An Icy Hill in August

"The well-being of every nation, like that of every individual, is threefold,---physical, moral, and intellectual. Neither physically, morally, or intellectually is a people ever stationary. Always it either advances or retrogrades; and, as when one climbs a hill of ice, to advance demands continual effort and exertion, while to slide downward one needs but to halt"

Bro. Albert Pike

The Meaning of Masonry

Lecture

The Evil Consequences of Schisms and disputes for Power in Masonry,

and Jealousies and Dissensions Between Masonic Rites

When last I read these words I was dug in deep to the ritual. I was preparing for my first time in the East while reading three other books on Masonry and blogging about it all at least once a week. My effort was continual my thought was enveloped. Every meeting brought new challenges and satisfying rewards. The first half of the Masonic year at my lodge ended with the culmination of much work and fellowship, a Master Mason degree for five new brothers and then we broke for summer.

Just over the horizon, in the promise of summer, was a shimmering hill. Breaking over the hill was a blinding light that obscured the actual view. The light of continuing fellowship and working together to perform a MM degree ourselves, for other Brothers waiting for the sublime degree, warmed what was to be a couple of months where we would not meet. But overshadowed by the light, was the surface of that hill, glistening ice.

As the weeks passed by in summer bliss the effort stopped and with every day spent enjoying the season I slid further back. My reading slowed. My thoughts turned to other things. I lapsed into lazy enjoyment and here I am.

I have tried to get back in the swing of things but the call of the warm sun and delightful sound of my children laughing was much stronger.

Esoteric thought is like a growing garden. It needs continual pruning and work to keep out the weeds. The garden of my mind is a little overgrown right now which is not a bad thing. I realized that in my deep research and meditation about Masonry I had been a little absent in the things in my life that mean a lot more than the craft, my family.

I had realized this a while back but it really sank in this summer.

Recently while out for a beautiful and enjoyable meal alone with my wife the subject of Masonry came up. My wife stated that she loved the fact I was so committed to the order and she knew how much it meant to me but she asked me one question that I could not adequately answer. She asked me what I get out of the fraternity. I said that I had become a better man and enjoy helping others become the same (crappy standard answer). To which she told me that I was already a good man before I joined Freemasonry so that was not a good enough answer. Which made me stop and really think about it. I did not answer her question that night and have been thinking really hard about it ever since.

I guess it is the fellowship that really ties me to the craft. I enjoy spending time with other men who I would not normally associate with in my daily life. I also enjoy the ritual. It is a challenge to learn and perform the degrees for the benefit of the new Brothers. The deeper stuff can't be communicated but I realize that I need to tone it down a bit and enjoy what is around me more and not live in my own head so much.

The advancement starts anew.

Are The Degree Rituals Too Long?

Ever since my last lodge meeting, where we raised 5 worthy brothers to the sublime degree of Master Mason, I have been pondering how to improve the camaraderie of the degree nights. Not to say that fellowship does not happen, it does, but we build so much brotherhood during the degree and due to the length of the ritual and the late hour we finish everyone is usually in a hurry to get home afterwards. I have lamented this in the past and now seek a solution and I believe I have one.

Remove the first section, or Stewards lectures, from the degree night and do them instead on the next meeting immediately following the degree. They may be called something else in your jurisdiction but these lectures are a question and answer session between two brothers that rehash the entire degree that just happened and are required to be memorized to be passed on to the next degree. By moving this lecture to the next meeting night it does a few things.

1. From my own experience, after going through the degree it seemed so repetitive to sit and watch an entire play by play of the thing I just went through immediately after I went through it. When I study the candidates/Brothers faces when they watch it, no matter how well it is done, they too seemed confused or bored during the lecture.

2. By moving it to the next meeting it gets the new brothers immediately involved. Usually the meeting after a degree is held on a higher degree and the newly initiated Brothers feel a bit left out when they are told they cannot attend the next meeting of the Brotherhood they just joined because they are only E.A's or F.C.'s. This gets them right back in.

3. It gives the new Brothers time to mull over the Degree they went through without the pressure of memorization. If we tell them after the degree to just take some time to really think about what happened during the degree they can take their first step into really delving into the meaning of the ritual without having to recite it from rote.

4. It slows down the "Get them to the next degree as fast as possible" mentality that hurts the overall meaning of our craft. If we slow down the railroading of candidates quickly through the degrees we build better Brothers and consequently a better fraternity.

