The Examined Life

A Master Builder by Any Other Name

2011-05-16T11:09:00.004-05:00

The Grand Lodge of Iowa has something called the Master Builder Program, which encourages new Masons to get involved in their lodges by giving them a checklist of tasks to complete... on successfully achieving these milestones, the new Brother earns the title of Master Builder, and in the process has gotten actively engaged in his lodge instead of disappearing after the 3rd degree.

The Grand Lodge of Massachusetts has a very similar program, which is indeed very effective at getting new Brothers involved even in lodges that don't always do the best job of following through with them. In Massachusetts, though, a Brother who works through the list of requirements earns the title of Masonic Rookie. Which would you rather be called?

On the subject of dues (or, Beating a Dead Horse)

2011-03-07T15:44:00.000-05:00

The Petersham Curling Club charges $390 per year, or $32.50 per month, for membership. This for a casual sporting club that does not make any of the lofty claims our Masonic recruiting materials often do... no 'making good men better,' no 'Curlers give $2 million a day to charity,' no 'George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were curlers too!' But clearly, the passion is there because members pay those dues year after year, and take advantage of all of the privileges that their membership affords them.

My mother lodge's dues, in contrast, work out to $7.30 per month, and that's after they were raised a couple of years ago. After dues went up, we got an angry letter from one Brother who now lives in another part of the country, assuming there had to have been a mistake in his dues bill. When told that no, dues had indeed gone up, he immediately asked for a demit, stating flatly that "$88.00 per year is too much for Blue Lodge dues. I pay less than that to belong to the Shrine."

If my lodge's dues jumped to $390 per year, I'd feel a pinch for sure - but I would find a way to pay it because being a Mason, and participating in my lodge, are that valuable to me. Imagine what your lodge would be like if everyone who belonged placed as much value on their membership as curlers do!

Like the Precious Oil Upon on the Head

2011-02-17T23:32:00.004-05:00

It was my privilege last week to visit not one but two lodges under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of Free & Accepted Masons of New York, both of which meet in the magnificent Grand Lodge building on West 23rd Street in the Flatiron district of Manhattan.

I toured the Grand Lodge building in 2007, while still waiting to take the first degree, and although I had done some reading and knew something about the arrangement and significance of the furniture in each lodge room, I was still very much an outsider.

When I stepped into the anteroom of the Ionic room last night before the meeting of St. John's Lodge No. 1, there was a palpable charge of anticipation about the room that simply wasn't there when I walked around it as a profane tourist 3 1/2 years ago. The pre-ritual ritual of Brothers filing into their lodge and greeting one another warmly is the same whether you're in a dense city or in a remote country lodge, and it's the same whether you're a member or a Brother traveling in a foreign country.

What we do is profoundly special. How many other organizations give you the ability to walk into a room as a complete stranger in a faraway city at the start of the evening and part with bear-hugs at the end of the night? When it's done right, Freemasonry is just an amazing thing. As every Entered Apprentice is told, it conciliates true friendship among those who might otherwise have remained at a perpetual distance, but too often Brothers never set foot outside of their district, or even their own lodge. Even as a dedicated officer or active Brother, it's far too easy to get worn down by the grind of nuts-and-bolts Freemasonry and the petty intrigues of your local Masonic community.

When you travel both literally and Masonically, you experience a fascinating juxtaposition. Physically you find yourself hundreds or thousands of miles from your home, friends, and family. Even if it's a place you've been before, it's not home. You're out of your element, on your own... but if you find a lodge in that foreign place, you will be met with slight guardedness which quickly gives way to sincere fraternal affection once you're duly examined to the Lodge's satisfaction.

Once the lodge is tyled and the meeting starts, you realize that it doesn't matter where you are. A well-governed lodge at work exists out of time and space, and distinctions of geography aren't important. It's an important reminder of the universality of Freemasonry, and a great way to recharge your Masonic batteries.

Most Esteemed By Masons

2010-07-01T07:29:00.002-05:00

I'm skeptical, but this is interesting:

"A British academic claims to have uncovered codes that suggest [Plato] was a secret follower of Pythagoras and shared his belief that the secrets to the universe lie in numbers and maths."

Junior Warden-elect

2010-06-11T09:28:00.003-05:00

The last regular communication of the year was held at my mother lodge last week, and I was elected to the office of Junior Warden.

I admit, I will be glad to be more or less done with the Senior Deacon's chair (although I expect that I will get tapped to deliver the Middle Chamber lecture or take the second section of the Third Degree now and again.) I thoroughly enjoyed learning and performing my parts of the ritual, but it will be nice to be out of the spotlight for a while.

I also admit I'm not tremendously thrilled with my impending duties related to the coordination (if not direct preparation) of meals and collations... but I've been in the lodge long enough to know who I can work with to hopefully pull off some good meals.

Just as the office of Senior Deacon serves as a filter for officers who either can't or aren't interested in learning some pretty heavy ritual, I think perhaps the Junior Warden's traditional meal-organizing duties have evolved as a filter for officers who either can't or aren't interested in the kind of organization and leadership required to coordinate such an event; if a Brother can't pull together a bean supper, how well is he going to run the Lodge? I will endeavor to keep that in mind next year.

It's not for nothing that the metaphor of Labor is woven into our rituals and lectures. Freemasonry is work... I think officers generally realize this more than many members, but even among officers it can be easy to lose sight of what hopefully attracted us to knock on the doors of our Lodges in the first place. There's more to it than just memorizing ritual, or planning meals, or running efficient meetings - these skills are all parts of it, but not ends in and of themselves. One of the things that some of the Brothers I most admire seem to have in common is a tremendous respect for, and desire to perpetuate, the most noble ideals of the Craft itself... and that means thinking beyond the sometimes trivial distractions of your own Lodge -- not ignoring them, but not giving them more attention than they deserve, either. I hope to find the balance by the time I reach the East.

Silence and Circumspection

2010-06-01T07:03:00.007-05:00

I usually have ideas for Masonic blog posts floating around in my head, but as I get more deeply involved in my lodges I find myself less inclined to blather on about them, which is why I don't post much here these days. Early on I wrote that I chose to write this blog pseudo-anonymously because I want to be vague about the people and organizations I am interacting with, out of respect for their privacy. This is still very true. In addition to this, my attitude about how we talk about and promote the fraternity has evolved slightly.

In terms of a person who might be looking at different organizations they might like to join, the Freemasons' mystique is basically the only thing separating us from the Elks or the Lions. It drives me crazy when local papers run two-paragraph articles about the Masons opening their doors, because one of those paragraphs is always devoted to a well-intentioned brother saying "We don't have any secrets, actually."

We absolutely do have secrets - both tangible (the passes, grips, and words a Mason is given with each degree) and intangible (the personal insights that can be gained by studying the symbols and lectures of our fraternity, and the deep bonds of history & fellowship that can only be experienced by joining and being active.) To claim otherwise is to miss the entire point of our institution.

The Benjamin Franklin quote about how the grand secret of the Freemasons "is that they have no secret at all," is also often trotted out in these articles. Again, by using that quote to marginalize the aspect of Masonic secrecy, we're missing the point.

The importance of secrecy within the fraternity is perhaps best explained by posing the question, "If I can't even trust you to uphold your obligations to keep these few words and handshakes secret, how can I trust you to do anything else?"

The importance of secrecy without the fraternity is the leap of faith required by a candidate who wants to join. When I asked to be made a Mason, I had some doubts but had conceived a favorable enough opinion of the fraternity to put them aside. When my grandfather was a younger man, straight information about the fraternity was much harder to come by. He had a very favorable opinion of Freemasonry, but all of the Masons he knew were so closed-mouthed about the whole business that he never joined, intimidated by what the initiation might involve.

I think that leap of faith is important. On the one hand a candidate will have heard all kinds of awful things about Freemasonry: Satanism, world domination plots, drinking wine from human skulls, et cetera. On the other, he will think of his dad, or his grandfather, a best friend or respected colleague, upstanding, admired men who he knows would never have been involved if any of that weird stuff was true. It's up to the candidate to decide that there must be something there, and knock on the door of Freemasonry himself.

Rumors and falsehoods about Freemasonry have been swirling around for centuries. Idiots blogging about Jay-Z and Lady Gaga Illuminati subliminal media mind control is just the latest spin on a long tradition of suspicion and paranoia. For every author who writes a positive, straightforward overview of the fraternity there will always be a David Icke spewing lies and nonsense. No amount of telling newspapers that "We're not a secret society, we're a society with secrets" will change that, so perhaps we should stop worrying about it and working within our lodges to make sure that the Brothers who do take the leap of faith feel like it was worth it and stick around. Blogging about my frustrations might be a good way to vent, but doesn't accomplish much other than preaching to the choir of other frustrated Masons while contributing the the demystification of the fraternity.

I didn't wait for the movie after all

2010-04-11T20:56:00.006-05:00

I was surprised to find a copy of The Lost Symbol in circulation at my library and decided I might as well grab it. It was a quick read, although there really is only about 90 minutes' worth of story in it; it might as well have been written as a screenplay, right down to Brown's apparent casting choice of Morgan Freeman for the character of Warren Bellamy.

Masons should read this book. Yes, the characters are cardboard, the writing awkward and full of repetitious clichés, the cliffhanger scenarios and plot twists overly wrought, but we should be able to discuss it intelligently with non-Masons whose first impressions, for better or worse, have been formed by it. And I did like a couple of things about the book, and the involvement of our fraternity in it.

*** Spoiler Alert ***

(Don't read further if you want to read the book or watch the movie yourself.)

Dan Brown resisted what would have been an easy plot device to run with; the old tin-foil hat trope about the real purpose of Masonry (world domination) only being revealed to "high ranking Masons" while all the Masons outside the inner circle foolishly believe it's just a harmless social club.

Brown does throw the phrase "high ranking Mason" around a lot, and he does write about there being inner circles within Freemasonry, but in this story these inner circles are all about gaining and guarding wisdom, not power. Maybe fiction, but one I can work with if guys start showing up at my lodge asking how they can get one of those neat 33º rings. The world domination kooks? There's no working with them... just ask the crazy lady who keeps showing up at my lodge's open houses, trying to trick us into revealing something sinister.

And when it comes to the MacGuffin, the actual Lost Symbol that gives the book its title, it turns out in the end that there is no Lost Word which can be uttered to unlock the "Ancient Mysteries." The mysteries are encoded in all of the religious texts of the ages, hidden in plain sight and waiting for mankind to learn how to see them again. Veiled in allegory and illustrated with symbols, if you will.

On one hand, this is as cheesy and anticlimactic as holiday specials which end with someone saying "The true meaning of Christmas is within ALL of us!" On the other, isn't this what we experience when we take the degrees ourselves? We take long obligations which sternly admonish us never to reveal the secrets of Freemasonry unlawfully... but once we're given those actual, specific secrets they're a little anticlimactic too, as Brother Michael Halleran writes in his wonderful essay John Quincy Adams, Masonry & The Free, Invisible Car:

But there is another group of men who have passed through the west door: these men are under the impression that when they reach the third degree they will be given the spiritual equivalent of a new car, and when they find that this is not the case, they lose interest rapidly. Perhaps they see the lessons and lectures we give as essentially frivolous, or perhaps they don’t understand them.

More Crack Reporting about the Masons

2010-03-30T07:21:00.002-05:00

I mean, really, why did they even bother?

http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2010/03/29/nh_freemasons_invite_the_public_in/

Can we please stop giving quotes about how we don't have any secrets to the press? At this point they have clearly taken the "Masons are trying to shed their mystique and seem more mundane" ball and run with it. They don't need our help anymore.

The Importance of Traveling

2010-03-26T10:27:00.004-05:00

If you become a Mason, chances are good that a Brother will stand up after one (or all) of your degrees, congratulate you, and then proceed to exhort you to get out and visit other lodges, in and beyond their district. Sometimes they'll go so far as to say, "Visiting other lodges is what it's all about!"

Because many of these Brothers are old-timers, they get tuned out by the other members of the lodge who have heard the same spiel dozens of times before. You, who still barely know the names of anyone in your own lodge, will think to yourself "First things first! I don't even understand what just happened to me. I don't want to go to some other lodge full of guys I don't know."

