I would have had them sleeping if it weren't for you meddling kids!

For the first time, I kind of stepped on toes in lodge.

With all of the Fellowcrafts my lodge currently has, it was decided to have a lodge of instruction on the degree. My mentor, who has run things for so long, had a program gathered, and planned on doing an interactive Q&A session with a walk through on the degree. As our meeting grew nearer the W.M. and I exchanged emails about what to do for the L.O.I.

Our W.M., who is my "Middle Chamber" hero, wanted to go over the long form of the lecture and discuss the finer points of the degree. I was on board for that and asked what I could do to help. These email exchanges happened a few days before our scheduled meeting and trailed off without any concrete plans for our Masonic education for our new Fellowcrafts.

The beginning of lodge night is always a blur for me having to plan for the food and get the lodge set up for the evening. Tonight, I was also playing handyman around the building which kept me from the fellowship of the before lodge meal. Before I knew it it the gavel was dropped and as I settled back into my chair in the South we proceeded to open our lodge.

I have to admit, it was nice to be back in the South, although I enjoyed being Senior Warden for a night. Only two of our Fellowcrafts were able to make the meeting and we had a surprise visitor from a lodge upstate from us but we almost had a complete officer line as we attended to some buisness. Two more men were voted into our lodge including my very good friend whom I have written before on this blog.

On to the education.

The WM addressed our Fellowcrafts and explained that we would go over the Fellowcraft Degree and stated that there was a long form of the Middle Chamber lecture that they were given and that he just wanted to touch on some of the topics covered in depth in the long form. He then stated that its a really long lecture and didn't want to read them the whole thing.... then proceeded to read them the whole thing!! Head down in the book, he started reading the lecture for all gathered, and as he went on and on looks were being shot back and forth among the gathered brethren. He was losing them all really fast. I looked down at the F.C. brothers and although they were politely looking up to him in the East, they too started to adjust their watches and aprons and wedding rings. I saw our night of Masonic education going quickly down the tubes. I felt as if I didn't do something fast, it might be a long time before anyone wants to do one again. So when the WM paused in between sections of the lecture I politely asked him for the floor, which he politely relinquished, but no-one had any idea what was coming next.

Not to offend the WM I gave a long story short version of all the aspects of my favorite lecture and then proceeded to expound upon the higher meaning of the F.C. degree. I got up in front of our F.C.'s and started getting ESOTERIC which got back their attention, along with the rest of the brethren assembled. It was awesome for me and the applause after, I think, proved that my brethren liked it too. I then turned back the floor to the WM who insisted I finish reading the lecture even after my protest. I started speed reading through it, which he stopped me from doing and I then started reading it and expanding upon the material as I read. I was glad he stopped me from running through the rest and I think our F.C.'s got something from it all, but I felt as if I did wrong by upstaging my WM., even though he reflected some of my points to the brethren after.

I apologised to him afterwards and I think he was alright with it all, but you never know.

Masonic education should not be boring. It should not be a high school lecture on the liberal arts. It should be interactive and exciting. It should be delivered with all the excitement that our wonderful craft deserves. What we do is not boring, it is enlightening, we just need to refine our delivery for modern men.

Morals as Dogma

As a member of the order who has been responsible for shedding light upon the dark world I take my obligations seriously. While our exoteric rites performed in lodge may not awaken anything in some, I am one who sees the sprout in the seeds we sow together. If you look at our working tools without seeing the truth hidden within you will never be a true Freemason. All the titles and baubles and rings and lapel pins make not a man a Mason. He must put the working tools of his trade into action everyday from the time he first is made a Mason to the time they fall from his cold grasp.

"Where were you first prepared to be made a Mason?"

If it was in your head and not in your heart, even if you go through every degree in all of the rites of Masonry, you will never be a Mason.

We are not mind readers, we can not know for sure your intentions when you petition the Craft for membership. Many slip through who join for selfish reasons but they will never be Masons. They can rise to the title of Grand Master and never be a Mason.

"In whom do you put your trust?"

Many answer correctly to go forth in our initiation but truly believe not in the words they speak.

We must uphold the institution of Freemasonry. If we do not live up to the rituals we bestow upon worthy candidates we are nothing. If we do not use the working tools of our profession at all times, we fail the men who were worthy of being called Freemasons that propelled the Craft to the vaunted status we once held. All men fail at times, but we must labor continuously at our rough ashlars for the spiritual temple we set out to build.

We are builders.

Before we can help others build we must refine the temple of our own being. Without a solid foundation it will never soar to the lofty heights of the divine. Using the common gavel we must continuously chip off the the rough corners of our spiritual ashlar. It is a constant duty of the Entered Apprentice to remove all vices and superfluities of his mind and conscience until he is ready to build. When he does so he is ready to become a Fellowcraft. Not everyone does this.

