The Evidence of Eagles

Most of us at some point or another have met a young man who proudly includes in his credentials of his youth that he is an “Eagle Scout”. If you are not familiar with the program of the Boy Scouts of America, that might sound like a strange thing to list as great accomplishments of youth. But there is no question that Eagle Scouts are a unique classification of youth who carry that distinction with a unique pride. It seems that once a boy adds that credential to their resume, they carry that honor with them forever.

In brief, the Boy Scouts program is an international youth organization organized to develop good values, community spirit and leadership in boys that will help them become better citizens in manhood. It is a program that is over 100 years old and that has chapters all over the world. When a boy starts in the scouting program, he works his way up a series of ranks, each of which is progressively more difficult to achieve.

The highest rank of any boy scout is the Eagle rank. Statistics tell us that of the thousands of boys that enter the Boy Scouts program, only 3% are able to achieve that final rank and be able to stand proudly and say “I am an Eagle Scout.” And it is more than just an honor that stays within the BSA. Being an Eagle Scout can be listed on college applications, it can help with advancement in the military and become part of a man’s employment resume right along with time in the military and college experience. It is that valuable to a young man.

When a young man reaches the threshold of this prestigious rank, the requirements of him are high. Boys who wish to get over this final hurdle must work at it usually for over a year to accomplish what is required of them to put that Eagle pin on their uniform. And at the very heart of these strenuous requirements is the concept of community service.

Community service is an integral part of every aspect of the program the Boy Scouts organization puts together for the boys. At each step along the path of advancement, some “service hours” are required of the boys. It is so much a natural part of the way a boy scout thinks that many recreational activates are organized around service projects so the boys come to understand that being in community service is just part of being a citizen. And it can be fun too.

But to make the rank of Eagle, the candidate must complete his “Eagle Project”. This is a distinctive project that must be of significant community value. The process of even getting that Eagle Project approved is strict and held to a high standard. And once the boy has his project approved, it will take weeks if not months to complete it.

Typical Eagle projects include the complete repainting of a community service building, planting trees in a public park, landscaping all of the open areas in a church or organizing a community wide blood drive. There is no question that Eagle Projects make a positive impact on the community. And when a boy successfully completes that project and has turned in all of his requirements to become an Eagle Scout, he will look back with pride on that project and often take family members, friends and show his children and grandchildren that project with pride because he is able to say “that was my Eagle Project.”

So look around the community. Odds are you won’t look far before you will see the impact of the Eagle program in your town. The Boy Scouts make sure the best of their best leave a mark on the community. They want to be sure that wherever their finest leaders can be found, there you will find the evidence of Eagles.

The Church as Good Neighbor

There has been a lot of discussion going on about whether religion should be part of public life. This kind of theoretical discussion can be thrown around on national television shows. But anyone who lives in a community in any town in this country knows that the church is as vital a part of any community as the town hall, the library or the local swimming pool.

Whether you have religious convictions or not, the role of the church in community life is impossible to ignore. Most churches have as part of their core reason for being that they will reach out to the community in a wide variety of ways to help the needy and provide comfort to those in need of help in the community in which they reside.

Since this country was founded, the church has been a gathering place where important public factions take place. Just take a walk around Boston where the nation was born and you will notice that many of the important public landmarks that were part of the start of this country were churches. To a church, participating in community service is just as natural as a policeman helping a lost child get home. It just is part of who they are what they do.

If you have a community service project in mind, it is never a bad place to start to go to the church and meet with their administrative board. The church knows that if you improve the community, you make people feel more part of the lives of others. And people who want to be involved in the lives of others get out and go to church. So it just makes good sense for your local church, temple or synagogue to be a vital part of any community service project that can make your town a better place to live.

It is important to understand the role the church can play in any community service project in town. The church is probably not the place to go to get massive funding for a huge public works project. But don’t count the church out as a funding resource because within the church there may be many influential and wealthy citizens who might be ready to kick in their fair share to make the town a better place to live.

The church, if it is a vital and living religious body, has at its disposal a strong community of enthusiastic members and the ability to mobilize those members to get out and make a difference in the community. The pastor or priest of the local church has the pulse of his or her congregation and he or she knows how to get them moving on an exciting project and, by the way, how to turn them against one just as fast.

