a merit badge.<\/p>\n
A Nobel peace prize maybe?<\/p>\n
More recently, I’ve been uncomfortable with the Scouts’ policy of rejecting leaders and kicking out boys who are gay.<\/p>\n
Last night, though, all that baggage fell away as I watched these guys talk about their sense of mission and their responsibilities to their community.<\/p>\n
Helping a family that had lost its home in a fire; cleaning up a section of highway; gathering food for local pantries.<\/p>\n
And then getting outdoors to ski and snowshoe and winter camp.<\/p>\n
It doesn’t get much better than that. <\/p>\n
In an era when boys and their families are challenged by everything from high divorce rates to videogame drivel, a lot of young guys need all the help they can get.<\/p>\n
How long’s it been since you’ve recited the Boy Scout Oath? (I know for me it had been thirty years at least.) <\/p>\n
On my honor, I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last night I spoke to a group of Boy Scouts that meets out at Paul […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}