Moral law is the the truth we must uphold. If we are not just and upright Masons we are stooped over animals. I do not want to be an animal. An animal lives in a world where the simple impulses rule; food, shelter, and reproduction. An animal succumbs to those urges at all times, he will violate other animals to satisfy those simple needs. The world is filled with temptation and only the just and upright temper those animal urges.

"Learn to subdue my passions."

It is not an easy thing to be a Mason. Labor is hard. We labor in the quarries of a dark world. Only by seeking out quality material to build with, will we restore the foundation of our worthy order.

There is much work to be done.

Snickers Are Bad (Not The Candy Bar)

Two weeks ago while in the midst of memorizing the dialog from the play I was in, I dropped by the lodge on my way to a dress rehearsal. I was dropping off the ballot box for a vote that evening. It was in my possession because the very old box is in need of repair and was at another Brothers house for that purpose. At the meeting beforehand the WM had sent the Tiler out to our closet to get it and after a few minutes of furious searching outside the lodge room(our poor Tiler) the Brother who had taken it home for repair came up to me and reminded me that he had taken it. He could not make the last meeting either and dropped it off to me at work for me to drop off before lodge. GOT THAT STRAIGHT?
Anyway, I had time to drop it off and rush to my play rehearsal, so for the first time I came to lodge not intending to stay. I have to admit it was a strange feeling coming to lodge in jeans and a sweatshirt and rushing out after a brief hello. Attending lodge regularly is such a part of my life that when I don't do it it feels weird!?!
Sooo, during the cordial hellos I was reminded that our next meeting will be a step up night and a fellowcraft degree and I snickered and jokingly asked the Senior Warden if he was ready for it and had he memorized all of his lines yet. He said he would be ready and I ran out and went to my dress rehearsal.
I have been acting in a local theatre company for a year or so and after a few bit parts I was given a romantic lead role, including a beautiful duet with a leading lady. Between Lodge meetings and sickness I had missed quite a few rehearsals and had up to that point had not even rehearsed the big duet. My voice never quite recovered from the evil-death flu I had survived and the song itself was at the top of my singing range so needless to say I was very nervous about the performance. Add the fifteen minutes or so of dialogue and I can honestly say that I had not read anything esoteric or Masonic in the month leading up to the play. It wasn't until during a call the next day that my snickering at my Brother Senior Warden became ironic.
My WM who was the man who got me involved with the theatre company called me to ask if I needed help with the fellowcraft ritual. I said that other than a couple of words here and there that it was not much different than the two EA degrees that we had just done and I was getting pretty comfortable in the South. He then reiterated that it was a step up night, to which I responded that our SW told me he was ready, to which he retorted who do you think will be sitting in his chair during the degree!
During all of our talks about doing a step up night I never realized that I was going to step up into the West when the SW stepped up to the East. This sent me to my ritual book in a fury of looking up all I had to learn.
My snicker boomeranged on me.
I put off memorizing the ritual until after my play and for the past few days have been catching up with the fervor of a man possessed.
We'll see how it goes on Thursday night, I hope I don't slip into the Irish accent I used during my play!

Where's My 24 Inch Gauge

For my twenty or so readers:
When things are going great it becomes even harder to manage time. With the exponential growth of my lodge comes exponential responsibility to the few who do the most. I am proud to say we have already initiated more Brothers in the short time this year than we had done in the past two put together and we still have more waiting. This makes things extremely hard for a married man and father of three who has a hard time saying no to anything and is involved in more things than anyone my wife knows.

Between my blog, lodge, local theatre company, church, regular work and second job, I have been admittedly absent from my family way too much even when in their presence. That is why my posting has precipitously dropped as of late. It was my lovely wife who shed the light on me and I thank her for it. I had been so immersed in all of my extracurricular activities that even when I was home physically, my mind was almost always somewhere else, thinking about the future of my lodge, my next post, memorizing ritual or dialogue from my play. The problem was not in that I was doing all of these things, it was that I was doing these things alone and in my thick skull.

There are some of us who are bound by an even more ancient and important obligation than our Masonic one, you know, the obligation that allows us to wear a ring signifying our membership in the oldest organization in the world, marriage. It is a mysterious and magical union that takes a lifetime to master, and not all can. I call to my mind an image of the night I was installed in the South. The installing officer was a Most Worshipful Past Grand Master of Connecticut and his prompter was not a Mason but his lovely wife sitting on the sidelines with the ritual in her hands. It was reassuring to see even a PGM can miss a line every now and then and even more reassuring to see that his wife helps him with his ritual.