So when you go to the local church to discuss that community service project, think of what means the most to that religious institution. They are not motivated by property values, marketing statistics or traffic the project might generate. A church is interested in the people who might be touched and if the project gives them the ability to make a positive impact on the community. That kind of influence will help people feel open to coming to church again and that is what makes churches grow.

So we should look at churches as places that have a tremendous value to any community service project we might need to get started. As people motivators, they cannot be beat. Church members are joiners and doers and they as a rule can be trusted with money, equipment and responsibility. Churches have small communities such as the youth group, the ladies circle or the men’s fellowship that by themselves can take on a community service project and make it a success. So if you have plans to start a project that is going to make a positive mark on your community, remember a church can always be counted on to be a good neighbor.

Teens on a Mission from God

One of the many great lines from the classic movie The Blues Brothers was one that was delivered by Dan Ackroyd when he was explaining the importance of their need to get their blues band back together. He always explained that it was because, “We’re on a mission from God.”

But humor aside, across this country from literally thousands of churches each summer, youth groups head out on trips, some far away and some across town to offer community service in the name of their mission of spreading the word about their faith. Now whether you subscribe to the religious views of these many bright eyed teenagers, you have to admit that seeing such an army of youth spending their summer weeks working to help others rather than just hanging out at the pool or making trouble for their parents is a positive thing for everyone concerned.

From a religious perspective, one of the great values of a mission trip for teenagers is that it gives them a chance to genuinely use their faith in service of others. Most religious doctrines include a dedication to service to mankind in one form or another. Most of the mission trips that are sponsored from American churches are Christian in nature. And the Christian faith definitely includes teaching that all followers should reach out to the poor and to those less fortunate than themselves as part of their devotion to God.

So taking an organized group of young people out to offer service to the poor, to another culture or even overseas to a disadvantaged area makes those teachings from the church much more real. Even for those who may not subscribe to Christianity, it is clear that a faith that gets out and puts its muscle into community service is a faith that, to borrow a phrase, “puts it money where its mouth is.”

Beyond the religious aspects of the value of such mission trips, there are many tremendous values that are the outcome of mobilizing a group of teenagers to go and help others as part of a community service effort.

Some of those values are…

• It teaches the value of work. When youth are given shovels or paint brushes and they have to work 8-10 hours in the hot sun to help other people, they learn a lot about what hard work means and the great things that can come from hard work. This is a lesson that can never been taught as well via lectures or reading a book. It is a lesson best caught not taught.

 

• It teaches them to work together. Community service projects almost always involves working in teams. As teens begin to bond with their fellow missionaries that are both other teens who are older and younger and with hard working adults, those divisions between generations and between each other melt away as they work hard and enjoy the fun of really doing something worthwhile.

 

• It gives them a glimpse into the lives of others. Universally when teenagers return from a mission trip, they come back changed after seeing how others less fortunate than they live. This is a big growing experience and one that will only happen in a dramatic, face to face encounter such as they have on the mission field.

We cannot overlook that one of the big values of putting tens of thousands of teenagers into the field to do community service each summer is that many poor, disadvantaged or down and out people get much needed help from an army of kids eager to serve because they are doing it from their reverence for their religious beliefs. The bonding that happens on mission trips isn’t just between the team and each other and it’s leadership. Those receiving the help will bond with the mission teams in ways that none involved will ever forget. And that has value that are probably even greater than the work that got done. Those are eternal values.

Taking the Hell out of Hell’s Angels

If you have bikers in your community, you can relate to that sense of anxiety you might feel when you see them riding in tandem down one of your city streets. If they are part of a “gang”, they might be wearing the uniform of a biker with the black leather, the emblems of skulls, tattoos and other things that can be pretty frightening as they ride along on their motorcycles.

The image of bikers being dangerous and maybe destructive goes back a long way. You may not know that the origin of motorcycle clubs comes from the post World War II time frame. Many veterans who came back from that conflict with battle related issues found solace in being with others like them doing some “male bonding”. They found the motorcycle and in particular the Harley Davidson motorcycle and that gave them a shared interest that eventually developed into what we eventually recognize as a motorcycle gang.

Now the history of motorcycle gangs is not always pretty. It is true that one of the big motorcycle gangs in the fifties and the sixties were the infamous Hell’s Angels. And those original members of that club were pretty dangerous individuals. But there was a code of ethics to being a biker because they shared the battle experience. They were and are tremendously loyal to each other. And it may surprise you to know that bikers as a rule are quite patriotic and can be outspoken in defense of the country and its interests.