But here's the thing: if you join your local lodge and find that it's not a good fit for you (membership too old, membership too young, personality conflicts, whatever) how are you ever going to know if there's a lodge in the next town over that's everything you're looking for if you never go and visit them?

If you've joined and are getting everything you need from your mother lodge and see no reason you should ever visit another, that's great... but if you've joined and feel let down, or puzzled at what the big deal is, get out and travel! It's one of your rights and privileges as a Master Mason. Don't be hesitant about setting foot in a room full of total, or near-total strangers; they're your Brothers, and you may meet among them Masons who embody whatever particular aspect of Freemasonry attracted you to the fraternity in the first place.

The problem is that it can take a while to determine whether a lodge is merely suffering from typical generation gap issues ("We've always done it that way!" "$8 is too much for dinner as it is!") or if there's a deeper dysfunction at work, and because new candidates look to the rest of the lodge to show them the ropes, they may assume that the microcosm of their lodge is "just the way Freemasonry is," wonder what the attraction is supposed to be, and stop showing up.

Question for my Massachusetts Scottish Rite Brethren

2010-03-18T19:23:00.002-05:00

If a Brother wanted to join the Scottish Rite in Massachusetts and go sequentially from 4º to 32º, is that even something that can be done anymore? Just join a Lodge of Perfection and work from 4º through 14º, move on to Princes of Jerusalem, and so on? I've looked at a few different Valleys over the last 2 1/2 years and get the impression that there are some degrees that get performed rarely, if ever... and not sequentially, either.

A corollary question: If you joined the Scottish Rite by way of a one-day class, did you find the degrees themselves fulfilling, or is your enjoyment of Scottish Rite drawn from your participation in one or more of the bodies that make up your Valley? I live prohibitively far from any of the Massachusetts Valleys to get anywhere near as involved as I have in my Blue Lodge, so my main interest in the Scottish Rite (at least, right now) would be in experiencing the degrees themselves. I know the degrees don't need to be taken sequentially, but I'm not in a rush.

Under whose watchful care even comets perform their stupendous revolutions

2010-03-18T13:54:00.002-05:00

“A universe simple enough to be understood is too simple to produce a mind capable of understanding it.” — Cambridge cosmologist John Barrow

(Via Futility Closet)

Building Costs

2010-02-09T09:01:00.007-05:00

This would make an excellent research paper, and someday when I develop some research chops and perhaps when I'm out of the officer line I'll have the time to pursue it, but in the meantime, I have found myself wondering lately:

Has anyone done a financial analysis of the following data points:

Membership numbers in the early 20th century
Dues costs relative to the currency of the time
Money spent to build the magnificent, reverent temples that we can't afford anymore

I find it hard to believe that Brethren alone could have chipped in enough money to build grand edifices like the Temples at Worcester and Springfield, Massachusetts, even with double our current membership or quadruple the dues we currently pay (adjusted for inflation). Were building corporations able to secure large construction loans for these projects? Did wealthy Brothers act as patrons, donating thousands of dollars? How did they get built, really?

And the age-old question: Why does nobody care any more? When I talk to old-timers who had the privilege of meeting in some of the beautiful old buildings that have since been abandoned, the old temples are usually spoken of with a shrug, not the wistful sadness I feel when I look at them. And the follow-up question: Why are the new lodge buildings that do occasionally get built so utterly uninspiring? I know that they simply "don't make 'em like they used to," but surely we could do even just a little bit better than the white clapboard boxes that seem to be the norm for newer lodge buildings in New England.

Politics

2010-01-19T09:22:00.002-05:00

The age-old policy of Masons not to discuss religion or politics in Lodge is a very good one, but after living through last year's Presidential campaign and the current special senatorial election in Massachusetts, I find myself a little bit disillusioned.

Even if members of a lodge observe that policy (and many of the older, conservative Brothers in my neck of the woods don't), what if you've added them as contacts on Facebook? There's no Masonic code of conduct that says you can't talk politics around other Masons outside of Lodge, so watching Brothers (liberal and conservative alike) let fly on Facebook can be eye opening.

It doesn't bother me that a Brother might have a political difference of opinion with me, but it absolutely bothers me when I see a Mason making false logic or ad hominem attacks against the ideas, members, or candidates of another political party... because when I shake a Brother's hand in Lodge, I don't want to be wondering if he secretly holds me in contempt, too.

All Dressed Up

2010-01-05T13:29:00.002-05:00

From the Onion: Man Unable To Wear Nice Clothes Without Everyone Asking Questions

I can't speak for other parts of the world, but here in north-central Massachusetts I get a lot of funny looks whenever I duck into a convenience store to grab something on my way to or from a lodge meeting, dressed in a suit.

People really just don't dress up for anything any more... when my wife and I made our first visit to our local UU church last year (my first visit to an organized church in a number of years), the high school kids were wearing jeans and logo sweatshirts. Adults asked, "Why are you all dressed up?"

It really blows peoples' minds when I'm wearing a tuxedo.

Why I Like Going to Lodge

2009-11-04T16:24:00.002-05:00

It shields me from the constant stream of interruptions and tasks being piled onto my to-do list, if only for a few hours.

Ladies: They're not just for preparing food

2009-09-26T15:33:00.002-05:00

Much is often made of the generation gap between Masons who joined in the post WWII boom and the younger Brethren who have started joining over the last few years; because so relatively few baby boomers joined, there can be some pretty big cultural disconnects without the benefit of a generation that probably would have helped ease the transition.

Perhaps one of the biggest such disconnects that I've experienced so far is the notion of Masons' "Ladies"... a term that is meant in a gentlemanly way, but also carries with it the baggage of the Leave it to Beaver era. The old-school notion of involving the Ladies at Masonic functions often seems to revolve around inviting them to prepare a dish for some dinner or collation. Brothers under the age of, say, 45: If your spouse or girlfriend got a call from someone at the lodge asking them to make a casserole to bring to some function, what would her reaction be?

When Everyone's Wrong on the Internet

2009-09-14T16:03:00.003-05:00

One of these days, I'm going to learn that it is ultimately useless to get drawn into an argument about Freemasonry on the internet. As Jeff Eaton said, the crazy guy always has more time than you.

From time to time a post related to Freemasonry appears on BoingBoing, a site that features links to all sorts of interesting stuff, often with a pop-culture bent. I read these threads with particular interest, because Boing Boing's readership strikes me as generally intelligent and considerate when it comes to commenting. As such, most posts about the Masons turn into jokes about old guys wearing funny hats and driving little cars, as opposed to raves about shape-shifting lizard people.

But inevitably, someone cries "Hypocrisy! You Masons talk about acceptance but I can't join because I'm an atheist or a woman! You think you're sooooo much better than me because I don't believe in fairy tales!" with undertones of "I wouldn't want to join your stupid little boys' club anyway! How can you take that stuff seriously?" and suddenly you're arguing about whether or not the Masons (and other private organizations) have the right to exist because they exclude members based on certain criteria... and it's all the more frustrating because most of the people who get so indignant about the no atheists/no women aspect of regular Freemasonry don't even want to join! It's just something else to argue and snark about online.

So, all I can do is try to make a cogent, well-written post and leave before things get ugly - and try to keep myself from going back, because it's just going to get my blood up.

So Has Dan Brown Thrown us Under the Bus?

2009-09-14T08:08:00.003-05:00

With the prologue and first chapter of The Lost Symbol out of the bag, it looks like Freemasons are probably going to spend a lot of time correcting the "facts" portrayed in the book. Like the fact that the 33rd degree ritual involves the candidate drinking wine from a human skull. Thanks Dan!

Apparently there was a Supreme Council that did in fact include the wine-from-a-skull act in its version of the 33rd degree, but they were clandestine (not officially recognized by either the Northern or Southern jurisdictions of the Scottish Rite), and it was about 100 years ago. (http://lostsymboltweets.blogspot.com/2009/09/do-you-masons-really-drink-from-skulls.html)

When I really consider it, I guess I'm not as annoyed at Dan Brown as I am at the people who accepted The Da Vinci Code as historical truth and will no doubt do the same with The Lost Symbol. Whether the Masons are good guys or bad guys in the story remains to be seen, but already there are hundreds of people out there who probably think we really drink wine from human skulls.

I'm now also wondering if Blue Lodges are going to be subjected to the Shrine effect, where fans of the novel join just so they can go on to the Scottish Rite and become 32º Masons.

How do you Reconcile the Ideals of Freemasonry with a Pessimistic Outlook on Humanity?

2009-09-03T14:38:00.006-05:00

The tenets of Freemasonry are all about being good and true, and being serviceable to fellow creatures. I do try to uphold these ideals in my day to day interactions with mankind, but like Brother John Ratcliffe, I often find modern society to be awfully discouraging.

My concentration this afternoon has been derailed by news coverage of idiot parents who are up in arms over the fact the the President of the United States will be giving a live talk about education to kids in schools all over the country next week. Why? Because rabid right-wing TV and radio personalities have convinced them that it's "socialist indoctrination." I'm at a total loss for words. Who are these people, and how do they get mainstream news coverage? Can you imagine the TOTAL! MORAL! OUTRAGE! we'd hear from these same talking heads if a liberal parent objected to a conservative President addressing their kid in school? "Unpatriotic! Unamerican! Encouraging the terrorists!"

Meanwhile, all any concerned parent would do in a reasonable society would be to discuss the President's speech with their kids after school that day, you know, like grown-ups used to do: calmly and rationally.

While I'll freely admit to having liberal tendencies myself, what bothers me is not the fact that a person might not agree with the sitting President's political views or agenda. It's the willful ignorance and anti-intellectualism that has overtaken civil discourse in our society, and the despicable people who bend those tendencies to opportunistic advantage, poisoning the well for the rest of us who want nothing more than to coexist amicably with our neighbors.

Times and Seasons, Years and Cycles

2009-09-02T08:25:00.003-05:00

Masonic bloggers across the U.S. are announcing the arrival of the upcoming year with a mix of exitement and wistfulness at how fleeting our summer hiatus was.

As I get ready for what is sure to be a busy Masonic year (I'll be installed as Senior Deacon and Historian of my Lodge in October) I'm feeling much the same; July and August provided a much-needed break from the weekly rehearsals, Lodges of Instruction, and stated meetings, but I'm looking forward to seeing my Brothers again and going back to the quarries. It's a feeling that is dimly familiar, and I realize that it's very similar to what I used to feel when returning to school after summer vacation.

One of the best things about Masonry is that it provides a context in which to meet men from a very broad swath of the social fabric of our communities, something I haven't enjoyed since my college years ended in 1996. In college, a student is typically thrown into a dormitory building with other students from all different majors and all different parts of the country, united by your choice of school.

When you join a Masonic lodge, you're typically thrown into a group of men of all different ages and backgrounds, united by the community you live in and the tenets of Freemasonry. The Masonic summer break restores that sense of renewal that we all used to enjoy as students... when we go out into the real world, life often turns into a 365-day-a-year grind. While you still don't get a summer break from your day job (unless you happen to be a teacher,) taking a couple of months away from the Lodge gives you a nice opportunity to reflect on the proceedings of the preceding year, and contemplate the upcoming one.

A Slight Disconnect

2009-08-25T13:56:00.003-05:00

I have yet to join any appendent bodies. Because there aren't any left at my mother lodge, I did not have the oft-described experience of having guys shoving Shrine/Scottish Rite/Royal Arch/Grotto/Eastern Star petitions into my hands as soon as I signed the bylaws. And because I jumped right into an officer's chair, I haven't exactly had a surfeit of time to go exploring them on my own.

But I do hear from the Shrine every once in a while. They send letters inviting me to one shindig or another, rehashing the good works that the hospitals do, and the $2 million per day figure, and "fun in Masonry," et cetera.

I've gone back and forth on the notion of joining the Shrine... the hospitals are certainly a very worthy cause, and I can totally get behind the idea of getting together with other grown men to wear fezzes and drive tiny cars in parades, even I don't get around to it for another 10 years. On the other hand, the Shrine's original reason for being ("Blue Lodge is boring! Let's go party!") kind of irks me.

The letter I got yesterday doesn't exactly instill me with the burning desire to become a Shriner, though. I'm cordially invited to a "Rockin' Nobles Party" (quotes and apostrophe theirs), and of course the letter said that "your Lady" is welcome too (quotes mine).

