Bear Bahoochie

World Thinking Day (22nd Feb.) is all about us being part of a movement with 10 million girls in 145 countries. It’s a day when we all think about each other and give thanks for the sisters and friends we have locally and internationally, so what could be more appropriate to reflect on Law 4?

“Law 4 – A Guide is a good friend and a sister to all Guides.”

Before I sat down to write this I have always thought of this law as simply being a case of being nice to people. A bit like the line from the Bible that says
“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
Yet now I’m really thinking about it, I can’t help but think maybe it means more than that.

Part of it is that Girlguiding is about allowing girls and women to be themselves. A girl only space, with people who make you feel welcome regardless of who you are. However, while I’m happy to be friendly and welcoming towards fellow Guides, am I really willing to treat them like my friends or sister? In my ten plus years as an adult leader in Guiding, I haven’t agreed with everyone I’ve met in the movement, I’ve been disappointed by some and there are a handful I haven’t liked – I’m sure, my fellow Guides would say the same of me. But the law doesn’t tell me what to think of my fellow Guides, just that I must treat them as a good friend and a sister.

If my sister or good friends are in trouble I would move the earth to try and help them. I’ll stick by them in trouble and I’d celebrate with them when things are going well. I have driven miles to help them out, I’ve let them cry on my shoulder and if they asked me to help them to hide a dead body I’d do that as well (though I really hope they never test that).

So that brings me to another challenge– how? On a purely practical level how can I be a friend and sister to all Guides? I struggle to find the time to see my actual friends and my genetically linked sister, let alone 10 million strangers! Plus that 10 million is current members, what about those Guides I’ve known who’ve now left the movement? I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be dropping them just because they have left.

Clearly I can’t go for coffee and cake with 10 million women, but if I’m thinking being nice when I meet them isn’t enough, what more can I do?

I think the answer is that we support them, we fight for them and we stand up for them – it doesn’t matter if we’ve never met them, their problems are our problems. In a famous speech, John F. Kennedy once said;
“…for in the last analysis we all breathe the same air, we all drink the same water, we all inhabit this small planet, we all want what is best for our children, and we are all mortal!”
If we have the opportunity to stand up for women and girls we should be taking that chance and making our stand. Girlguiding provides an opportunity for women and girls to help themselves and their communities, but it also provides a way for us to help each other.

So often what we do here seems remote from the suffering and the challenges of the world that we learn about. All too often it’s easy to see these issues as someone else’s problem, far away and affecting someone we’ll never know. Many of the programme activities we do, like the Millenium Development Goals in ‘Together We Can’, challenge us not just to know about the issues but to do something about.

Law 4 demands something else, something more powerful – it demands that we care. In 145 countries there are women and girls with the same values, same morals and same ideals for the world as we have. Those women and girls aren’t strangers they are our friends and our sisters.