But as the years have gone by, even though it doesn’t seem that the image of the motorcycle gang member has changed, how they view themselves and how they want to make their contribution so society has changed a great deal. The truth is that many bikers have a strong sense of social consciousness, environmental awareness and they are often the first to respond to the needs of others in times of trouble.

Bikers express these values through dozens of community service projects each year. But these are not citizens who seek the limelight or the praise of others. They pitch in and help out with service projects that they feel passionate about in their own quiet and efficient way. And they almost never receive the recognition they deserve for the good things they do in society.

Each year around Thanksgiving, there is a tradition in many cities around the country for the local biker community to organize a “toy run”. As with anything else they do, the biker community makes this event all their own. Often they will gather on a particular Sunday morning with their toys ready to go. The toy of choice is a large stuffed animal or doll that can be strapped proudly to the front of the motorcycle as the parade begins. At a specified time the biker caravan departs riding in tandem in a long procession that can be miles long to take those toys to the point of distribution to give them to the poor or those who cannot afford such things for Christmas.

This kind of dedication to community service is a deep part of the ethical values that is what it means to be a part of the biker community. Throughout the year, bikers will perform hundreds of small acts of community service that never get reported or become part of an organized effort. Whether it is stopping to help out those in need on the highway or performing clean up or improvements in the nation’s parks, the biker community shows its commitment to the environment and to the community in dozens of quiet ways.

So when you see those menacing looking bikers on your city streets, maybe you can smile and give them a friendly wave. Because while they often look tough and menacing, these are fellow citizens who care deeply about each other and about the communities in which they live. And just knowing that can go a long way to take the “hell” out of the Hell’s Angels for all of us.

Real Patriotism

Patriotism is a word that has gotten a lot of use in the last few years as more and more people try to define what patriotism is based on how much you fly your flag and how many magnets you have on your car. But the expression of patriotism we show at the fourth of the July when we cut loose with those fireworks or we shout in agreement at stirring patriotic speeches are not the kind of patriotism that makes this country as great as it is.

This is not to say that there is no place for that kind of patriotic expression. To be able to express devotion to country openly is one of our rights. And when all citizens of this country can do that in agreement, it builds community and the kind of pride that makes the nation strong.

There is a phrase that one of the army divisions uses to explain to anybody who asks what makes that unit so brave and able to do such amazing things in battle or whenever called into duty. It is a very simple phrase but one that is full of meaning. It simply says “deeds not words.”

The concept of deeds being the true substance of patriotism is nowhere better shown than in the many acts of community service that go on in this country every week of the year. All over this great land, clubs, Boy Scout troops, churches, businesses and every imaginable kind of organization go into the community to do service projects to make their communities a better place to live.

Maybe this doesn’t seem like patriotism because we tend to associate patriotism with love of the country as a whole. But none of us live in the country as a whole. Each of us lives in a community that taken together make this wonderful country as great as it is. The country isn’t great because it photographs well from space. It is great because in little towns and small cities and big metropolises and out in the country, Americans get out and find ways to help each other and to help their communities grow and continue to prosper.

That spirit of community service is always on display when you see moments of crisis in part of the country. We see situations every week where there is a tornado here or a fire there or a lost child in one small town or a family who loses everything in another. When we see that, without fail, you see the local community rally to the aid of those who lost the most. In fact, when the national media does their job of letting us know when the need is great, the nation as a whole will pitch in and do all they can to help out their neighbors in another state, even though these are neighbors they have never met and that they will never see again.

Obviously dramatic events like the 911 attacks show that kind of spirit most dramatically. At the local level, even in a town like New York City, on the sight where there was tremendous danger and loss of life everywhere, those New Yorkers became what we all are. They became Americans and even with the threat of more danger, they got in there and helped the wounded. And then day by day, week by week, those Americans set upon a community service project to end all community service projects as they began to put those neighborhoods back together again and make a community out of what terrorists turned into a war zone.

But the local community service is not the end of the story. Soon from all over America, from small towns and big cities, armies of volunteers, coordinated by wise agencies that we depend on in times like these, moved into New York to lend their hands, neighbor to neighbor to help rebuild that city. Never mind if that mother from Peoria knew about New York or agreed with them politically. She saw a neighbor in pain and a town attacked by an enemy. And Americans come together when we need each other. That is the heart of what makes community service work. And that is the true meaning of patriotism.