When I joined Freemasonry I had read from many different sources that the only secrets of Masonry were its grips, words, and signs and that the ritual was not a secret. It is my firm belief that that is true. As I started to be asked to perform parts of the ritual for degrees I readily went to my wife for help. I know I could go to any of the brethren for help but it is much more convenient to go to my wife and helping me memorize my ritual helps her to understand that we aren't sacrificing virgins or anything else ominous and evil at my meetings. It also keeps up a dialogue between us that is necessary for a healthy marriage and I can say without a doubt her help is more beneficial than any other method I have tried. When she corrects me I can hear her voice in my head and I wont mess up that part again. For some reason or another I had not been going to her for help. I had been engrossed in reading and writing and all of the other stuff I do. I can trace back my disastrous "G" lecture (read my Fumbling Fellowcraft Degree) directly to not having her help me with that lecture and it was my fault for not asking.

It is all behind me now, and she is currently helping me memorize my dialogue for my upcoming play and all is well on the home front. When I start to prepare for my second attempt at the notorious "G" lecture in two weeks, I am going straight to her and maybe this time wont fumble it all up.

Do you tell your wife what goes on in lodge?

I Hate This Post

It was another outstanding evening at old St. John's. The energy was at the same level as it was at our last meeting, and that one was buzzing. Brethren were arranged in groups chatting, laughing, and enjoying the greatest benefit of our craft, good fellowship among good men. The District Deputy was waiting for me when I got there(I am always the first to arrive) and quickly ushered me to the candidate preparation room because it was our annual inspection and it was time for me to be tested. No problems there. After blazing my way through the words and grips, I went back to setting up the lodge for our second Entered Apprentice degree in as many meetings. We had three candidates waiting to be brought to light and with the usual degree of pomp that accompanies a Grand Lodge inspection. This went on without a hitch, delivered meaningfully and gracefully by the Brethren of my lodge. Our three newest brothers were then treated to three meetings worth of minutes that had been pushed aside for too long and a couple of bills,which I was sorry they had to sit through! We then closed in due fashion and went downstairs for a little refreshment and more fellowship.
One by one the Brothers left until it was myself, the Worshipful Master, the Senior Warden, and the Junior Deacon. We started to discuss the heavy matter of the future of the lodge and during the discussion it was decided that we should move it outside so the W.M. and S.W. could have a cigarette and me and the J.D. decided to join them and have a cigar, which has become a little tradition that I am really enjoying with the J.D. after our meetings. All sorts of angles were covered outside and due to the cold, we decided to cut it short, so I went inside to lock up so we all could go home. Before I went inside I noticed a car pulling in to our parking lot, it kind of creeped in and parked near to where we were all standing. I thought maybe it was somebody from the church who owns our building and continued turning off the lights and when I heard a conversation going on outside, I came outside to check if it was indeed someone from the church needing to get in. It turned out to be a young man in search of some answers about Freemasonry so I went back in and finished locking up.
Now this is why I hate this post.
As you may or may not know, here in America there are two distinct bodies of Freemasons. Each has a tradition going back to the 1700's. Each operate in accordance with the ancient landmarks of our order. Each are proud to be called Freemasons and I see no difference between us as I have stated many times on my blog, but unfortunately due to the atrocities of history there evolved two distinct bodies of Freemasons, so called"mainstream" or regular Freemasons and Prince Hall Freemasons. We here in the state of Connecticut were the first in the nation to officially recognise each other and we continue to work together in harmony and brotherhood. It was my Grand Lodge that reached out and asked the Prince Hall Masons in our state for them to recognise us, not the other way around. It is a really incredible story that I have permanently added to my side bar and I think everyone should take the time to read just how hard it was to reach the point of recognition. Now to the crux of my post.
The young man asking us about how to join Freemasonry was African American, which makes no difference to me because I do not see people by their color, but I am in turmoil as to how to handle him. We all answered his questions about the fraternity and unfortunately due to the late hour and the cold ,we had to cut things a little short with him, but I gave him my card and told him to call me anytime and we could finish our Q&A session. During the conversation we explained to him that there were three lodges in our city that all operated the same way and he would be free to choose what ever lodge best suited his time schedule, as we all meet on different nights. Here lies my problem, while I whole heartily want to welcome this fine young man into my lodge and would gladly recommend him for the mysteries of Freemasonry, I don't know what to do about telling him about Prince Hall Freemasonry. I feel as if I were to say "one of the three lodges in our city is Prince Hall which is African American" would be like telling him we don't want him, which is not true. At the same time I feel as if I don't tell him about the P.H. lodge it would be like hiding something from him.
I hate that I am in this quandary. I hate the fact that after Prince Hall became a Master Mason and the Military Lodge that raised him left (which was Irish, I believe), he had no where to practice the lessons of Freemasonry. I love the fact that he did not let this stop him from forming his own lodge and extending the good work of Freemasonry to African Americans like himself. I love the fact that the lodge he formed spread and multiplied and became the foundation for the proud organization of Prince Hall Freemasonry. If my Grand Lodge allowed me, I would gladly affiliate myself with the Prince Hall lodge in my city as a dual member. I have worked with the Brothers from that lodge and marched with them in our Memorial Day parade together as Brothers. They are my brothers and I wish there were no line that separated us, but there is. If I were a Prince Hall Mason I would never want to relinquish the proud history of that organization and merge with a "regular" Grand Lodge, but it is that same pride that keeps us separate. We are a result of history and we cant change it. There are two bodies of men that practice the same tenets of Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth and unfortunately the thing that keeps one separate is the color of their skin. We can recognise each other and work together as Brethren but I don't foresee any change in the fact that there are two separate but equal forms of Freemasonry in America, which is sad.
What can we do?
What should I do?
There is much work to be done.