My wife was amused by the use of the phrase "your Lady," which I think has lost whatever polish of civility and refinement it used to have and now seems strangely possessive and borderline creepy. As for the "Rockin' Nobles Party"? I can't think of a time in all my 35 years that the term Rockin' was ever anything other than painfully uncool. I don't know what the typical age bracket for new Shriners is these days, but I have a hard time imagining many Gen-X/Gen-Y Masons getting a letter like this and getting excited.

Send me a letter inviting me to a black tie dinner and whisky tasting, though, and I'll be all over it. I wondered a while back about whether any new appendent bodies had come into being lately, because I think it would be interesting to see what my generation would come up with if we started fresh without the legacy of ladies' auxiliaries and potluck suppers.

A Reference for the Rest of Us

2009-08-11T15:04:00.003-05:00

Thank you, Brother Chris Hodapp, for putting together a go-to blog post covering some of the whys and wherefores of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, which seems quite likely to figure prominently in Dan Brown's upcoming book. Bro. Hodapp's post can be found at:

http://freemasonsfordummies.blogspot.com/2009/08/lost-symbol-and-scottish-rite.html

Please take the time to check it out, and then share it with all of your non-Masonic family and friends on your blogs/facebook/twitter accounts. We would do well to get as much plain-spoken information as we can into peoples' heads before they read a fictional tale about how Washington was really a British Loyalist but his Masonic Brothers covered up for him, or whatever weirdness is to be found in the book.

Templar Musings

2009-08-10T10:19:00.008-05:00

Back in May I wrote about my resurgent interest in the York Rite, due largely to a Brother who has become a dear friend and who is heavily involved in all three York Rite bodies (Royal Arch Chapter, Cryptic Council, Knights Templar Commandery.)

I have long assumed that I would stop short of joining the Knights Templar, as I cannot honestly call myself a Christian despite having been raised in the UCC. Online discourse about whether or not a non-Christian can or should join is interesting, and seems to reflect three prevailing attitudes:

The ritual is to be interpreted literally and no man should ever petition a Commandery or take any of the Templar obligations unless they are a devout Christian.
Templar ritual, like the three Blue Lodge degrees, is full of veiled symbolism and as such, explicit references to Jesus or the Christian trinity are symbols for deeper truths. Insofar as you are not made uncomfortable or offended by these references, you can be a Templar.
It's fun to dress up in pseudo-military regalia and play with swords - don't sweat the obligations, man!

It's a question that leads to much interesting discussion, and to some extent reflects on the debate about the future of Craft Lodge Masonry. I've been thinking a lot over the summer break about the age old question of what Freemasonry is - the thing that troubles a lot of people about the current state of Freemasonry in the US is that new guys have a different vision than the old-timers, and there's an idea that someone has to be right, and there's an awful lot of energy spent complaining and debating about who's right and who's wrong.

My own current take is that Freemasonry is what you, an individual Mason, make of it. If all you want out of lodge are stale crullers and arguments over bills, then more power to you. It seems like kind of a waste of your obligations, but I won't begrudge you your comfortable routine. I can put up with those things while I'm pursuing what I want out of Masonry, which is better ritual, a little bit more pride in our institution and lodge buildings, and a place to get together with good men in an increasingly shallow and depressing society.

I've been pretty active in my mother lodge for over a year now, and to a lesser extent I'm engaged at the district level and also my great-great-great grandfather's lodge here in my own town. Among all the lodges I've visited and Brothers I've met, what I'm finding is that if you take the time to get to know a lot of Masons just a little bit, you'll start finding subgroups among the larger collectives of individual lodges or districts. Masons who really dig old regalia. Masons who like single malt Scotch and cigars. Masons who are particularly adept at ritual. Pretty much any interest you can think of, you can find other Masons who are into it and inclined to flock together.

And what's interesting is that many of these Masons AND groups overlap in different places, like a big colorful venn diagram. Nobody needs to pledge fealty to one particular Masonic clique; I can get my ritual fix by visiting lodge X who does particularly good degree work, and I can get my regalia fix by hanging out with Brother Y, who may also happen to introduce me to some very interesting books about US History and tell me I should talk to Brother Z, who's really into history. It's all good, and I think in some ways essential to our health as an institution. Can you imagine how awful your lodge would be if everyone was interested in the exact same things and had no new ideas to bring into each others' spheres of influence?

To put it another way, consider the typical workplace that lets employees listen to the radio. It might start out with a manager choosing his favorite rock station. If enough coworkers complain, it might get switched to a country station for a while... but if the manager can't stand country, maybe they'll try a top 40 station. Eventually, it gets changed again and again until it winds up on a crappy soft-rock station. And there it stays because while nobody really likes it, at least they all hate it equally. It never seems to occur to management that if the overhead speakers were shut off altogether and each office pod were allowed to pick its own music, everyone would be much happier.

Freemasonry definitely has some systemic issues facing it (jurisdictions that may have seen a spike in raw membership numbers from one-day classes or other membership drives are finding that it's not only about getting people to join, it's about getting them to come back to lodge), but ultimately I think it's more about Brothers making their visions of what Freemasonry could be happen for themselves than imposing those visions on one another without stopping to ask what floats their boats.

As to the Templar question: my impression based on Templars I've talked to, and things I've read online is that there is almost a "don't ask, don't tell" policy with regards to one's assent to the explicitly Christian aspects of Commandery, at least in the United States. That is to say, it will be generally assumed by members of the order that you are a Christian. If you're not, but take the degrees anyway then it's pretty much up to your own conscience as to how faithfully you are upholding your Obligations as a Knight Templar. If you dissect these requirements semantically and interpret them to mean simply that you must believe that the Christian religion exists, and that you'd defend its right to exist, is that good enough for you? Is it good enough for the Brothers in your Commandery if someone learns that you attend a Unitarian Universalist Church or a synagogue and demands an explanation? Is it good enough for Great Architect? In the end, that's what really matters.

I was greatly amused by this anonymous comment to a post on this subject at http://blog.kingsolomonslodge.org/2008/12/can-non-christian-feel-comfortable-as.html:

Templar: You know this is mainly a Christian organization and most of the members are Christian, right?

Non-Christian: Yup.

Templar: And that we refer to Jesus by name as our Lord and savior, and that he died for our sins.

Non-Christian: Well, he is your savior and he did die for your sins, who am I to say he didn't?

Templar: You have to swear to defend the Christian faith, are you okay with that?

Non-Christian: Sure, why not?

Templar: The Order revolves around strictly around Christian histories...

Non-Christian: Those are good histories.

Templar: ...and faith.

Non-Christian: It's a decent faith, too.

Templar: Well, I just want to make sure you can be comfortable with all of the Christian references to ensure you won't take offense.

Non-Christian: It's no problem with me.

Templar: Do you like wine?

Non-Christian: I love it!

Templar: Great! You got $100?

Non-Christian: Yup.

Templar: Excellent! I'll get it from you Wednesday at the Lodge.

Masonic E-mail List Etiquette

2009-07-28T14:35:00.002-05:00

If you want proof of how corrosive religion and politics can be to lodge interactions, you probably don't have to look much further than your inbox. I wound up on the mass e-mail list of a Brother for whom I have a lot of respect, and with each toxic right-wing viral email he forwards to me that respect diminishes just a little bit.

It's not because I don't happen to agree with most of the bile being spewed in these screeds. People are entitled to their beliefs, and however different your views may be from mine I respect your right to those beliefs and opinions. What really bothers me is that invariably the tone of these messages assumes my complicity in the hate, disrespect, distortions, and intolerance that they preach.

They're sent with the assumption that of course I agree that this is a Christian nation that should have legally mandated and legally protected Christian prayers in school, and display the Ten Commandments in courthouses, and that Barack Obama is arrogant, and evil, and elitist, and probably not even a real citizen, and turning Amurrca into a socialist country, and I-wonder-how-those-pinko-liberals-like-their-change-NOW. They're so strongly worded that I don't dare respond with a polite "Please don't send me any more political e-mails" message for fear I'll get dragged into an argument I want no part of, which can't be won in the face of such anger and bitterness, and that has the potential to taint more relationships in my predominantly conservative lodge.

Wondering Aloud

2009-07-08T13:51:00.003-05:00

What was the last major appendant body to come into existence? Has anyone tried to get one going lately?

It's Official - The Lost Symbol is about the Freemasons

2009-07-07T16:33:00.003-05:00

I'm probably the last person to be blogging about the fact that the covers for both the US and UK versions of The Lost Symbol feature both Washington D.C. and Masonic Symbols prominently.

Which means that I will probably begrudgingly buy and read it, because about a month after its release, Massachusetts will be holding another state-wide open house, and I need to know how Dan Brown has represented (or misrepresented) our order. Talk about your free publicity, though!

If we can set people straight while still leaving them with a little hint of mystery, we could see a lot of new petitions, and I don't see people petitioning lodges because of this book as necessarily a bad thing. Having people clamoring at the west gate is a good problem to have, as long as you're willing to investe a little deeper than "Do you believe in a Supreme Being? Any questions? No? Ok, sign here and you'll hear from us in a couple of months."

Gate City Lodge #2 hits the NY Times

2009-07-03T08:00:00.002-05:00

And thankfully, the article is not written in a ZOMG THE MASONS ARE ALL RACISTS tone. Rather, Sheila Dewan and Robbie Brown seem to be shaking their heads in along with the rest of us who live in the 21st century:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/us/03masons.html?ref=us

Bangor Masons have a New Home

2009-07-01T16:06:00.004-05:00

Yeah! Bangor's beautiful 1868 Masonic Temple burned down in 2004, and instead of retreating to a bland new structure in the suburbs, the area's Masonic bodies have purchased some wonderful old buildings on the grounds of the former Bangor Theological Seminary. The closing was Monday. Congratulations and good luck, Brothers!

http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/109687.html

(BANGOR DAILY NEWS PHOTO BY KATE COLLINS)

Speaking of Improving Masonry

2009-07-01T15:13:00.003-05:00

I remarked not long ago that I'd rather hear about things people have actually *done* to improve Masonry than listen to people bitch about what the rest of us should or shouldn't be doing to improve it.

Regarding the situation in Georgia (which I assure you, my Brethren in other parts of the country, seems as backwards and alienating to all of the Masons I've talked to here in the Northeast as it must to non-Masons reading the articles starting to trickle out in the news), I've e-mailed my DDGM to 1) Bring the matter to his attention and 2) Ask him what my Grand Lodge can do about it.

I'm not mentioning this to pat myself on the back for sending an e-mail... just to remind folks that if enough of us take the small steps like getting the word out through our respective Masonic grapevines, stuff might actually start to happen.

Or you could just keep complaining to anonymous people on the internet, that might work too.

A Brief Observation

2009-06-20T10:47:00.002-05:00

Rants about what everyone should do to improve Freemasonry are much less inspiring than stories about what someone has actually done to improve it.

2 Years

2009-06-08T16:28:00.002-05:00

It's hard to believe I started this weblog a little over 2 years ago on June 5, 2007. 3/4 of a year later I was made a Mason.

Rather than try and wax eloquent, I'll sum it up by repeating what my good friend and Brother Mike said on one recent evening:

Freemasonry is magic.

Watch that Cable Tow

2009-05-29T10:56:00.005-05:00

Early on, when I was devouring all the information I could find about the Blue Lodge and appendant bodies of Freemasonry, I couldn't wait to get going; take the first three degrees, then continue on to the York Rite and eventually the Scottish Rite. The idea of all those degrees was exciting - not so much for the elaborate and impressive titles that accompany them (although those are certainly fun,) but for the idea that each one represented some important and relatively obscure bit of knowledge to mull over, each one building on the last, hopefully leading to some kind of ultimate Masonic enlightenment.

After joining and getting swept into the officers' line of my mother lodge, I decided fairly quickly to let the appendant bodies wait. As an officer I'm spending quite enough time as it is in Blue Lodge, and to echo Bro. Tom Accuosti's sentiments I don't feel like I've gotten everything there is to get out of the Craft degrees before rushing off to the next.