And last of all it removes a tangible amount of time from a degree night that can be better spent building upon the actual degree and the ties it forms between the Brethren. Maybe if it wasn't creeping on midnight after a degree more brothers would hang out and spend a little informal quality time with their new Brothers in a way that cant happen during a dinner before hand.

What do you think?

Do you do it differently?

Where Has Civility Gone?

Let me preface this post by admitting that 85% or so of the country is not like this from what I have experienced so if you are from one of those places do not get offended.

It was Sunday morning and my wife and I decided to go to our favorite bakery for breakfast so we loaded up the kids and headed down town. On the way I called my sister up to join us even though I knew this bakery is on the small side with limited seating but it was early enough that I figured we could grab one of the few larger tables that are available. My sister was waiting for us at the parking lot and helped unload my four and a half year old and six month old daughters and walk across the street to the bakery.

The bakery itself is in an old industrial building converted to multipurpose commercial use. If you didn't know it was there you would never find it, but I discovered it a while ago and have been a slave to its fresh baked delights ever since and hooked my family on it also. It is, first and foremost, a bakery and caterer and only half heartedly serves breakfast and lunch to customers who have about 10 two seat tables in a six foot wide hallway and three four seat tables on front of the counter to enjoy their scrumptious vittles.

We have been there many times and are usually fortunate enough to grab one of the big tables or take one just after someone finishes because it is first come first serve. Sometimes we have to wait a little for someone to finish which is alright with us because the food is soooo good but then you have a situation like one I experienced on Sunday that sets us off. So here is what happened.

We walked into the busy as always place and there were two of the big tables available as we walked down the narrow hallway towards the counter juggling a four year old, and baby in a carrier, past the two seat tables and people walking out. To our dismay a group of young women walked into the other door by the counter and grabbed one of the big tables. Which is fine with me because it is first come first serve and their party was as big as ours and I don't need special privileges just because I travel with two cute as a button little princesses. Just before we got to the other table a big guy with a turquoise bandanna covering his bald head sat down and got it before us. Which again was fine with me, he got there before me so it was his, but as we walked past him, ordered our food and discussed where we would be able to fit our little group, still swinging around a baby in a carrier and a four year old pointing out all of the yummy things she wanted to her aunt, the bug guy was joined at his table for four by his little female companion and that's it, no one else. There were eight empty tables for two behind him but I guess he needed the extra room for his elbows and such. He sat there waiting for his food and stared at us trying to figure how we were going to sit at the small tables with a dumb look and never thought about giving the table up to us. There is the problem.

We have been there many a time while some person sat at a table for four sipping coffee by themselves while we scrambled around sitting at two table for twos feeding two kids and ourselves on tiny two foot by two foot tables(thats a lot of 2's). I know it is our problem for going to this place, but I was raised to be polite. I was taught to give up my seat to an older person or woman with children. I was taught to hold a door for someone behind me. I was taught to let someone with one thing go in front of me at the grocery store when I have a full cart. I was taught to say please and thank you to everyone and I endeavor to teach civil behavior to my children. I just cant understand people who don't do these things and although I usually shrug it off, sometimes it gets to me. This guy saw us struggling to seat ourselves and (probably)never thought about how rude it is to sit at a table for four when you only have two. That is one of the bad things about living in the North East in America, most everybody is out for themselves. My wife, who is from the South where people are more kind and considerate in general, said to me as we left the bakery we should get out of this part of the country. I sometimes think she is right.

What does this have to do with Masonry?

Nothing really, I just wanted to rant.

I wish more people read the book by our illustrious brother above and took it to heart.

Are You A Traveling Man?

May the road rise to meet you,

May the wind be always at your back,

May the sun shine warm upon your face,

The rains fall soft upon your fields and,

Until we meet again,

May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

I am a traveling man.

My journey is never ending.

I travel towards the East,

The source of all light.

The source of all knowledge.

I am a traveling man.

I wander a winding road.

With many twists and turns.

I know not what lies ahead.

I find new truth with every step.

I am a traveling man.

On a path from whose bourn no traveler returns.

The final destination is not the goal.

The goal is the odyssey itself,

and what I learn with every new vista.

I am a traveling man.

It is the only thing I know for sure.

My insatiable curiosity,

and desire for knowledge

are my ever present companions on this trek.

Traveling.

Traveling.

Traveling.

Never weary

Never ending.

M.M.M.