The Stone That The Builder Refused

I was recently asked a question by a Brother that I had no real good answer for. While we usually concentrate on how to get good men to join our fraternity the question on how to turn someone away rarely comes up.
My Brother has a certain someone who he has known for a long time, who constantly hounds him for information on the craft. Good news right? Well, this man, according to him, is far from the type of man who we would wish to call a brother and my Brother asked me how best to turn him away.
Recommending a man for our order is one of the highest honors that can befall a Freemason, but it also comes with great responsibility. With the future of Freemasonry still uncertain it is my opinion that we should be extremely careful of whom we bring among our numbers. It is hard enough sometime just to find good men who are also willing to take the chance on a Brotherhood veiled in mystery and history, but there will always be those out there who have no problem taking solemn vows just to find out what we are about. Men with no honor to keep their obligation and you know sometimes there is no real way of knowing this until way too late.
After getting the idea of what kind of man my Brother was talking about, I suggested he stress the moral basis of our order which might turn off an amoral person and if that did not work I suggested he just tell him that it is just a bunch of old men! I did not know what to say. I try to keep myself away from those type of people and if I must associate with one, and we all have to at one point or another, I keep it as shallow a relationship as possible.
What do you do with a man who wants to join Freemasonry but you think is not a good fit? Or even yet, what about a person who you think is alright but you just don’t like?
Tough questions when most of our lodges need more people, but I don't ever want some visitor to leave my lodge thinking of what I thought when I wrote Higher Standards or Lack Thereof.

First E.A. In The South

Thursday night marked the fist Stated Communication with yours truly sitting in the South and I hit the ground running with an Entered Apprentice degree. Although I fall short of my fellow blogger, and Junior Warden, Traveling Man from Movable Jewel's immediate step up night as Worshipful Master in his first E.A. degree, I think it went pretty well except for my refering to the hour of refreshment as "HIGH NOON" which received a hearty laugh from all present.

Speaking of all present it was quite a night at Old St. John's.

I was the first one to arrive and began to set up the wonderful dinner prepared by my lovely wife for the Brethren. The candidate for the evenings conferral was already there and ready to go. This degree was primarily orchestrated by myself in the time since our installation and that evening. I dont know if it was the satisfaction of putting this degree together or the excitement of sitting in the Junior Wardens chair for my first full meeting, but from the time I arived there was a buzz in the air. As the usual Brothers started to show up, I went up stairs to the lodge room to set up for the degree. This went well with the help of a couple of my Brothers and when I went back downstairs I was very pleased to see a room full of men eating and conversing around the meal prepared by Mrs. Jr. Warden. On top of that there were some interested men around my age there to learn more about my lodge, sitting down and conversing with the Brethren! We even had an Entered Apprentice from the other lodge in my city there to watch the degree from the sidelines. I can say, without a doubt for the first time, that the average age of everyone gathered was a full couple of decades younger than had been gathered at Old St. John's in quite a while.

Our outlook as a lodge is getting much brighter.

During the meeting petitions were being turned in and investigations were being voted on. How exciting. The degree went great and afterward the fellowship was also. Our newest Brother hung around and was very greatful for the degree we gave him. He is a welcome addition to the craft and will, I have no doubt, be a contributing member to my lodge.

We are scheduled to do another E.A. degree in two weeks which will also be our annual inspection which I am a little nervous but also really excited about.

Speaking of excitement, my dear friend who I have mentioned before on this blog, called me last night to let me know that he has deceided to petition my lodge for the mysteries of Freemasonry. He will be the first man to bear my name as recommender on his petition and it will be with great honor that I hand it over to the lodge.

There is much work to be done!