However: An interesting thing happens when you get out and visit other lodges, and spend time getting to know other Brothers. Chances are good you'll strike up acquaintances with Masons who share pretty closely your interest in a particular aspect of Freemasonry (like history, ritual, philosophy) or some of the manly avocations that seem to go hand in hand with Masonry (like single-malt Scotch, homebrewing, and cigars/pipes)... and when those guys start talking about how much they enjoy their Chapter or Valley, the natural reaction is to start thinking about joining so you can experience more of that kind of fellowship.

Such is my situation... my interest in the Royal Arch has been rekindled of late, but I really can't rationalize piling another monthly meeting onto my calendar. I am going to try to make myself wait, banking spare time in the way a kid will bank pennies for a baseball mitt or bicycle.

Real Historians on the Grand Masonic Conspiracy

2009-05-18T12:34:00.002-05:00

http://matisak.blog.obroda.sk/blog/english_section/2009/05/18/what_did_the_secret_societies_achieve_in_the_history

No Seldon Plan

2009-05-17T09:37:00.007-05:00

I recently listened to Episode 30 of the Masonic Central Podcast (direct MP3 link) featuring Professor Margaret C. Jacob, who covers a lot of very interesting historical ground about the spread of early speculative Masonry, and the way it comes to be either very open or very secretive depending on the surrounding political/religious climate. Also fascinating was her explanation of the Masonic libraries stolen by the Nazis during World War II and then kept by the Soviet Union (and then former Soviet Union) until 2000; information that suddenly doubled the amount of material available to Masonic researchers. That's the kind of discovery that can potentially turn lots of established historically accepted "truths" on their heads, and if there's one thing Freemasons like to discuss it's historical truths.

Whether approaching Freemasonry as a direct descendent of the ancient Egyptian Mystery Schools, or a less mystical, gentlemanly by-product of the Enlightenment, one always encounters discussions about the intent of the unknown Brothers who first developed the symbolism and ritual of the Craft. Opinions differ as to what their intentions were, but there does seem to be a general impression that they were trying to establish something very deliberate, and enduring.

Professor Jacob talked about how Freemasonry in the 18th century taught men, among other things, skills of leadership and self-government - a very unique thing during a time when most of the world was still ruled by monarchy.

When it comes to Freemasonry and its role in the 21st century, she painted a less flattering (but uncomfortably accurate) picture. While Freemasons were ahead of the curve during the 18th century in terms of forward thinking ideas about religious tolerance and human rights, in the 21st century we're being dragged behind modern society kicking and screaming; the issue of continued racial segregation (in the form of Grand Lodges' refusal to recognize Prince Hall Masonry) in the south was cited as one reason that many of her students have a very difficult time finding any sort of relevance in the Fraternity, as was regular Masonry's continued exclusion of women.

I will admit that I have a really hard time with the idea of women belonging to my Lodge/Grand Lodge. I feel that the question of gender is quite different from race in this context; I believe, unapologetically, that adding a co-ed dynamic to the Lodge experience would distract greatly from the Work (with men probably more to blame for that distraction than women, frankly.) I have no problem with Co-Masonry, and perhaps the next logical step would be toward recognition between US Grand Lodges and the Supreme American Council of Co-Masonry - but I think that forcing all lodges to admit women would destroy a lot of them, as many Brothers would stop attending, demit, or form new, clandestine, male-only lodges.

Back to the original creators of speculative Masonry... did they foresee these crises of race and gender, but trust to future Freemasons to be carry the torch of enlightenment and lead the way when society was a little more ready? Did it not even enter into their deliberations because race and gender inequality was "the way we've always done it?" Did they even care what happened to Freemasonry after their deaths? We're so used to thinking about Freemasonry as a tradition whose origins are lost in time, that it's hard to remember that, at some point, someone was making it up as they went along.

One of my favorite science fiction stories is the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. The premise, in a nutshell, is that a mathematician named Hari Seldon develops a statistical science called psychohistory by which he's able to analyze past socio-political trends to predict future ones, and in so doing foresees the collapse of the Galactic Empire, to be followed by a 30,000 year dark age before a new empire would arise.

Seldon and a team of psychohistorians take it upon themselves to develop a plan by which they can manipulate future history to shorten that dark age to a mere 1,000 years, by situating a "Foundation" in such a way that it is able to preserve much of the knowledge of the current Empire and remain at an advantage over the more barbarous neighboring planets.

The Foundation stories chronicle a series of crises that arise along the plan's timeline, carefully designed by the psychohistorians so that the Foundation will ultimately have no choice but to follow the particular course of action that will advance the formation of a new, enlightened empire at the end of that 1,000 year span.

When we talk about the original creators of speculative Masonry, it seems like we often attribute a similar prescience to them, that they were creating this peculiar system of morality (veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols) to be passed down through the ages, and that we are not to question or deviate from the landmarks they left us.

I don't think that attitude has worked all that well, as Professor Jacob aptly points out. Part of the problem is that American Freemasonry has been fighting its own internal battle with membership attrition... if we can stabilize that problem, it will be up to this new wave of 20-40 somethings to aggressively re-establish the relevance of our Fraternity in an increasingly fragmented and distracted society.

Planning Ahead

2009-05-14T12:56:00.008-05:00

Like many an active new Brother officer, I find myself hurtling towards the East. It's a prospect that excites and intimidates me simultaneously.

After serving as Senior Steward pro tem for a couple of meetings last year, the first chair I was officially installed in was Junior Deacon - at the time I was a little bit freaked out by the knowledge that this put me one step away from being Senior Deacon (and thus the Middle Chamber lecture) which was a little more involved than I had anticipated getting so soon after being raised.

Over the ensuing months a few things have happened:

I've gotten to know the Brothers at my mother lodge better
I've gotten a better sense of which things have "always been done that way" and which things are done that way just because people got out of the habit during leaner times
I learned the Middle Chamber lecture before I actually needed to know it, demonstrating to myself that learning ritual is not a big deal IF you give yourself time and work at it slowly but surely.
I've visited other lodges, and had a chance to compare and contrast with my mother Lodge.

This last has probably been the most helpful to me in terms of developing a more holistic view of the Craft, and has given me a lot of ideas that I would love to see implemented at my own lodge. Even though I am still three years away from taking the Master's chair (if the current line of officers continues to move up) I often find myself thinking in terms of who I may be able to call on to help with a particular initiative when I'm Master, or whether there are any steps I can take now to lay the groundwork for something new/different during my year in the East.

Of course, the first major planning step was to decide that yes, I do actively want to be Master of my lodge for a year. That sounds obvious, but it's a pretty crucial decision that I think often gets short shrift from Brothers who suddenly find themselves in one of the Wardens' chairs with some amount of pressure to keep going because many lodges still have trouble finding officers. It's not for everyone, and if a Brother becomes Master against their better judgement out of a sense of duty or obligation, it's potentially destructive to the whole lodge.

Once you've made the decision to go for it, though, you should start planning, even if you're still Junior Steward (for one thing, holes in lines open up and you may find yourself bumped up a seat or two before you know it); think about what you want to accomplish during your year in the East, think about what skills you need to develop to effectively run a meeting, settle disputes, and set the Craft to labor. When the gavel is handed to me, I don't want to find myself standing there like a deer in the headlights, and turning to the Past Masters to answer questions about every little procedural detail, or about how something is "supposed" to be done (whether by custom or by obscure detail not found in the cipher book). So, I'm watching meetings intently and asking the Brothers with an eye for ritual lots of clarifying questions, and I'm trying to build a mental index of talents and interests of the Brethren at my lodge.

I figure if I try to plan everything out now, I might have about half of my act together when the time comes.

That Which Was Lost

2009-05-11T13:51:00.006-05:00

I've known for some time that my paternal great, great, great grandfather was a Freemason. A couple of weeks ago it occurred to me to do a bit of research in hopes of finding out what lodge(s) he belonged to.

To my surprise, I learned that he was a charter member of the lodge here in town in 1866 - the lodge to which I had already applied for affiliation only a few weeks earlier. That was the only lodge to which the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts had a record of him belonging, and given that he was 68 years old when it was chartered I contacted the Grand Lodge of Vermont
to see if they had any record of him having joined while living there earlier in the 1800's.

I learned that he joined a lodge in Caledonia county by demit in 1855, but unfortunately there was no record of which lodge he had demitted from, so I still don't know where he was entered, passed, and raised. I wonder if this may be due in part to the aftermath of the Morgan affair, during which time the Grand Lodge of Vermont itself went dark.

In light of these very specific details of my ancestor's Masonic activities I find myself simultaneously exhilarated and saddened.

When I first became interested in joining the Masons, I was wary of the back-slapping, back-room, good-ole-boy network type of bonding which I worried might be in store. While I have encountered some Brothers who seem to place more meaning on simply belonging to a private club than on the tenets of our profession, my personal experience is usually that a man being an active Freemason usually speaks volumes about his character. It serves as a kind of shorthand in much the same way that our symbols are shorthand for much deeper concepts.

Knowing that he was a Mason gives me a surprisingly strong sense of kinship and friendship with this man whom I previously knew only as a small photograph taken some 140 years ago. While the rituals have doubtless been streamlined in the interim, either one of us could sit down next to the other in Lodge and follow along.

Of course, shared experience as a means of bonding is not unique to Freemasonry. There are any number of father-son traditions that get handed down across the years; participation in a particular sport, military service, attendance of a particular private school or college, and so on. The thing that I find so very compelling about the shared experience of the Craft with my great, great, great grandfather is that underneath all of the more superficial aspects of Freemasonry, the goals of our shared profession are so lofty, fundamental, and universal.

The tinge of sadness comes from the knowledge that he's a Brother I won't get to know in this life. Being directly related to him provides a vivid context in which to consider the man, but when you start to consider all of the interesting worthy Brothers who have gone before us the world over, they can seem like sand through the hourglass.

A $5 case for a $7 Apron

2009-05-04T12:40:00.005-05:00

My new-to-me apron arrived without a case, and not having another $50+ to spend on a case right now I headed to Michael's and picked up a 22"x 17" Star Eco-Smart "red wallet" portfolio for the princely sum of $5.00. Black would have been nicer, but this is a start. I think perhaps my next mission will be to keep an eye out for a used case on Ebay and at local flea markets.

I haven't examined a purpose-built case to see how aprons are typically fastened to keep them flat and attached to the side when the case is being carried around, but in my case I'm simply using a few binder clips to fasten the apron to the top edge of the portfolio, with a bit of padding to keep the clips from digging into the apron itself.

Unmasonic

2009-05-04T10:04:00.014-05:00

I'd like to join Bro. Chris Hodapp in saying that the Buffalo, NY Jesters indicted for numerous unwholesome activities have no business being Masons. According to a new article at http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/660251.html the incident has sparked a wider investigation, and it's looking like the Buffalo incident is not (as the Jesters organization claims) isolated.

Like Widow's Son has said in his posts about the Jesters on The Burning Taper, what creepy old men do together on weekends is their own business, but I am disgusted and insulted that they would do so under the auspices of Freemasonry. I can't think of any reason they would claim to "proudly believe and participate in Masonry"¹ while systematically violating their Masonic obligations and flouting numerous of our core principles except as a way to appear just & upright by association.

Any conspiracy theorist will tell you that Masons don't have a corner on super-sekret rituals and activities. The Jesters should go their own way and leave us out of whatever it is that they stand for.

¹"Royal Order of Jesters - Masons, Shriners, Freemasons, Masonic Lodges, Grand Lodges" Royal Order of Jesters
 n.d. Web. 4 May 2009. http://www.iroj.org/

More about Aprons

2009-04-29T11:07:00.007-05:00

My English Constitution apron arrived with remarkable speed, having been mailed from the UK last Friday and showing up at my doorstep the following Tuesday.

It's a beaut - there are a couple of small spots that need re-stitching and the whole thing will benefit from a surface cleaning, but overall it's a very nice apron, especially for the $7.50 or so USD that I paid for it.

Upon re-reading the Massachusetts members' handbook, there is a very brief section about aprons - a few notes about which aprons a Past Master or Past District Deputy Grand Master may wear if they sit as an officer, and then some scant instructions about members' aprons: Members of a lodge wear blue-bordered aprons, while guests wear white ones.

