Eagle Scout Court of Honor

Today I attended a ceremony which I had never witnessed before: a young man from our parish became an Eagle Scout.

When I was in grade school, back in the late 1960s and early 70s, I was a Cub Scout for a couple of years.  I was attracted to it for the same reason that I suppose a lot of kids are: because the kids who already were scouts were permitted to wear their scout uniforms, rather than their school uniforms, on the days of scout meetings. They also got to march in the Memorial Day parade.  Our parents promoted it as a worthwhile activity.  All these things were outward signs of the inner reality, the nub of the matter: these other kids were in a club that I was not in.  Like a lot of kids, I didn't want to be on the outside of a club while my friends were on the inside.  Kids became altar servers or crossing guards (which we called "Safeties") for similar reasons.

So I became a Cub Scout, got the blue uniform, and started going to the meetings.  But once I was in the club, the mystery ceased being mysterious, and became, as we used to say 20 or 30 years ago, kind of lame.  I was pretty desultory about getting badges and medals (because that involved commitment and effort).  The few badges I earned didn't give me a jolt of accomplishment.  I thought the meetings and activities were kind of boring.  My dad never helped me to make my Pinewood Derby car; he thought a kid should make his own.  I ruined one of my mom's steak knives carving mine.  It's fair to say that I never went for scouting whole hog.  By fifth grade, which in those days was the age that Cub Scouts became Webelos, most of my friends had dropped out, and after one or two Webelo den meetings, I dropped out, too.

My own kids were Brownies and Cub Scouts for a couple of years when they reached the appointed ages.  I never became an actual Scout leader, but I was fairly active with my sons when they were in Cub Scouts.  I observed some of the same signs in my sons that I see now in myself: they liked the uniforms, but didn't really make a concerted effort to be a scout, and after a while they lost interest and gave it up.

Still, on the strength of that decidedly non-committal history with scouting which I've just described, I became known as the go-to cleric at our parish for anything having to do with Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts and that ilk.  It doesn't amount to much.  Our parish doesn't have a school, and doesn't sponsor a scouting troop.  But virtually all of the public and Catholic elementary schools in the area have Cub Scout troops affiliated with them (the Memorial Day parade in this town goes on forever), so some parishioners do participate in scouting.  And not just the kids: there are adults in the parish who serve as troop leaders.  

In addition, you may know that there are Catholic medals that a scout can earn.  Every few years, one of the parish kids goes for one of them.  These religious emblems require a church sponsor, and I'm the default go-to guy among the clergy for that sort of thing.  The parents do the real work of yelling at the kid to complete all the activities to earn the badge.  I review and sign their workbook of activities.  Once a year, there is a Scout Sunday (not something on the official church calendar, as far as I can tell, but somehow, the adult scout leaders in the parish know when it is, and they tell me).  On Scout Sunday all the Scouts in the parish and their adult leaders are invited to show up in uniform, be part of the Entrance Procession (complete with American and Scout flags) and sit together in reserved pews at the front of the church.  If any kid earned a Catholic medal, we call them forward and award it to them after the homily.  It's nice.  Maybe a little silly (did I mention my heart isn't really into Scouting?) but nice.  

In the Boy Scout hierarchy, Eagle Scout is, I believe, at the very top.  There have been a few Eagle Scouts in the parish during my time.  A nice young man in our parish became an Eagle Scout this afternoon.  I had been a rather small part of his Eagle Scout project: he and the guys in his Boy Scout troop did some work to expand the footprint of our food pantry.  They built some shelves and a mobile food collection cart.  They put some real work into it, and it was some good work, and it helped us expand.  In addition to the actual work, he had to go through a fair amount of Scouting rigmarole: writing a proposal, getting it accepted by the regional adult leaders, and so on.  A woman in our parish who actually runs the food pantry did a good deal more than I did to contribute to his achievement.  But as the parish liaison guy, I was the one who reviewed and signed off on his work.  

The family invited me to be a guest at the ceremony earlier today in which he was actually elevated to the rank of Eagle Scout.   Of course, I was happy to attend.  The ceremony is called the Eagle Scout Court of Honor.  And in some ways it was pretty interesting.

I use the word "ceremony" intentionally, because there was a fair amount of what I would call secular ritual involved.  This is something that I think used to be more common in American society than it is now.  One still sees secular ritual at some public events like graduations (think of the graduates marching into the gym in their caps and gowns while "Pomp and Circumstance" plays, and then walking from one of the dais to the other to receive their diploma).  When I was a kid, adult community service organizations like the Elks and the Shriners were more thriving than they are now, and I believe they all have their rituals, too.  When my father in law was an Elk, the officers in his lodge used to take part in competitive ritual tournaments (how American is that?),  competing against other Elk lodges.  As in the church, there were ritual ranks, vestments, texts and actions.  

Ritual elements were on display in the Court of Honor today as well.  The element that struck me the most are the scouting uniforms.  There are a few aspects of the Boy Scouts which are quasi-military, and the scheme of uniforms is one of them.  There are various ranks of Boy Scouts, and if one is knowledgeable (which I am not), one probably can glance at the color of the neckerchief, the insignias, the sashes and so on and discern the boy's rank.  Equally interesting to me is that the adult scout leaders also wear scout uniforms.  There may be differences in rank among the adults, too, for all I know.  They begin their meetings with a Color Guard, which involves boys posting the American flag and Scout flag at the front of the room.  Then the scouts all salute, the rest of us civilians place our hands on our hearts, and we recite the Pledge of Allegiance together.  

It's pretty rare for me to have an occasion these days to recite the pledge (cf. the lack of civic ritual in our lives these days).  Today, making the pledge moved me.  I think the situation in Ukraine has had me reflecting quite a bit lately on what the US actually stands for, and what we could be if we could figure out how to fix what's broken. 

After more ceremonial business involving candles, medals and pins, and a series of speeches, a representative from the Marine Corps - a retired veteran - was invited to speak.  He alluded to a connection between Scouts and the Marines of which I confess I wasn't previously aware, although I can easily believe that teen scouts would be on the recruiting list for any branch of the armed forces.  This Marine introduced another ritual element, cake cutting.  As he described it, it's a Marine thing whereby the oldest Marine gives his piece of cake to the youngest Marine, thereby conveying that they look out for one another (or something like that).  What disconcerted me about the cake cutting is the Marine presented the newly minted Eagle Scout with a brand new, still-in-the-box K Bar with which to cut the cake.  If you're not familiar with a K Bar, I can tell you it is a knife, it's really big, and looks deadly as hell.  It's not manufactured to cut cake; its purpose is to gut and skin the enemy.  Here in the burbs, it's not the kind of gift we typically bestow upon our teenage sons - at least, not in this house (although I'm sure we have our share of gun nuts around here).  

Eventually, the rituals and speeches wound down, we all congratulated the young man, and then we feasted on a catered dinner provided by the scout's family.  And now he's an Eagle Scout.  He's a senior in high school this year and will be off to college in the fall, where I am not certain whether the rank of Eagle Scout means anything to anyone.  But he can reflect that he's accomplished something that very few others have.