TheGong

Will make an OA "Legend Belt" for anyone interested. Price is set at $50. See pictures. Comment or PM me for details

If you actually look deeply at the STEM Program you will see that it is about kids looking at the world around them and discovering what and how things work. This go's hand in hand with the outdoor program. Yes there are some aspects that are "inside" activities but by and by the STEM Program works best in an outdoor setting.

The Fees really depend on what you get at camp. I know when my lodge (Agaming Maangogwan) goes to camp Rotary in Clare MI we pay more money but what do we get? 1) Food cooked by the year round professional staff 2) A very large dinning hall with full basement 3) At least 2 cabins Now we are at camp to do service for the camp, (remember the OA was started at a summer camp and one of our core principles is to promote and support the council camping program) but we get so much back from the camp that our cost may go up but we still get a discounted price.

So to go off another thread, the recent changes to the Venturing Program drastically changes the initial purpose and intent of the program. It is my understanding (but I may be wrong) that the point of Venturing is freedom. The choice to do what you want, when you want, with whom you want (so long as it falls under the guide to safe scouting, YPT, ect). This model, although never very successful, was still the main factor for joining Venturing (it is why I joined and many others in my Crew). With the changes to the program I see that the very essence of the program has been ripped ou

I like the thought of the contest where people write their own ceremony and submitted them and take the best elements of each. We would get an amalgam of a ceremony that in the end would hopefully be a meaningful and not so contrived ceremony.

So it looks like most lodges who do this have a year round necklace that people continually add to, but what we do is just a token like your ordeal arrow that you only where while doing your brotherhood.

So in 2012 when my lodge merged with 3 others we decided to create a brotherhood token much like the Ordeal Arrow. We thought that since the Ordeals have their arrows, and the Vigils have their cookies then why don't the brotherhoods have bars? Each Brotherhood candidate gets a set of two horizontal red bars that hang around their neck. I was just wondering if any other lodges do something like this?

In my troop once you became an Eagle Scout you were allowed to be a JASM, but I broke the status quo in that instead I became the OA rep as I was just elected to serve as a Lodge Officer. Since turning 18 I have not seen any Eagles from my troop become a JASM.

I feel that it is for those who coach, preform, and live for the ceremonies but aren't the ceremonies for all members and should be easily understood for all members? The beauty of our ceremonies is in their simplicity but also in the way that they can move you and you can understand them, but there are also some mystery's that keep us in debate. Why do we talk about Shakespeare to this day? Because he wrote good stories that can be grasped by everyone.

As far as the knife test goes I have seen someone faint because of the fake blood however if you are clear in the lines leading up to it and you continually explain that nothing bad will happen to the candidates during the brotherhood hike then there shouldn't be a problem.

Well what I mean is that instead of calling the new person in the story his new name you could just pick an old one. Although I would not have gone with the story route at all, Brotherhood is a continuation of the Ordeal, a commitment to the Order. Why tell a story about brotherhood when you goal during the ceremony is to test/have the candidates prove themselves as embodiment's of the W.W.W. For this story to work you have to be very familiar with the Legend and be able to follow a new offshoot of it. How many Vigil members can even give the main parts of the Legend???? Let alone Brother

In the first written version of the Ordeal there were at least 6 principles in the ceremony. Why not bring one of them back into the story?

So I think that the old ceremony needed to be changed and this new ceremony takes a completely opposite approach to how to explain brotherhood. I think there needs to be a middle ground somewhere. Keep some of the traditions such as how they great each other in the old ceremony, keep the old closing, and combine everything else from the new one.