I thought this was interesting, as I've only ever seen a handful of blue-bordered aprons provided by a lodge, and that was not at my mother lodge - also, I was handed one of those blue-bordered aprons as a guest! I expect that this is one of those things that each lodge evolves its own traditions around. Or perhaps lodges don't attach much importance to apron specifics, beyond making sure that all Brethren are properly clothed before entering the lodge room.

I find this kind of minutiae fascinating.

The Badge of a Mason

2009-04-22T13:32:00.009-05:00

After ruminating last week about the plain white cloth aprons we wear in the US, I found myself poking around Ebay to see what was available in the way of regalia that's just a little more inspiring. There are plenty of sellers offering new Master Mason aprons in what I guess you could call "U.S. Style" - dark blue trim with an all-seeing eye on the lap and the square and compasses underneath... screen-printed or embroidered, depending on how much money you want to spend.

The one listing that really caught my eye was for a gently used apron in the UK, in the English Constitution style: lighter, royal blue trim, silver chains at the end of the tassels, and three rosettes: one on the lap and one in each lower corner. Amazingly, the bidding never even reached £4.00 and the lambskin apron, which belonged to the seller's grandfather, should be on its way over the Atlantic to me soon.

I have not read or heard of any regulations in Massachusetts regarding the style or decoration of aprons, and there is another Brother in my district who I have seen wearing a British-style apron, so I plan on wearing this one whenever I'm not sitting as an officer at my mother lodge. To me wearing this apron feels like a rational homage to the roots of our fraternity (and my ancestry) in the UK.

I decided that I wanted a nice apron not as any kind of status symbol, but as a point of pride in being a Mason and a token of the seriousness of the business in which we are engaged. I have a feeling that it never occurs to a lot of Brothers that they could get themselves something nicer. Partly because there aren't many physical storefronts selling Masonic regalia these days, but mostly because (at least in my lodge/jurisdiction) the subject of aprons is really never discussed with new Brethren beyond "Take your lambskin home with you, you won't wear it again until you get buried with it. Wear these cloth ones from now on."

It's Official: Dan Brown's next book out in 2009

2009-04-20T13:11:00.006-05:00

Dan Brown's next book will be titled The Lost Symbol and will be published on September 15.

[edit] Whoops, I thought I had read on one of the announcement news stories that book will take place in London, but most speculation still places it in Washington D.C. and with a title like The Lost Symbol (Which is pretty bland compared to The Solomon Key) it could well involve the Freemasons.

Part of me feels like I should read The Da Vinci Code just so I know how the Freemasons were (mis)represented in the story and can discuss it intelligently, but this review was so off-putting when I read it five years ago that I really have no interest in reading anything by Mr. Brown.

What's in an Apron?

2009-04-17T14:57:00.007-05:00

I attended my first Fraternal visit to another lodge as a member of our District Deputy Grand Master's Suite last night, and as such I got to wear a purple-bordered apron. I felt a bit conflicted about this temporary status symbol as I listened to the section of the Entered Apprentice lecture which tells a new Brother that "Masonry regards no man for his worldly wealth or outer appearance."

I believe that presiding and past DDGM's are absolutely entitled to wear their purple aprons with pride and well-deserved respect for the amount of work and pure time they spend serving their district, but me putting on a purple apron felt a little bit presumptuous and/or showy; the DDGM's Official and Fraternal visits are a part of Masonry (in Massachusetts, anyway) that seem to be less about the tenets of our profession than about ostentatious formality.

Don't get me wrong, in many ways ostentatious formality is one of the things I cherish about Freemasonry in Massachusetts; as a society, we don't treat much of anything with formality any more, and if you ask me one of the biggest secrets of Freemasonry is that it's a last bastion of the lost art of gentlemanliness. I love the courtesy, civility, and mutual respect to be found in a well-governed lodge. Give me another 20 years and I'll probably be one of the old timers who manages to look dowdy in a tuxedo, but right now I rather enjoy dressing formally for the evening's work.

The thing about all of the announcements, processions, and ceremonies around a District Deputy Grand Master's visit, though, is that they don't really have anything to do with "the business in which we are engaged"... they're really more about hierarchy. And that's OK, I guess - I'm not one of those "down with the Grand Lodge system" people, and from what I've seen the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts provides a lot of support for its constituent lodges. I think things would be a lot more chaotic and fractious without it. As for that purple-bordered apron I wore last night, it felt... superficial. I won't say I didn't like it - not so much because of the purple but because it wasn't a tattered, slightly yellowed old thing made of flimsy cloth. As an officer I get to wear a nicely embroidered apron most of the time, and the contrast to the lodge loaners I wear when visiting other lodges is always a bit stark.

In most (all?) jurisdictions in the United States, an Entered Apprentice is given a nice white lambskin (or perhaps "lambtex") apron during their initiation, but then they're told to put it away in a drawer until they die, at which point it is to be buried with them. Instead, lodges typically provide a big stash of plain white cloth aprons for members and visitors to wear. Past Masters and Past District Deputy Grand Masters are often given nice presentation aprons at the end of their terms, but most Masons are stuck with the white cloth loaners. This has bugged me for a while - if an apron is the badge of a Mason, shouldn't we take a little more pride in the ones we wear in lodge? If you try to argue that it's not the apron but the man who wears it, then why do Past Masters and Past DDGMs wear such nice and ornate ones?

I tend to fall into the "formal" camp when it comes to the question of how lodges should dress and conduct themselves - to me it signifies the respect that Brethren should have for the Craft and especially for the candidates being introduced to it. When I see photos of Brothers wearing their aprons over jeans and t-shirts in other, more casual jurisdictions, I admit that it rankles. However, the purple apron I wore the other night seemed like a cautionary reminder that formality should not be for its own sake.

How Many Non-Joiners are in this Fraternity, Anyway?

2009-04-13T05:59:00.009-05:00

One year ago this past Thursday I was raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason. A year later I find myself Junior Deacon of my mother lodge, and earlier in the week my petition for affiliation with the lodge in my new home town was read. I've become good friends with Brothers whom I would never have met within my professional or social spheres, and my perspective on the Craft continues to evolve.

When I first got interested in Freemasonry nearly two years ago, I researched obsessively online. I was not looking for "secrets," exactly -- rather, I was trying to find an accurate description of what it's about. What I found were voices of passionate Brothers who described Freemasonry as a once-great, Jedi-like order of gentlemen which used to be all wise and mystical and stuff, but has lamentably fallen from their once-lofty ideals and devolved into a cheap imitation of its former self. This was the overall impression I had to go on during the eight months between my application and my initiation, and as my Entered Apprentice degree approached I steeled myself for frustration and disappointment.

My actual experience has been much more nuanced. There have certainly been frustrations along the way and it is still sometimes disheartening to look at the artifacts of the now-defunct Royal Arch Chapter and Knights Templar Commandery that used to meet in my lodge's building, but overall I still believe that Brothers who spend all of their time and energy kvetching about how Freemasonry isn't traditional or philosophickal enough are missing the forest for the trees.

As I get to know various Brethren and start to talk with them about their experiences over the years, one statement that comes up with curious frequency is, "I'm not a joiner." I used it myself in a very early post here! Why in the world do so many non-joiners become Masons, and get so involved with an organization which, at one level, is all about social gatherings? One such self-professed "non-joiner" is a three-time Past Master of our lodge!

When looking at Freemasonry from the outside, it's easy to get the idea that most of the "inner temple building" work that Masons do happens during our meetings. After all, the three degrees are designed to provide candidates with the working tools to build their own moral and Masonic edifices, right? Except half the time the Officers of the lodge are too busy trying to remember their parts and floorwork to pay attention to the actual content of the ritual, and the gobs of information thrown at the candidate are too much to be absorbed in a single evening. (As one apt description goes, it's like getting hit by a wave: Most of the water passes right over you, but you still get wet.)

So if we don't work on our rough ashlars during meetings, then when do we? It's often said that Freemasonry has a curious dual nature, public and private... Public insofar as lodges sometimes host community dinners, do fundraisers, blood drives, et cetera, and Private for all the things people typically associate with the Masons; closed lodge rooms, members-only functions, secret passwords and handshakes. I think that perhaps it could be said that Freemasonry has a curious treble nature: public, private, and personal. When I'm studying ritual, either to memorize it or to internalize its messages, I'm generally by myself, at home. When I contemplate adding one more Masonic event to my calendar and think about the length of my cable-tow and whether or not I'm making effective use of the 24-inch gauge, it's an internal dialog.

I think that the fellowship I have enjoyed at Lodge meetings and other Masonic functions is something more than the effects of a shared experience, which is something that can bond any group of people together. The shared experience of the three degrees is certainly part of it, but I think that the personal aspect of the Craft runs under the surface and provides an even stronger, unspoken connection. How refreshing it is to enjoy a good meal with a group of men who I know are engaged in their personal labor to chip away at their own rough ashlars and leave the world a better place than they found it... it really does recharge my batteries in a way I would not have expected as a textbook introvert.

(That being said, are there Brothers who think of Freemasonry as just a private, charitable dinner club with a few "Boy Scouts for grown-ups" ceremonies thrown in? Sure. There are also Brothers who take things to the other extreme and insist that most of us aren't worthy of their philisophickal table scraps and should have joined the Elks and left the business of mystical, esoteric, spiritual alchemy to "REAL" Masons. I don't worry too much about the former because I know they certainly don't worry about me, and I have yet to encounter the latter in meatspace... I doubt many would deign to darken the door of a Massachusetts lodge anyway, what with our open houses and advertisements.)

A delightfully positive, substantive, and non-sensational newspaper story about Freemasonry

2009-04-09T12:49:00.004-05:00

Lodge St John Kilwinning No. 173 in Largs, Ayrshire Scotland is celebrating its' current building's 100th year, and the Largs and Millport News has done a very nice feature on them:

http://www.largsandmillportnews.com/articles/1/38293/

Our Masonic Profiles

2009-04-06T16:36:00.006-05:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about what kind of Masonic profile I present to the profane world. Not so much in terms of being a good representative of the Craft (I like to think that I don't have to alter my default behavior to do that) but the extent to which I "promote" it. If I re-post every new item on my lodge website to my Facebook account, or constantly re-tweet my lodge on Twitter, what purpose am I serving? Am I raising public awareness about Freemasonry in my community, or am I just spamming (and potentially weirding out) all of my contacts?

It's no secret to any of my closer friends & family that I'm a Mason, but the fact is that many of them don't seem to care much one way or another. It's been nearly two years since I decided to petition a lodge, and I wonder if I'm reaching the end of a typical cycle that active new Brethren go through, where the initial excitement and pride give way to personal reflection as they begin to really absorb the ritual & symbolism of Masonry, and figure out where they're headed.

To put it another way, I'm all for elevating my lodge's public profile and I am no less proud to be a Mason than I've ever been, but I don't want to do Freemasonry the disservice of making it seem too commonplace by posting every little event or announcement into my social media stream; so many of them are really interesting only to Masons (and local Masons at that) that I feel like my profane contacts will either just tune them out, or figure that I've gotten all cliquey (at best) or culty (at tin-foil hat worst) now that I've joined a lodge.

We Have an Image to Maintain

2009-03-26T16:48:00.004-05:00

Of all of the weird behaviors people exhibit related to the subject of Masonry, the one that has been fascinating me lately is this really weird, sort of upside down negative reaction that some people seem to have when they learn that the Masons are having an open house, or that there's a book called Freemasons for Dummies, or whenever a Mason is interviewed for a newspaper article. What's with the people who make snarky, yet somehow vaguely disappointed comments like, "Pfft! For a secret society they sure make their buildings easy to find!" or "Secret societies aren't as secret as they used to be!"

It's as though they would rather have their sinister, mistaken, pop culture preconceptions about the Masons proven true! Aww, man! You mean the Masons aren't a sinister cabal who control the weather and eat babies? What a ripoff! I was really hoping that they'd send their minions after me to kidnap and brainwash me after stumbling on this sekret knowledge of theirs!

Public perception has been on my mind lately because of the impending state-wide open house we will be having on Saturday in Massachusetts; as a lodge ambassador I'll be one of the Brothers tasked with hanging around the Lodge from 9:00 to 3:00, greet visitors, and attempt to explain what the heck it is that we do. My goal is to formulate a description that contains enough of a concrete explanation that will spark the interest and imagination of the right sort of man, but to be oblique enough about everything else to preserve a sense of mystery and (dare I say it) exclusivity.

