I’m a proud member of the Order of the Arrow —the National Honor Society of Scouting. The OA’s mission is to recognize Scouts who live by the Scout Oath and Law and to encourage others to do the same.
My Scoutmaster and peers nominated me in 1987 when I was still a teenager and spending my summers at Scout camp.
It was an incredibly proud moment for me. A surprise I never saw coming.
At a nomination ceremony, red paint was applied to my face, which I could not remove for 24 hours.
I returned to camp two months later to complete my “Ordeal.”
To become a member of the Order of the Arrow back when I was a teenager, a Scout needed to complete an Ordeal, which amounted to:
- A 24-hour vow of silence
- A day of hard labor. For me, this meant blazing trails — cutting down trees, clearing brush, and removing boulders.
- A night spent sleeping on the ground under the stars, which sounds lovely, but on the evening of my Ordeal, it rained for much of the night, leaving me shivering in a wet sleeping bag on the muddy ground.
- Bread and water only for the 24 hours of silence and hard labor
It was an incredibly difficult weekend — an ordeal — but as I ate a hearty breakfast on Sunday morning and finally spoke to the boys with whom I had spent the previous day working, I felt like I could conquer the world.
Do something hard that few people will ever do, and you gain confidence and strength beyond measure.
When I dropped Charlie off at Scout camp this summer, I wondered how the Order of the Arrow’s Ordeal had changed since I was a boy, so I asked a young man who had recently gone through his own Ordeal.
I was thrilled to discover that nothing had changed. He, too, spent a day of hard work in silence, consuming nothing but bread and water, and he, too, spent a night sleeping in the rain.
I couldn’t have been happier.
In a world where children are more coddled than ever, it was heartwarming to see teenagers still doing this difficult thing—absent any softening or sanitizing.
I asked the Scout how he felt about the Ordeal.
He said: “I didn’t think I would make it. I almost quit more than once, but I’m so happy I didn’t. It was hard, but I’m proud of myself for making it through the weekend.”
Then he added:
“It’s funny. When I was doing my Ordeal, it felt like the worst thing in the world. But now that I look back on it, it seems pretty great.”
I know exactly how he felt. Understood it completely.
Vice President Harris is fond of saying, “Hard work is good work.”
She’s right.
It can also be life-changing work. It can be the kind of work that makes other things seem so much easier.
The kind of work you never forget.
