Order of the Arrow.
I loved Boy Scouts! It was a great experience for me in many ways. I became Eagle Scout in 1968 at age fifteen. I still have fond memories of working hard for sometimes hundreds of hours to get a pin, a medal, or a patch. It felt so good to complete the task! I still have my coat, completely covered in patches in my closet.
Once you have earned an award, it gives you a feeling of accomplishment which is sweet (Proverbs 13:19), but it also gives you a feeling of comradery with others who have earned the same award.
I would spend hours at the scout rifle range trying to get a perfect score of fifty—ten bulls-eyes in a row! As I earned various pins for marksmanship, I would begin to notice other boys wearing the same pin. Almost like magic, we were drawn to each other to talk and become friends. Without a word being spoken about it, we each knew the hours of patience and practice and discipline the other had endured. It made us “brothers.”
I remember one year when I earned the Order of the Arrow! To get this award, you had to be isolated for 24 hours in the woods without food and you could not say one word. That was almost forty years ago, and I don’t recall all the details of it, but that was the general idea. If you made it through this ordeal, you, brave warrior, could wear the arrow sash! This put you in a class just under God with the other scouts! You were a man now!
Over the years, I’ve earned various awards like three chess tournament trophies in high school and letters for tennis, but the past twelve months, July 2006 through July 2007, I’ve earned many that will make me “brothers” with millions of people both dead and alive. You would have to be there to understand.
I have been through the ordeal of public arrest; court; jail; front-page news; diesel therapy; solitary confinement; lousy food and beds; cold showers; loud, obnoxious swearing cell mates; snoring cell mates; uncertainty; “the hole;” “the tank;” ugly jump suits; freezing cells; some arrogant, power-hungry guards without compassion; stand-up counts; claustrophobia in seven-by-twelve-foot cells locked in twenty-three hours per day; hunger; tears by the bucket; long lonely days and nights; blaring televisions broadcasting dumb shows announcing “You are not the father!”; “recreation” with an egg-shaped, slick basketball in a chain link cage; “inspections” where guards just take whatever they want; recorded phone calls; “visits” through a glass on a phone that is forty-years-old; and breakfast that is the same bland stuff every day at 4:30 a.m.
I have seen guys fight over dumb stuff, worn “the jewelry” of handcuffs and leg shackles, taken five-hour bus rides in chairs and shaved with the cheapest razor on earth. I’ve seen guys get tattooed with burned paper mixed with deodorant and pushed under the skin with a staple sharpened on the dirty concrete. I’ve seen many get staph infections that way.
I’ve seen the look on men’s faces when the judge gives them twenty years, or their wife writes for a divorce. I’ve sat and cried and prayed with grown men whose lives were coming unglued. I’ve seen men light smuggled cigarettes with a battery and a razor blade. I’ve heard how drugs have destroyed men’s lives as well as their family. I’ve seen the men with rotten teeth from dope.
I’ve had to kneel on the floor and back up to the little hole in the door to be handcuffed behind my back to move ten feet to take a shower. I’ve sat on the freezing toilets with no privacy.
I’ve seen the warden take a good man’s furlough away the night before for no reason other than because he felt like it. Even though plane tickets had been purchased and plans had been made for six months and it was for the nine-year-old daughter’s birthday, who hadn’t hugged her dad in six years!
I’ve been in rooms where an idiot painted latex paint over oil-base paint and watched as it pealed off in big sheets. I’ve been searched and strip searched, “breath-a-lyzed” and drug tested. I’ve slept on old lumpy two inch thick mattresses with no pillow in rooms of concrete and steel that echo with every whisper.
I’ve seen guys heat water with a “stinger,” make rope out of garbage bags, and pass notes between cells on a bar of soap. I’ve used a roll of toilet paper for a pillow. I’ve been crammed in a ten by twelve foot room with twenty men while the guards slowly did their job between telling hunting stories.
I’ve sharpened my pencils on the concrete floor and gone days with no paper or pencil because the CO (correctional officer) was too lazy to get one for me. I’ve seen “counselors” ignore inmates’ urgent requests for attorney calls.
I’ve strained to understand the guard’s unintelligible announcements over the scratchy PA system. I’ve swept the floor with a twenty year old broom that is two feet tall and has eleven straws left. I’ve brushed my teeth with the lousiest toothpaste on earth with a brush two-and-one-half inches long. I’ve been moved four times—always the day before commissary—and I arrive the day after commissary at the new location. I’ve seen scores of men sleep on the floor due to the tremendous overcrowding. I’ve tried to shave looking in the “mirror” that is a badly scratched cookie sheet bolted to the wall. I’ve worn the pink underwear because some idiot in the laundry washed it with the orange jump suits.
I’ve been fingerprinted six times and filled out the very same form seven times. I’ve watched as inmates try to plaster vents shut with wet toilet paper to keep the freezing-cold air out. I’ve heard the sickening mechanical, heartless thud over 1,000 times, as the heavy steel door locks to seal you in. I’ve seen miles of razor wire on acres of chain link fences. I’ve been moved hundreds of miles from my family for no reason, by a system that doesn’t care. I know full well the feeling of being hopelessly trapped in the belly of a great beast who really doesn’t worry about anyone in it. I know the long days and nights of yearning to hold my family in my arms.
But, I have seen men come humbly to God and grow in ways that are miraculous. Yes, I’ve earned a few badges this year and now I’m brother to about thirty million other Americans, plus countless others worldwide throughout the centuries, who have the same badge! I will use it to win souls. The badge feels good—because God does give grace for the test!
By Kent E. Hovind, in a Federal Prison in South Carolina
May 20, 2007
I Corinthians 4
I Corinthians 9
II Corinthians 11