But alas, if you storm into our lodge expecting us to confess to keeping the metric system down, or fluoridating the water supply, you may find that your sense of mystery suffers.

Just in time for the Open House

2009-03-23T07:21:00.003-05:00

I just finished watching the "Secrets of the Freemasons" tabloid documentary that the National Geographic channel produced a couple of years ago - while actually fairly factual and not as ridiculous as the programs put out by the Discovery and History channels around the same time, they sure lay on a lot of sinister music (I'll have to talk to our lodge organist about that, he doesn't play anything nearly that spooky) and just about every sentence in the narration begins with, "Some people believe," or "Conspiracy theorists believe," or, just to mix it up a little bit, "There is a general consensus among historians that the Masons were not behind the French revolution, but some conspiracy theorists believe that the Freemasons were involved."

Nevertheless, as someone who will be greeting the general public at our open house this coming weekend, it's probably worth watching all of these things, since that's where a lot of people may have gotten their information.

Late to the Party

2009-03-17T18:06:00.005-05:00

I finally got around to checking out The Setting Maul podcast (link goes directly to the podcast feed - you can also go to thesettingmaul.com) and so far I'm quite enjoying the Brothers' take on things.

I soured on a lot of internet-based Masonic discourse a while ago because so much of it is polarized and fraught with hyperbole... nothing is ever accomplished because the positions taken are often so fatalistic: either Masonry has been irrevocably ruined, or there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, and that's that.

The Setting Maul, at least the first few episodes I've listened to, is reality-based - that is to say, it acknowledges the frustrations we often encounter in Masonry, but rather than railing on about whose fault they are or how crappy it is that things are in such a state, the Setting Maul folks talk about ways to deal with some of those realities. The refreshing thing is that a lot of them start with ourselves: looking in our hearts and thinking about whether any of the problems and/or solutions lie within, rather than just pointing fingers. And even if there's not always a solution, it's nice to commiserate without quite so much drama.

Hello from DrupalCon DC

2009-03-04T22:54:00.002-05:00

Hello from DrupalCon DC! On the off chance that anyone (other than Trevor) who reads this site also happens to be a Drupal developer and here at the conference, send me a tweet @MrAndyChase and let's set up a BoF session.

Otherwise, please enjoy this photo from the House of the Temple, which is surprisingly near my hotel.

One Stone at a Time

2008-11-30T18:27:00.008-05:00

Not too long ago I appealed to all the Masters and Past Masters out there for tips on how one might go about memorizing all that ritual.

The answer, as gently provided to me by Bro. Tom Accuosti was (and I paraphrase), "Just work on a little bit at a time, all the time."

I just memorized first large paragraph of the Middle Chamber lecture. I am Junior Deacon this year, but I figure there is no time like the present to start working on one of the longer bits of ritual that will fall to me as Senior Deacon next year. It took me a little more than half an hour and I know I will have to keep repeating it to myself for a while to make it stick, but as the saying goes: well begun is half done.

It is surprisingly exciting to have started down this path; what little ritual I have learned so far has sunk in mostly through osmosis, rather than by my actively having to work at it. I have to stop myself from moving to the next paragraph and give my brain a chance to catch up.

How did I do it? A little bit at a time. Duh. I feel a bit sheepish, like someone who asks a trim and fit friend how they stay healthy and keep their weight down and receive the obvious answer, "Eat less and exercise more."

Back to Basics

2008-11-27T07:39:00.010-05:00

After months and months of waiting, rumination, and speculation on the philosophical nature of Freemasonry and the secrets that lay behind the antechamber door, the nature of this weblog shifted rather dramatically after I took the degrees and jumped headfirst into the inner workings of my lodge. Since being raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason, I have been focusing instead on the more mundane, nuts-and-bolts details of what Masons actually do to keep their lodge running. There is nary a mention of Masonic Light on this blog since June. This is not because I have given up on those loftier, esoteric notions about Freemasonry... rather, it is because I have developed a better sense of their context, and I am much less inclined to make proclamations or opine too strongly about any one aspect of the Craft... there are so many different aspects, and I'm still learning how they're interconnected.

It is easy to forget just how mysterious this whole Freemasonry business seems before you join; the symbols, worrying about the investigation, being a bit unsure about the super-secret rituals... in general, just wondering what it's all about... No matter how crazy you know the Masonophobes are, what if there's even a hint of truth about all that New World Order business, or that Baphomet guy? Can you really leave if you want to? (The answer there is yes, by the way - far too many new Brothers do.)

If you take the degrees and stick around, the work that Masons do behind the tyled door loses that initial veneer of mystery very quickly... so quickly that the part of us that had hoped to find a secret society of beard-stroking, enlightened gentlemen might feel a little bit disillusioned and discouraged. It can be hard to think reverently about "The Mysteries of Freemasonry" when you're sitting down to a potluck supper of Swedish meatballs, pizza, and potato chips.

At the same time, though, I have been struck by a deep and moving sense of the transcendent at various unexpected moments over the last six months, at degree rehearsal, at a dinner served on paper plates, during a business meeting, or (less surprisingly) during a particularly elegant passage in the ritual. I think I've written before that Freemasonry is greater than the sum of its parts, which is why it's so hard to describe to non-members... and why it's so hard for non-members to see what all the fuss is about, and unfortunately causes some of them to conjure up bizarre notions of what it is that we do.

A word occurred to me the other night that I think describes our order quite well, despite the fact that Masons are often not the bunch of mystical philosophers some of us imagine them to be before joining:

Monastic.

To me this word bridges the gap between that sense of mystery I remember before joining, and some of the more mundane realities of the lodge; to put it another way, monks and nuns of any faith have to do their laundry sometime... that doesn't diminish the sacredness of their vows in any way, shape, or form, it's just a part of the package.

I think it would be a stretch to say the we as Freemasons are truly monks of some kind, but being an active member of your lodge does require some discipline and dedication to the Craft... joining the Masons in jurisdictions that still require new candidates to memorize the lectures for each degree requires careful study and a certain level of seriousness that goes above and beyond the demands of many other social obligations. This is especially true if you take it upon yourself to learn the ritual and commit to sitting in a chair for at least 10 meetings a year. Whether you make that commitment because you're honoring a family tradition, because you just enjoy the company of other good men, or because you're looking to unlock the secrets of the universe by searching for hidden meanings in the ritual, it's all Freemasonry.

A Question for those who have already traveled to the East

2008-11-24T16:50:00.003-05:00

When did you learn the Master's parts of the ritual? That is to say, did you start memorizing the work years ahead of time, or did you wait to cram for each degree until you were installed in the Oriental chair? As I page through my cipher to work on my few parts as Junior Deacon, I get a bit woozy when I look at the Master's lectures which go on for pages at a time.

I suspect that the delegation of the Middle Chamber lecture to the Senior Deacon was a very strategic choice when the ritual was being developed; I imagine that if the SD is able to find a technique that enables him to memorize that work, then the rest will follow more easily... but at the same time, he still has a couple more years to understudy the Master before taking it all on. (Or, he can graciously step out of the line if he decided he's getting in over his head.)

As a confirmed high school nerd who once upon a time took it upon himself to memorize the name of a certain forgotten German composer, I am reasonably confident in my ability to memorize things... and if I get a head start maybe I can do so in a way that's not like trying to drink from a fire hose.

Harmony being the strength and support of all well regulated institutions, especially this of ours.

2008-11-05T16:26:00.002-05:00

Remember the rules as we leave last night's election behind us: No politics in Lodge. Based on a few conversations overheard over dinner or after meetings in the run up to the election, there are going to be some uncomfortable moments at my lodge next week, but for my part I will smile neutrally and excuse myself if the result of the election comes up.

If things get particularly ugly I will hopefully have the fortitude to remind my Brothers that religion & politics are off-limits.

Dust off your Forget-me-not lapel pins, Brothers

2008-10-24T22:03:00.005-05:00

Though there are those who will take what I am about to say as political, I am not posting it out of any partisan motives; if this Huffington Post article, "Sarah Palin Linked to Second Witch Hunter" came from Fox News and was about Joe Biden I would be telling you not to vote for Barack Obama.

But it's about Sarah Palin, so I am urging all of my Brothers not to vote for McCain/Palin. If you can't endorse any other candidate, then please just don't vote at all. Seriously. Why? From the article:

One of Palin's two witch hunters has publicly stated, in a July 13, 2008 recorded address [see video, below], that Sarah Palin is in the Alaska "spiritual warfare" prayer network and thus Palin appears to be tied into to a U.S. and international "spiritual warfare" network, The Global Apostolic Prayer Network, which claims that a planetary-level demon spirit blocks prayers of Catholics from reaching Heaven and whose top members boast of possibly having helped kill Mother Theresa through prayer-warfare.

I would hope the outright craziness (not to mention creepiness) of this "prayer warriors killing Mother Theresa" business would be enough to convince any rational person not to vote Republican this year, but Masons may be especially interested in this other tidbit:

Global Apostolic Prayer Network leaders compare Catholicism to Freemasonry and have conducted prayer warfare which they claim may have helped to kill Mother Theresa. One top leader and apostle of this spiritual warfare movement endorses the activities of church-based Central American death squads.

Please, please, please - don't let anyone under the influence of these people anywhere near the White House.

Stephen King on the 30th anniversary of "The Stand"

2008-10-24T07:27:00.003-05:00

Speaking of the existence of a Great Architect and the afterlife, there is a good interview with Stephen King about his novel The Stand, a long-time favorite of mine that deals with themes of good versus evil set against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic America. From the interview:

It's a mystery. That's the first thing that interests me about the idea of God. If there is one, it's mysterious and powerful and awesome to even consider the concept, and you have to take it seriously. I understand where Bill Maher is coming from when he says, basically, the world is destroying itself over a bunch of fairy tales about talking snakes and men who are alive inside fishes. I'm very sympathetic to it, but at the same time, given the cosmos that we're living in, it's very persuasive, the idea that there is some kind of first cause that's running things. It might not be the god of Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, it might not be the god of al-Qaida, and it might not be the god of Abraham, but something very well could be running things. The order of the universe as we see it, the interlocking nature, and the way things work together, are persuasive of the idea that there may be some overarching first cause.

The rest is at http://www.salon.com/books/int/2008/10/23/stephen_king/index.html

What is the Metric of Success?

2008-10-21T17:14:00.006-05:00

This last Saturday, during our open house, my lodge received 7 new applications for membership. These were men who had each been interested in Freemasonry for some time and saw the open house as an opportunity to learn more without perhaps feeling the same level of commitment or scrutiny as you might by calling or e-mailing a lodge out of the blue.

These were not random schmoes who saw an "open house" sign, wandered in off the street and decided to submit an application as a lark.

I was not involved in any of my lodges' previous open houses except as a visitor last fall, but I know this most recent batch of petitions surpasses any past results on a purely numeric basis.

Was it a success? After some lengthy conversations with several Brothers yesterday I don't think we can claim success unless we follow through with these new candidates if and when they join, taking the initiative and responsibility to show them the ropes and get them engaged and sticking around.

As evidenced by my current predicament, my lodge's officer line could use a little bit of shoring up, but what we don't want to do is continue the trend of viewing all newly raised Brothers as warm bodies to stuff into officers' chairs (unless that's what they're into.) What a few Brothers and I want is to restore the aspect of fellowship at our lodge by getting members together for occasions other than

Rehearsals
Dinners/Stated Meetings
Degrees

Maybe even getting Brothers together outside the lodge, which doesn't happen much right now in any organized fashion.

At the same time, I want to work the problem from the other end and find a way to soften the disappointment of newly-raised, esoterically-oriented Brothers who aren't going to find the mystical order of philosopher-Jedis they may be expecting based on their internet research. There has to be a way to do it without totally discouraging them.

As I experience all of these different facets of Freemasonry, the mystery that fascinates me most right now is what keeps men coming back to do this? Why do Officers sacrifice one night a week to practice ritual, even if they're not interested in (or maybe haven't even heard of) Pike, Mackey, et al? Why do old-timers show up to watch degrees they've seen dozens, even hundreds of times before? Why do some men take on the huge time and energy commitment of serving as a District Deputy Grand Master, even after all of the time and energy they devoted to their year in the East?

