Scoutmaster

Now

Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we're going to be more cheerful in the future, it's because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.- Pema Chodron

Pema Chodron is a leading exponent of teachings on meditation and how they apply to everyday life. She is widely known for her charming and down-to-earth interpretation of Tibetan Buddhism for Western audiences. Pema is the resident teacher at Gampo Abbey, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the first Tibetan monastery for Westerners.

Aldo Leopold

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes - something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.
- Aldo Leopold - Thinking Like a Mountain Sand County Almanac

Aldo Leopold lived in an era when "we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf". Now we travel a great distance to hear a wild wolf howl and think ourselves fortunate if we do.
Leopold's Sand County Almanac is a collection of essays that capture the 'fierce green fire' in a philosophy that has gone on to influence a generation of environmental awareness. His thinking, once revolutionary, is now a standard measure for relating to the wilderness.

I cannot gather wood and light a fire without recalling Leopold's essay "Good Oak":

We mourned the loss of the old tree, but knew that a dozen of its progeny standing straight and stalwart on the sands had already taken over its job of wood-making. We let the dead veteran season for a year in the sun it could no longer use, and then on a crisp winter’s day we laid a newly filed saw to its bastioned base. Fragrant little chips of history spewed from the saw cut, and accumulated on the snow before each kneeling sawyer. We sensed that these two piles of sawdust were something more than wood: that they were the integrated transect of a century; that our saw was biting its way, stroke by stroke, decade by decade, into the chronology of a lifetime, written in concentric annual rings of good oak. - A Sand County Almanac

Associated Resources
Aldo Leopold Foundation
A Sand County Almanac at Amazon

Joseph Addison on Compassion, Benevolence and Humanity

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief, and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another. Every man’s natural weight of afflictions is still made more heavy by the envy, malice, treachery, or injustice of his neighbor. At the same time that the storm beats upon the whole species, we are falling foul upon one another.

Half the misery of human life might be extinguished, would men alleviate the general curse they lie under, by mutual offices of compassion, benevolence and humanity. There is nothing therefore which we ought more to encourage in ourselves and others, than that disposition of mind which in our language goes under the title of good-nature.                                                                                                               

–Joseph Addison, The Spectator, Sept. 13, 1711 in: The Works of Joseph Addison vol. 1, p. 251 (Harper’s ed. 1850).                                     

Seven Blunders - Ghandi

In human society, all violence can be traced back to these seven recurrent blunders: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles.
- Mahatma Ghandi

Associated Posts on Scoutmaster
Mohandus Ghandi

Justice and Force

Pascal's ideas are important for anyone in a position with the force of authority. The authority of Scoutmasters, parents, managers, and leaders is only legitimate when it is just.

Justice, force.–It is proper that what is just should be obeyed; it is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed. Justice without force is helpless; whereas the use of force without justice is tyrannical. Justice without force is futile, for there shall always be the wicked; but force without justice is always to be condemned. It follows that we must always combine justice and force and, to this end, what is just must always be made strong, or what is strong just.
–Blaise Pascal (June 19, 1623 – August 19, 1662)

From Wikipedia;
Educated by his father French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher Blaise Pascal was a child prodigy. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote powerfully in defense of the scientific method. He was a mathematician of the first order. Pascal helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen and corresponded with Pierre de Fermat from 1654 and later on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he abandoned his scientific work and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées.

More Good People - Good Ideas on Scoutmaster

George Washington on Tolerance

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support…

May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.

                                                                                                              

–George Washington, Letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, Aug. 18, 1790 in: The Writings of George Washington, p. 766-67.

From Harpers Magazine
                                    

Wallace Stegner

Here is an excerpt from a 1960 letter Wallace Stegner, the dean of western writers, wrote to a commission studying the preservation of wilderness in California;
Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed...  never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it.
Without any remaining wilderness we are committed wholly, without chance for even momentary reflection and rest, to a headlong drive into our technological termite-life, the Brave New World of a completely man-controlled environment.
We need wilderness preserved--as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds--because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it. It is good for us when we are young, because of the incomparable sanity it can bring briefly, as vacation and rest, into our insane lives. It is important to us when we are old simply because it is there--important, that is, simply as an idea.

Stegner's  writing defined the environmental movement. The full text of the letter can be read here.
Via Two Heel Drive

Learn Something

The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then, to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.
T. H. White, The Once and Future King, bk I: The Sword in the Stone (1938) (The wizard Merlyn to the young Arthur)

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
Thomas H. Huxley (1825 - 1895)

I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.    
Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973)

Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.    
Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

The least of learning is done in the classrooms.    
Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968)

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.    
Doris Lessing

Lessons from Sticks

Around a campfire one evening during our vespers observance I asked all the Scouts and leaders to bring a stick with them before they sat down.

Once they were seated we gathered all the sticks into a bundle. I held them as I stood before the fire. None of the sticks tried to jump out of the bundle, none of the other sticks tried to shove the others away, they all joined together without complaining.

When there's a job to be done we need to get at it without complaining. When we are together as Troop or Patrol everyone is important - no one is excluded.

I asked the SPL to select a stick and see if he could break it in two- he manged to do this very easily. I then handed him the bundle and asked him to break all of the sticks at once- try as he could it was impossible.

A single stick is easy to break, but a bundle of sticks can't be broken. We are strong when we keep together. We can stand up to greater challenges and bear more difficulties as a Troop or Patrol than as individuals.

The SPL then chose a stick and I asked him to bend it. Some sticks bend, some break.

Learning to adapt our skills in changing circumstances and tempering our strength with flexibilty makes us valuable members of our Troop and Patrol.

The bundle of sticks were then laid on the fire.

Warmth, support and encouragement come from working together - just as these sticks bring light, heat and cheer to the fire.

Once the sticks are burning one is removed and laid apart on the ground.

On our own the spark of intensity dims. We need the support and encouragement of our Troop and Patrol to maintain our enthusiasm.

S-Supporting each other Sustains our Spirit.
T-Together we can Take on any Task
I- Intensity Increases when everyone is Included
C-Combined Courage Combats Challenges
K-Keep flexible in changing circumstances
S-Stay at it! Stick together!

Quotes II

The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
  - Willa Cather

I am not young enough to know everything.
  - Oscar Wilde