Great Escape Opening Ceremony October 2013
A Scouts’ Own – October
Caller/MC commands:
GIRL SCOUTS ATTENTION
COLOR GUARD ATTENTION
COLOR GUARD ADVANCE
COLOR GUARD POST THE COLORS
GIRL SCOUTS, SALUTE THE FLAG OF YOUR COUNTRY.
PLEASE JOIN US IN THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE.
Pledge of Allegiance
COLOR GUARD, DISMISSED.
1st Speaker: Girl
Scouts, please raise your hand in the Girl Scout sign and join me in reciting
the Girl Scout Promise:
On my honor, I will try, to serve God and my country, to
help people at all times, and to live by the Girl Scout Law.
2nd Speaker: Please
join me in reciting the Girl Scout Law.
I will do my best to be
honest and fair,
friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,
courageous and strong, and
responsible for what I say and do,
and to respect myself and others,
respect authority,
use resources wisely,
make the world a better place,
and be a sister to every Girl Scout.
If you are asked, “When is Girl Scout Week?” Of course you
will say “In March, when Juliette made that telephone call, over a hundred
years ago now.”
But what if you are asked “When is the Girl Scouts’
month?” Will you answer with me,
“October, of course!”
From October 1st, when we begin the Girl Scout year, to
October 31st, when we celebrate our Founder’s natal day, October is full of
excitement for Girl Scouts.
Let us say with Anne of Green Gables,
“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
October is a month of beginnings and endings. Beginnings like the excitement of a new Daisy
Girl Scout, about to learn the Promise and Law, to earn petals to decorate her
blue tunic. Beginnings like the new
leaders, who can’t believe in their ability to manage a troop of more than 5 or
6.
Endings like Halloween, where the fall dies in a rustle of
leaves and candy wrappings.
Beginnings like a crisp blue and orange day that calls us to
go swinging along the open road.
There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir:
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame she calls,
and calls each vagabond by name.”
― William Bliss
Endings like the bare trees of November, the leaves of flame
all on the ground.
We vagabond old Girl Scouts with our old vagabond stoves –
October calls our names and brings us back to the Great Escape. Those bright leaves of October have our names
written on them! When you look down on
the ground and see the delicate veins on a yellow maple leaf, or look at the
red sumac plumes as you walk down the path, your name is written on them in the
invisible ink of October.
Autumn flings her fiery cloak over the sumac, beech and
oak.”
― Susan Lendroth, Ocean Wide, Ocean Deep
As we release the Hundredth Anniversary Flag, look for the
leaf with your name on it. (Open flag,
release leaves. All find their leaf).
As you walk around today, look on the ground for two or
three more leaves that are calling your name!
Bring them all to the dining hall at lunch time, and we’ll put the
leaves with our names on them together to help us remember October and the
Great Escape.
October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and
nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and
carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins. O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!”
― Rainbow Rowell, Attachments
This is your chance to be baptized with the leaves of
October! Kick up a pile of leaves and
remember what it was to be five or six, like those new Girl Scouts, and jump
into an ocean of leaves. Jump into our
weekend and grab a fistful of new friends as if they were a fistful of leaves –
and never let go! Swing along with a
swagger in your step as if you were an eight year old Brownie with a beanie on
your head!
Sing: Swinging along….
Thank you all for coming.
This concludes the Opening Ceremony.
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