If you asked a dozen Brothers you would get a dozen different answers, and yet there is a common thread in there, somewhere.

Secrets, indeed.

Square & Compasses Day is Tomorrow in Massachusetts

2008-10-17T22:22:00.004-05:00

Saturday, October 18, 2008 is Square and Compasses day in Massachusetts. All Lodges across the state will be open from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM. Public welcome!

http://www.massfreemasonry.org/index.tpl?SID=122430045913832382&ng_view=56&ng_id=31
http://askafreemason.com

Take it With Me

2008-10-15T11:50:00.004-05:00

Scientific American has published an interesting article called "Never Say Die: Why We Can't Imagine Death" at http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=never-say-die&ec=su_neversaydie, examining the conundrum of how it is impossible for us to comprehend the absence of self-consciousness after death. You can't know what it's like until it happens, but once it happens you won't be around (in your current form, at least) to describe it. It's like trying to imagine what there was before the big bang... it makes your head hurt after a while.

Especially curious is the fact that even people who steadfastly believe that there is nothing after death think in terms of a deceased person having a consciousness:

"One particularly vehement extinctivist thought the whole line of questioning silly and seemed to regard me as a numbskull for even asking. But just as well—he proceeded to point out that of course Richard knows he is dead, because there’s no afterlife and Richard sees that now. "

So is the popular human belief of some sort of continued existence after life on earth merely an evolutionary, cultural, psychological defense mechanism against the bleak existentialism of knowing that the entirety of one's existence gets snuffed out and disappears completely when we die? Or is it the touch of the Great Architect, trying to steer us all on the path of leaving this world better than we found it, to ready us for entry into the Celestial Lodge?

I think about this question a lot; I try to be coldly analytical and dismiss my deep-seated belief of some kind of organized intelligence at the heart of creation as a purely human construct, a collective bed-time story to keep us from going crazy at the thought of leaving our friends, families, and happy memories behind for the long, empty night that awaits us all when we die.

It just doesn't work. For all of the scientific advances humans have made during our cosmically short time here on earth, I don't believe that we have learned enough about anything to be able to state authoritatively how everything in this universe came to be, or where our souls go when we die. At the same time I have a hard time subscribing to the idea that there is a single true religion, and that only followers of the "right" faith get a golden ticket to the big Wonka factory in the sky when they die, while everyone else is punished for eternity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oGVDLcpXQ8

Worth a Read

2008-10-13T06:44:00.002-05:00

The Old Side-Liner

A Dilemma

2008-10-07T05:12:00.002-05:00

Our Junior Deacon wasn't at rehearsal last night, and I offered to understudy the position for the evening, since the JD is a little more involved in things than my own position of Senior Steward... and it seemed like I might as well get a head start on learning the JD ritual, figuring that by the time I have to step up next fall I'd be in great shape.

Little did I know, the JD (Who was raised only a few months before me) has had to drop out of the line for a few months. I'm not on the hook for this week's meeting, but it's clear that the chair is open if I want to go for it.

Out of context, the office of JD is not too intimidating... but it's the knowledge of the Senior Deacon's duties right around the corner that gives me serious pause. In an ideal Lodge with a full and stable line, it would take a Brother at least three years to reach the office of Senior Deacon. That's three years of watching the SD's floor work and ritual, learning a lot of it by brute repetition. Maybe it's even enough time for some of the Middle Chamber lecture to sink in.

By contrast, I've only been a Master Mason for 5 months and I'm already looking at the third chair in the line. It doesn't feel right in terms of that learning-by-osmosis factor, nor in terms of integration with the lodge; I mean, I don't even know where all of the light switches are yet! I feel like I've got more basic things to learn before I take such a prominent place in the initiation of new candidates.

The question that is troubling me is finding the balance between what's best for me and what's best for the lodge. Better for the Lodge's sense of stability to have an empty Junior Deacon's chair, or an empty Junior Steward's chair (assuming the Junior Steward wanted to move up as well)? Better for me to sit in relative obscurity for another year, giving me more bandwidth to deal with my duties as an Ambassador and my efforts on the lodge web site, not to mention the ongoing saga of the renovation of my house?

Our installation of officers doesn't happen until next month, so I've got some time to think about it.

More Fodder for the Tinfoil Hat Crowd

2008-10-04T07:14:00.007-05:00

When I first watched Dan Aykroyd's video pitching his new Crystal Head Vodka, I assumed that the tone and content was tongue-in-cheek, much like Roger Ebert's recent Q&A about Creationism, but that does not seem to be the case.

And that's OK, I guess; whatever floats your boat & all that... but John Hodgman points out something I failed to notice on my first visit to the Crystal Head web site: The square & compasses can be seen in the lower right corner of the page, tucked into what appears to be a map of some Mesoamerican city. As Mr. Hodgman says,

Huh?

(And is it wrong that I want a bottle?)

On the Subject of Openness/Advertising

2008-10-01T08:36:00.006-05:00

The Grand Lodge of Massachusetts has been running a lot of the Ben Franklin TV ads lately on WGBH, Boston's PBS affiliate. Just this morning I was surprised to hear that some news update or other on WAAF's Hill-Man morning show (your typical low-brow morning zoo) was brought to me by the Grand Lodge of Freemasons.

As Masons (especially the sort who spend idle moments reading and writing about the Craft online), we have a tendency to focus and dwell on anything and everything having to do with Masonry, and we're especially sensitive to our portrayal in popular culture and the mainstream media. "We're selling out!" "We're watering down the fraternity!" "Freemasonry isn't about slick advertising!" ... et cetera. The thing is, non-Masons who have zero interest in Masonry aren't going to pay any more attention to these ads and articles than they would to any other brand/product/service/organization they don't care about. It's the idly curious and fence-sitters that this kind of exposure reaches, and I think that's a good thing. I have to grudgingly concede that even the shallow, "We don't have any secrets" articles that irk me so might reach worthy men who are intrigued but uncertain about their preconceptions of Masonic secrecy.

Seeing an ad and taking the initiative to petition, be investigated, and take the degrees are two entirely different things. Yet it seems like a lot of the negative reaction within the fraternity towards greater publicity stems from the idea that any old cowan or eavesdropper who sees an ad or article about Freemasonry is going to try and join. I simply don't believe that to be the case.

Of Local Interest

2008-09-25T11:04:00.001-05:00

Just When You Need It

2008-09-24T07:47:00.003-05:00

No sooner had I done a bit of venting about my frustration with the state of online Masonic discourse than Widow's Son introduced a new guest editorial series on the topic of Masonic Harmony, reminding me that you always have to be vigilant against confirmation bias... just because some of the loudest voices also happen to be some of the most disharmonious, it doesn't necessarily follow that they are representative of all of the Brethren going quietly about their business online.

These guest editorials are some of the best Masonic writing I've read online in recent memory, and if I may make a gross generalization the gentle reminder from my Brothers is:

Illegitimi non carborundum.

Please don't feed the trolls, and certainly don't let them distract you from your own Work.

Thank you, Brothers.

Yep, Quiet Around Here

2008-09-17T20:12:00.002-05:00

Over the last month or so I've started and abandoned 4 or 5 posts explaining why I haven't been posting... not the usual "Gosh I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted" blog fodder, but a look at the current online Masonic climate and my reaction to it.

I have kept putting it off because I have been quite busy with activities both Masonic and profane and also, frankly, I don't need to explain myself to anyone... but as the gap between my online and meatspace Masonic experiences widens, one thing becomes increasingly clear:

I am not feeling the Brotherly Love online.

With some exceptions, I find a lot of online Masonic dialog increasingly divisive, if not downright toxic. The thoughtful back and forth exchanges I seem to recall finding in mid-2007 when I first got interested in Masonry have given way to polarized modern-vs-antient, old-vs-young, fish-fry-vs-festive-board, Grand-Lodge-vs-GOUSA, them-or-us bickering. I've slowly been unsubscribing from a lot of Masonic RSS feeds over the last few months, because I really don't care to be associated with it, even by such a passive act as reading it.

My wife made an observation the other day about people who seem to decide they know everything there is to know (or, at least know everything worth knowing) by the time they reach age 30. She said she can't imagine what it's like to be that confident in one's own world knowledge, and then said something that is certainly true for me too:

"The more I learn, the more I realize there is left to learn!"

I don't have any agenda other than to improve myself in Masonry, and right now I am not finding a lot of opportunities to do that online (private exchanges with Brothers notwithstanding.)

I know the tone of this post is somewhat harsh, and for that I apologize... but chalk it up to the frustration I've been bottling up for longer than I probably should have. I'll be around, but these days I am focusing most of my Masonic energy on rebuilding my Lodge.

I Know What I Want for Christmas

2008-09-09T15:29:00.003-05:00

If you follow the link, MAAC also shows a Scottish Rite double eagle with Boston Bruins colors that I also find especially appealing. Apparently they have quite a selection of jersey blanks and symbols to choose from. I'm also picturing a nice red and white, Royal Arch triple tau on a blank Redwings jersey.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with MAAC and haven't done business with them, I'm just a great big geek of a hockey fan and Freemason.

What came you here to do?

2008-08-05T12:34:00.007-05:00

Much like Aedifico42 in his recent post on MasonicMinute.com, of late I have been wondering just how constructive my time spent blogging about Masonry really is. Specifically, opinionated blogging... about the state of the craft, what Freemasonry is, what it means, what it's supposed to be, et cetera.

Thinking back to the first couple of weeks I went searching online for information about the Freemasonry, there were two types of sites that were instrumental in my decision to ask to become a Mason:

Factual: Sites that discuss Masonic history and fundamentals; the nuts and bolts of how a lodge works and what the degrees are about
Experiential: Sites featuring first-hand accounts of what it's like to be initiated and become a member of a lodge

It didn't take long for me to exhaust whatever factual/experiential resources I could find, and during my long wait to be inducted I moved on to other sites/blogs of the "I hate fish frys, modern Masonry is lacking" stripe. While these critical viewpoints did temper some of the loftier notions I had about the experience that lay in store for me, they also set me up to feel as though disappointment was inevitable.

Recently I attended a district meeting, standing in for the vacationing Brother who usually represents our lodge. Lots of things were discussed, but among them were not the finer esoteric/philosophical points of Freemasonry. The question of retention and how we can provide new Masons with a better experience was raised, and agreement was pretty much universal that we need to do better - and ideas were discussed. The same sorts of ideas that get thrown out across the internet by solitary Brothers lamenting the state of the craft in their local lodges, to be read by Brothers on the other side of the country who can't do much but commiserate. At a real-live face to face meeting though, suddenly you're in a room full of Masons who can effect local change. What a difference!

Otherwise, it was mundane stuff... planning events for the coming year, discussing logistics and delegating responsibilities. The sort of thing that any organization has to do. There was nothing inherently mystical or ritual about it, but there was good fellowship and a mutual understanding that everyone there had given this lovely weekend evening out of their supposedly "dark" summer out of devotion to the Craft.

I guess what I'm saying is, between that meeting and the ambassador training I attended last week, I feel like I've done more to improve Masonry in my Lodge and district in one week than I have in 15 months of blogging.

Practical Freemasonry

2008-08-02T07:54:00.003-05:00

I'm now officially a Masonic Ambassador for my lodge, having attended one of Grand Lodge's training sessions earlier this week. I even have a certificate and and jewel to prove it.

So what does a Masonic Ambassador do in Massachusetts? They are often the first point of contact for a potential candidate who calls Grand Lodge for information, or looks up a local lodge on the Grand Lodge web site. They answer candidates' questions, and follow through with them as they take the degrees so that they have a familiar face they can sit with at dinner, and most importantly know they can bring questions to.

Within the lodge, the Ambassador tries to help find ways to integrate new members, whether that's just introducing them to Brothers with similar interests, or learning about their hobbies/skills and putting them in touch with a particular committee where they can contribute.

Grand Lodge recognizes that it's about retention as much as it is about recruitment, and Ambassadors are charged with getting Brothers new and old engaged in their lodges again. The whole session was refreshingly pragmatic and quite encouraging overall. One plain statement presented during the evening was that it is important that lodges understand that membership is the only reason for our existence.

