Saturday, April 26, 2008

The Young Master Mason and Not Taking The Bait

"Where is this Brother coming from?" thought the Young Master Mason to himself as he sat reading through his RSS feeds one morning. "What is he even talking about? To hear him tell it, he's Wil Smith trapped on a post-apocalyptic island full of zombie Masons!"

The Young Master Mason sipped his coffee, cracked his knuckles, and began trying to compose a thoughtful, measured response to all of the vaguely paranoid, feverish accusations and condemnations he had been reading for months.

Five minutes later, he looked out the window and saw the sun shining. It was a beautiful Spring morning... the leaves were unfurling on the maple trees, birds were singing, and all of the snow was finally gone from the deepest hollows in the woods.

"I've got better things to do with my time," he thought, "It's a beautiful day, and I'm not going to waste it sitting in front of a computer, firing self-important missives across the internet."

The Young Master Mason finished his coffee, turned off his computer, and went out to face the world.

2 comments:

Tom Accuosti said...

To hear him tell it, he's Wil Smith trapped on a post-apocalyptic island full of zombie Masons!"

::laughs::

The Young Master Mason finished his coffee, turned off his computer, and went out to face the world.

::stands up and cheers::

AC, I have about two dozen regular readers from Connecticut. I'd like to think it's not because my writing is bad, but because *most* Masons aren't particularly interested in doing the online community thing. Yes, there are a number of active web forms, and my blogroll lists something like 80 blogs written by Masons, with several more that I read via RSS. But the web forums seem to be populated by a lot of the same people; at least, I see mostly the some ones on several boards. As to the blogs? Only a handful are updated with any (excuse the pun) regularity.

Really, when you come right down to it, the internet bickering that we see is such a small, tiny little piece of what goes in the Masonic world that most people have no idea that it even exists! *Most* Masons will never knowingly meet a brother (or a sister) from an unrecognized jurisdiction, let alone find themselves in a situation in which they won't know how to deal with one.

The very few brothers who are interested in going off in another direction should just do so and prove themselves by their work, instead of wasting energy on attacking the system that they left. The brothers who are happy with their old system should concentrate on continuous improvement (on the system or on themselves) and stop inciting those who have left.

And afterwards, maybe, just maybe, we'll all get around to practicing some real Masonry.

A.C. said...

Indeed. I was at a Table Lodge last night and found out about an e-mail list one of the Brothers maintains, mostly for member of his lodge (one of the others in my district), but also for more general, Western Massachusetts Masonic happenings.

I gave him a card, and I'm looking forward to receiving e-mails telling me about stuff that's actually happening, as in, "Hey, let's get together and enjoy some fellowship/raise some money/etc."... not "Well I'd go but I bet the old guys won't spend any money on it so it won't be any fun so I won't go" or "Well I'd go but those pushy new guys will probably be there and I don't want them in my face, so I won't go"

I don't believe I would ever have found out about this e-mail list unless I had gone to the Table Lodge; as far as I know it has no web presence that I might ever have surfed across.