A Master Mason Degree Then Dim The Lights

There seems to be a common thread right now in Masonic Blogs. They all have posted something in the way of "Well, I haven't posted in a while because I have been so busy with work, family and lodge commitments and the beginning of summer is upon us....."

Now I don't want to be one to be left out so let me start this post by saying:

Well, I haven't posted in a while because...

Between my last Masonic post and now, I traveled 800 miles each way with two children in the car to my sister in laws wedding in Kentucky. Again during a road trip pit stop in New Jersey I received warm fraternal greetings from a Prince Hall Brother who noticed the S&C on my T shirt and called to me "I see you are a Traveling Man" and gave me a brotherly handshake and hug and we exchanged lodge info and parted on the square. Even my wife, who at times seems just to tolerate my Masonic stuff loves it when I run into a Brother on the road. My four year old said "Daddy you have brothers everywhere!" to which I told her, "all over the world honey!" which she thought was so cool. But other than seeing where the local Masons lodge was in my Father in laws home town of Eminence, which is a very small rural town, I had no other masonic contact on the trip.

When we got home I had to kick it into high gear Masonicly. My lodge was about to host a Master Masons degree for the first time in a long time and I was responsible for getting two of the five Brothers to be raised proficient at the previous degree. We had a log jam of Brothers needing to be raised, and in Connecticut you can only raise five Brothers at one time (thankfully). Our district degree team was gathering to help us with the second half and was made up of more purple aprons than we had seen in our old building in forever so I wanted to get my guys up to snuff. I had two personal sessions with the Fellowcrafts and then started to plan for the dinner to precede the degree. Being Junior Warden is the penance to pay for leading the lodge someday. I cant wait to hand over the responsibility of the dinners to another Brother not only because it adds a huge responsibility to my job but we never collect enough donations to cover the cost of the dinners so I have been subsidising feeding the brethren for some time now.

The turnout for the degree was awesome. Although I could not chit chat as much as I wanted to with the visiting brethren because I was too busy setting up dinner and the lodge for the degree. I did however take the time to grab each of the five FC's and tell them to make sure to soak up as much as they could of the evening because it would be the best degree they ever went through and that it was the single biggest bind between brothers, going through the sublime degree. Afterwards one of the new Master Masons and one of the guys I coached, came up to me and thanked me for telling him to drink it all in which made me very happy.

Unfortunately because of the length of the degree and the lateness of the finish the gathered brethren left as quick as their cars could take them. Which left me cleaning up with only the Worshipful Master as company and he was itching to go, so there was not any fellowship after the degree. This was a big bummer to me because it was our last meeting before going "dim" for the summer. In CT we do not meet in July and August mostly because most buildings don't have air conditioning and summer is so filled with vacation and family obligations that barely filled lodge meetings would be even barer during these months. So I went home, hung up my tuxedo for a while, and went out in my back yard for a cigar and my whirling thoughts.

Although I welcome a break from the crazy schedule that my obligations have produced this year, I will miss lodge for a couple of months. I plan to do some serious esoteric delving this summer into our ritual and brotherhood so like my friend and fellow CT Masonic blogger says:

Stay Tuned.....

