Ceremonies in Junior Leader Training

Ceremonies in Scouting are best when they involve the participants emotionally and even spiritually. Scout ceremonies, around the campfire or deep in the woods, should touch on ongoing themes in the lives of youth, like belonging, identity, self-expression, success, independence, and personal values.

An effective ceremony is part myth and ritual, perhaps invisibly echoing long-lost rites of passage that our forbearers took part in at times beyond our cultural memory. They can remind participants of the great values of love, acceptance, personal growth, spirituality, cooperation, and togetherness which are available to them in the best moments of Scouting.

In White Stag, for example, we use The Order of the Still to encourage solemnity and personal reflection. Ceremonies can touch the tap root of each individual, to reach them where words cannot.

This article was excerpted and adapted from the leadership sourcebook, "Follow the White Stag," which contains over 60 pages about the spirit and traditions that this particular program has grown over the years. This book shows how you can grow your own spirit and traditions.

Some of the White Stag traditions are part myth and ritual, echoing long-lost rites of passage that our forbearers took part in at times beyond our cultural memory. Moving ceremonies use the archetypes explained by famous psychiatrist Carl Jung to indoctrinate participants into the White Stag culture of love, acceptance, personal growth, spirituality, cooperation, and togetherness. The Order of the Still is but one example of the many traditions that do this. Ceremonies should attempt to touch the tap root of each individual, to reach them where mere words cannot.

In White Stag, we strive to set a precedent or standard with our ceremonies in such a way that a participant's life will be made fuller and richer. We do this using the White Stag Spirit, the spirit of the Scout Oath and Law, and the Venture Code, and to reinforce a learner's own positive values and beliefs.. In our program, we weave the legendary trail of the White Stag into the program

Each unit can create its own history from which it can borrow: the legendary 50-miler completed in two days, the summer camp where it rained every day, the fording by rope traverse of the rain-swollen river that no one else could get past.