| Last Sunday as I was finishing my run through Tree Tops Park with my
running buddy, I saw a neighbor standing in her garage doorway about to get her
newspaper. Unfortunately the years had not been kind to her. She was walking with
a walker and one eye was closed. Over the years I had seen her taking care of her
house and she had always appeared quite friendly, but in her present condition
she could no longer see me from where I ran along the road. Without thinking, I
picked up the Sunday paper and quickly brought it to her. God bless you, she
said, as I handed her the paper. I was astonished by the sincerity of those words
as I realized that it would have taken her quite some time to walk to the paper
and pick it up in her condition. As I caught up with Steve, my running buddy, I
commented that I had fulfilled my scouting good turn for the day and it wasn t
even 8 a.m. He jokingly replied, Now you can be a jerk the rest of the day. At
first I laughed but the more I thought about what had transpired, the more I
thought about what the meaning of what scout spirit really is. Scout spirit
doesn't mean how many little old ladies you help across the street or pick up the
Sunday paper for. It does not mean how many meetings or campouts you attend or
how many merit badges you obtain. Scout spirit means that we live by the Scout
Oath and Law twenty-four hours a day and uphold the pledge we make as scouts to
hold ourselves up to a higher standard, or as the Hebrew National people say, We
hold ourselves up to a higher authority. So don t just wait for the obvious
situation such as the little old lady and the newspaper to exercise your scout
spirit, but create your own situations to live the scouting life and practice
scout spirit twenty-four hours a day,seven days a week. By doing so we all answer
to a higher authority. |