On Fatherhood

I am writing at the time of the predawn day of the now iconoclastic day of fatherhood, Fathers Day.
My whole life, as far as I can remember, has revolved around the promise of fatherhood. I have always wanted children, as many as a wife would allow me to father. Although the family that I was raised in was not entirely huge per say, four children, my parents came from prototypical Irish Catholic families of the mid 1900's. My mothers family was the holy grail of fatherhood to my paternal instinct, thirteen children. I remember going to my maternal grandfathers birthday celebration in the 1990's, and during the ubiquitous family photo, I could not even imagine how it would be to have so many pieces of yourself at large in the world, but I envied him.
My own Father is my hero. He is all I ever wanted to be. He is the kindest, strongest, and most generous man I have ever known. He is not the most outspoken man in the world, but he can say more in a look or gesture than most can say with a whole dictionary.
He gave me life.
He gave me an example of manhood.
I was never the supreme athlete he was, but he never made me feel bad about it.
My father, although possessed of a higher education (political science), is a house painter and a handyman, like his father was. It was the best way to support a growing family in the 70's-80's. But I can tell you with out a shadow of doubt that there is no smarter painter/handyman out there.
He taught me that Fatherhood is sacrifice. Once you bring a child into this world your world changes; it is not about you, it is about your creation and how you can make the world better for it.
Children are the single hardest and greatest thing in this existence.
For so long you live in a world that revolves around yourself. Its a nice world, you know it like the back of your hand, but you crave something more. Next comes the love of your life, who alters that singular world view and helps you see that there is more to life than yourself. That first divide of love can be hard for some who find it much easier to live singularly but for most it brings even more love than you thought you were capable of. This results in a production of two loves, a child. I can honestly say that there is no single joy in life that can compare with that of your own child.
The birth of my first daughter was not exactly the death of me, but it was kind of. In her was the new me. I am not the same person I was four and three quarters, as she says, years ago. My life is her life. I still have my hopes and dreams but they are now entwined with hers. I live through her. My son and new daughter was and are the same.
I remember having a conversation with my wife before the birth of my son about how I could not imagine how I could love another like my daughter to which she wisely responded "before me, you didn't know how it is to love someone else and yet your love grew. Then we had our love together which was wonderful, yet it expanded again for our daughter and just like it was unimaginable how love could be made better by her, it will be made larger again for him." Now that is not an exact quote but it was the gist of the conversation, but the point is that love has no boundaries or limits. Love is ever growing.
I love being a father. It is what I always wanted to do. Looking back at my families life, even with the trials of having thirteen crazy children, I always will envy my grandfather for the unbelievable amount of creation he loved and enjoyed, I just cant seem to convince my wife to let us house our own baseball team. With the price of living nowadays I cant imagine affording a quartet!
Enough of this crazy, wandering Fatherhood post.
HAPPY FATHERS DAY!!

A Desire For Knowledge

Do you declare that, unbiased by friends, and uninfluenced by mercenary motives, you freely and voluntarily offer yourself as a candidate for the mysteries of masonry; that you are prompted to solicit this privilege by a favorable opinion conceived of the institution, a desire for knowledge, and a sincere wish to be useful to your fellow creatures?

That first time you are in lodge and waiting in the preparation room is such a crazy experience. You really don't know what is going on (hopefully), sitting with men you don't really know, and are asked to arrange yourself in the manner required for the initiation. All of the sudden two dudes with staffs enter the room and start asking you questions which you answer without really pondering what is being asked because on the surface they are easy questions to answer. Those questions however are the single most important questions you will ever be asked, and in my opinion, the one above is crucial to the future of the fraternity in the United States of America because it is what separates us from all of the other fraternal or civic organizations out there.

The first part stems from our need that men come of their own free will and accord. Solicitation and recruitment produce members, not masons. You offer yourself to the mysteries of masonry not to the organization of Freemasonry. Ours is a fraternity for making men withdraw into themselves and seek, with the help of the divine spark that is within us all, the truth that underlies all things.

The next part reminds us that it is a privilege and not a right to be a mason. A privilege is something that needs to be maintained not something that is guaranteed. When you receive your drivers license after fulfilling the requirements of the state you live in you must obey the laws of the road or you may loose the privilege that was granted to you. If you violate the laws of the road too many times you can loose that privilege for life. Think about that. I have recently been reading the minutes of my lodge from back in the 1800's and found that it was much harder to maintain the privilege of being a mason back then. Trials and suspensions for unmasonic conduct happened often and I think if we demanded our brothers now to live up to the standards of the past many would fail and loose the privilege of being a Freemason.

The next part, is my favorite part, and is something that is as much a part of my being as breathing, a desire for knowledge. I have never known a time in my life when I did not have the unquenchable thirst of curiosity. I am not just curious about finding out what things are but also why and how. In the beginning of our history as a craft, knowledge was not easily attainable. Be it by the church or monarchy, knowledge was a thing to be controlled and be distributed as little as possible in an attempt to keep the people down. Back then a desire for knowledge was a desire for enlightenment, and freedom that was not the norm at the time. We live now in a time when knowledge is as easy to gain as a mouse click yet the majority of the populace, of this country at least, would rather use their time to be mindlessly (and usually tastelessly) entertained for a couple of minutes. A serious desire for knowledge is something that needs to be resurrected and inculcated in as many people as possible.

The last part becomes the result of living up to the others. After offering ourselves to the mysteries of masonry, maintaining the privilege of being one, and quenching our desire for knowledge we may be useful to our fellow creatures. Notice the word creatures and not man. If we live up to the promise and possibility that our order can produce in a man we live as the Great Architect of The Universe meant us to be, and we can be useful to all of its creation.