I joined an Agesci scout group at eight years old. One of my first ceremonies was the presentation of our group's neckerchief—the colors we would wear with pride. The scout leader tied two knots at the ends as a visual reminder of the good deeds I would need to perform each day to prove myself a worthy cub scout. That moment captures something essential: you cannot talk about scouting without talking about service.
A scout knows that the task is to "do your best and always be ready to serve"—which is why this phrase appears in the mottoes of all three age-based branches of scouting. In his final letter to scouts, founder Baden Powell summed it up this way: "the real way to be happy is to bring happiness to others." So when, after ten years in scouting, I first encountered Fede e Luce, I felt well prepared for service. I remember my first activity with the community was an evening pizza dinner at a restaurant. I didn't have to organize anything—I was simply asked to pick up a young man at his house and drive him back afterward. Nothing strenuous (I had just gotten my license, so every chance to drive was welcome). The evening passed pleasantly and lazily, full of conversation and laughter. I drove home troubled, my doubts multiplying into a hard realization: I wasn't nearly as prepared as I thought. There was something about service I still had to learn.
My previous service experience had been as a helper to the cub scout leaders—a year spent organizing games, outings, and camps of various lengths for thirty screaming children. It was intense and exhausting work, but it had one advantage: crystal-clear instructions. Do this, organize that, take care of the other thing. In short, I was called to do. At Fede e Luce, for a long time I couldn't understand what I was being called to do. They spoke of friendship, building bonds, being together—but the gatherings left me with a vague sense of frustration. What useful thing had we actually accomplished that day? Where were my two good deeds in those few carefree hours spent eating and singing?
At twenty, I completed my scouting journey with the Departure ceremony—a moment of recognizing that I could now walk my own path in the world, living out the values I had learned through scouting. It was when I stopped doing scouting and began to be a scout. In that ceremony, I presented to my community several significant choices I had made in light of the scout law and promise. For service, I named Fede e Luce, because it was through this experience that I discovered the most important thing about service: it matters more to be there for someone than to do something for him.
I cannot pinpoint exactly when or how this shift happened for me. At twenty, when I made my Departure, I sensed it but didn't truly understand it or fully accept it. I don't know whether it came from one particularly moving gathering, or a luminous hour with someone, or wise words from a parent, or spirited conversations with friends. Over the past fifteen years of pizzas, casettes, and pilgrimages, I've simply found myself doing less and less and being more and more: being a friend, being of service, being present as much as I can. That vague frustration still creeps up sometimes, whispering in my ear that I'm not doing enough. When it does, I pause for a moment and look around at the people gathered there. And I calm down. If I am present and they are present, then everything that matters is already done.