Now, now. All of the other things that make Freemasonry so unique and important to all of us are also reasons for our existence... but without new members who keep coming back the only place we'll be able to discuss them or enjoy the fellowship of one another is in the comments sections of each others' weblogs.

I also learned that there are some official Grand Lodge guidelines regarding web sites and what types of content are allowed on them, so I may be quiet here for another while until I can make sure I haven't committed any no-nos with content I've posted since last June.

Ambassador Training in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts - July 30, 2008

2008-07-29T18:15:00.002-05:00

See the Grand Lodge web site for more details.

If the past month hadn't been so completely flat-out crazy, I might have gotten around to posting this before the other two came and went.

Serenity Now

2008-06-27T09:54:00.003-05:00

It's been a spectacularly stressful couple of weeks around here. I've alluded to our new house over the last six months... it's been quite a project, more or less a complete rehab of an 1831 farmhouse, and there's still a good ways to go before it's "finished". We've run into the predictable cost and schedule overruns that can plague any large-scale home project, and have been increasingly in a state of limbo as we start to pack and distance ourselves from the house we've called home for the last five years.

Early last week we had a bit of stress relief when our landlord offered to let us go month to month on our lease, which was up at the end of this month. "Great!" we thought, "that gives us a few extra weeks to get the house into a habitable state, and plenty of time to pack and haul our junk over there!" We took them up on their verbal offer for the month of July, and promptly sent them another months' rent.

Two days ago our landlord reneged on their offer and told us to hit the bricks by July 1, leaving us with 5 days to pack AND move AND clean, instead of the 5 weeks we thought we had. If they hadn't offered to let us stay in the first place, we would have been much more industrious over the last week and a half, but as it was we thought we had some breathing room.

So, after allowing myself to freak out for an hour or so, I had a choice: let my anger and frustration over the situation stress me out even further, or get my shit together and adapt to the "new normal". I chose number two. Don't get me wrong, I am about as stressed out as I've been since the last time we moved 6 years ago, but I'm not going to compound it with anger at the landlord right now.

When in Doubt, Call Somebody

2008-06-24T11:16:00.008-05:00

There was a bit of miscommunication around who will be sitting as officers for the degree we are squeezing in next month. Only a few of us showed up for rehearsal last week and again last night, and we all went home after it became clear that nobody else was coming... I had been asked if I could participate right after our last degree, but at the time I was non-committal because I wasn't sure if I could make the meeting. I had figured I would convey my availability by showing up for rehearsal, but when nobody showed up last week I didn't take the initiative to call someone to find out what was going on.

As it turns out, enough other people were non-committal that it was decided to organize it as a Past Masters degree. That's fine by me, as I would prefer to watch at least one Master Mason degree from the sidelines before getting sucked into the progressive line. I might have planned my Monday evenings differently had I known, though.

I'm really not upset about the mix-up in the big scheme of things, but I am starting to realize that I am going to have to take the initiative if I want to be "in the loop"... I think perhaps the core of long-time brothers who have been manning the ship for so long tend to assume that there is little interest in participation among newer brethren, and thus continue to plan and organize amongst themselves. Who could blame them when 2 of the 4 Brothers with whom I was raised in April haven't been back, and another was a no-show for his Fellow Craft degree last month?

Meanwhile, as a fairly new Mason I have been more passive and waiting to be set to labor... hence the disconnect in the middle.

We can't all be Wilmshurst

2008-06-23T05:54:00.010-05:00

Yesterday I watched the first two parts of the John Adams miniseries produced by HBO earlier this year. While quite interesting, entertaining, visually stunning, and occasionally rousing (the patriotic indoctrination of the founding-fathers-as-demigods I received as a Massachusetts schoolchild remains surprisingly effective,) I realized that I would like to see the same production values applied to an adaptation of Freelon Starbird, a young adult novel told from the perspective of an 18 year old Philadelphian in the Continental Army during its hardships in 1776. I'm read about half of it so far, and I wish that I had been exposed to it as a kid; it paints a much more sobering picture of the complicated political climate in the colonies at the time, and how truly awful the conditions were.

The tale of the American Revolution has been mythologized to such an extent that it is very easy for us to forget how many colonists wanted nothing to do with any sort of rebellion, even if they weren't crazy about the whole taxation-without-representation business. This is portrayed to some extent in John Adams, but perhaps because we're so familiar with the cast of characters and the eventual outcome, it feels glossed over.

A few weeks ago I wrote about those 100 year-old "Masons these days don't study the ritual enough, they don't know what True Freemasonry is" quotes that often get trotted out as proof that Freemasonry is on a steady decline. I somewhat cheekily suggested that maybe all those quotes prove is that there have always been people who are never satisfied with anything. What I was really saying is that just as the uncomfortable or less interesting parts of the American Revolution often get glossed over, I think it quite likely that there were plenty of Masons 100 years ago who were just as dedicated to the Craft as Pike, Mackey, or Wilmshurst, but never saw what all the hullaballoo about esotericism was and never bothered to write books about what Masonry meant to them. Pike, Mackey, Wilmshurst, et al did, and have become canonized over the years; it has become difficult to separate what Freemasonry is from what they felt it was in their experience, in their times.

Again, I say this not to discount the idea that there may be deep esoteric meanings to the rituals, nor to discredit the work of these widely respected Masonic authors... just to point out that our Brothers didn't have Blogger in the 19th and early 20th century, so the perspective that got published is the one that has prevailed.

Masonry as Validation

2008-06-22T07:36:00.003-05:00

Synchronicity is always interesting. I've had the title for this post kicking around my head since my last lodge meeting, and only a few days later Freestyle wrote a paragraph about finding validation in Freemasonry, in his post The Spirit of the Craft.

Freestyle wrote specifically about validation in terms of freedom of religion; how Freemasonry reaffirms our collective belief that one's personal faith is one's own business:

"I thought God was God. There are lots of names for God...lots of descriptions. But at the end of the day...God...was God."

I agree wholeheartedly. The crucial yet vague requirement of belief in a non-specified supreme being remains a rather unique feature of our order, and remains relevant even in the 21st century. Increasingly it seems like people are inclined to reject all notions of deity out of bitterness over acts of hatred, violence, intolerance and hypocrisy committed in the name of one religion or another throughout human history. I don't remember where I read it, but someone had a very insightful question that they liked to ask of atheists: "What is it, specifically, that you don't believe in?"

Apart from religion, though, so far my experience in Masonry has provided validation for a number of other things I have long believed true on my own:

People shouldn't be jerks to one another
Tradition and history are important^*
Community is important
A person should aspire to knowledge of numerous subjects
It's OK to be an adult male, and to enjoy the simple fellowship of other adult males (no matter how loutish TV commercials say you are.)

^* I write this cautiously, because there's tradition (Masonic ritual, Trick or Treating, Old Home days) and then there's tradition (arranged marriages, dog fights, female circumcision) - they're not all good.

Bully logic

2008-06-18T11:02:00.006-05:00

Last week's Boston Herald article made it to Boing Boing (http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/17/punks-in-the-masons.html), and for the most part the comments are refreshingly well-informed, and positive.

I must call shenanigans on one comment, though:

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/17/punks-in-the-masons.html#comment-213515

It's got it all... the anecdotal "dad of a friend" who was a "high ranking" Mason, how they found went through his secret Masonic stuff after he passed away (the safe and locksmith are a nice touch), and how they learned through these secret documents that "... the highest law in the land for them is NOT the American law system. That's treason as far as I'm concerned. "

He then employs the classic conspiracy theorist technique of preemptively calling any Mason who denies this claim a liar. How it makes my teeth itch!

Lately I'm noticing that "OMG baphomet/satan/devil worship ritual and bloody oaths" freakouts are old and busted, and "Masons are up to no good with their secrets and cronyism, but they're so lame, they're just a bunch of old dudes doing their stupid old-fashioned gothy ceremonies and it's just so totally uncool and lame that anyone would be into that, what a bunch of losers who can't make friends on their own" is the new hotness. I can't tell if people really feel that way, or if Internet Tough Guy bluster is just their reaction to an idea they somehow feel threatened by.

I find it sad that the idea of structured, organized community involvement has slipped so far out of our social consciousness that some people don't even recognize the basic goodness or relevance of it anymore, even if they don't have the time or interest in it themselves.

Junior Steward Presumptive

2008-06-15T08:50:00.002-05:00

A couple of weeks I found myself sitting in the Junior Steward's chair during a Fellow Craft degree rehearsal. I was therefore not too surprised when I was asked (about 30 seconds before the meeting started) if I could "fill in" for the actual degree. Afterwards asked if I would be coming to rehearsals for the 3rd degree we're squeezing in next month.

Looks like I should start saving up for a tuxedo.

Heartbreaking

2008-06-15T07:38:00.010-05:00

I had a meeting in Springfield, Massachusetts the other day, and I gave myself a bit of extra time to drive by the Masonic Temple at 339 State Street to take some photos... I had seen a postcard view and was pleased to find that the place still showed up in the various searches I was doing online.

As the place came into view, I was literally awe-struck. The apartments of the Grand Lodge of New York were amazing in their own right, and the Worcester Masonic Temple is also a proud structure, but this was the first time that the edifice of any Masonic building I've seen in person had such an effect on me.

"My Brothers built this," I thought to myself, craning my neck to look at the huge, prominent square and compasses and stylized double-headed eagle prominently featured on the building's facade.

What a testament to the pride and commitment of those Brothers in Springfield 85+ years ago, that they were willing and able to contribute and/or raise the substantial money that the place must have cost... some 86,000 square feet with four lodge rooms, a 1,500 seat auditorium, and a large banquet hall. $1,000,000 1924 dollars.

And guess what? They sold it in 2007. It's now the headquarters of the International Communion of the Holy Christian Orthodox Church. The linked article mentions declining membership and growing suburban Lodges as reasons that the building had become a "White Elephant," but it also says:

[Archbishop] Paul told BusinessWest that he intends to make the facility more of a community asset than it has been historically, with the probability that more groups can take advantage of its four large meeting rooms, 1,500-seat auditorium, and 800-seat cafeteria.

Why is the ICHCOC the first owner of the building to have that idea? Why weren't the auditorium and banquet hall being rented out all along? I'm sure the decision to sell the place was not made lightly or easily and I don't know any of the circumstances that led to it (I'm sure taxes on such a huge downtown property were outrageous, something the church probably won't have to worry about) but I admit that every time I read about lodges giving up their historic buildings I feel angry and betrayed that such amazing resources are being allowed to slip away. I don't think we will see such grand and elegant Masonic buildings erected in our lifetimes, if ever again. Certainly not on dues that haven't been adjusted for inflation since the 1950's.

Masons are Hip in Boston, too

2008-06-09T19:28:00.008-05:00

Some of my Massachusetts Brethren are featured in a new Boston Herald article, Frat boys: Masons drum up members among Hub rockers.

As with the L.A. Times article which probably inspired it, the piece focuses on two things:

Younger guys are joining the Masons
They're actually cool young guys. With goatees, even.

The emphasis on the Masons-as-the-hip-new-thing met with some derision/consternation as it bounced from weblog to weblog in the online Masonic community, but personally I think these articles will reach the right people. As I said myself last June,

"While I am prepared to be among the youngest members of a lodge, I don't think I want to be the only young member."

I'm sure I'm not the only person out there who sat on the fence for a while, wondering if they would find other men who are of similar age AND to whom they could relate.

(Photo by John Wilcox)

Fictional Fraternities

2008-06-06T11:23:00.003-05:00

I followed a link to this interesting list of fictional fraternities from the Van Gorden-Williams Library's weblog post Improved Order of the Benevolent Quiz-Takers, and quickly noticed that a couple that are missing:

The Bookhouse Boys

From WikiPedia:

The Bookhouse Boys are a secret society on Twin Peaks formed to combat the darkness surrounding the town.

The members, some of which belong to the police department, also play a kind of vigilante role against drug dealers etc. The series says that it was formed about twenty years previous to the events, so probably some time in the 1960s. They are not afraid to take the law into their own hands, e.g. when Bernard Renault is interrogated in the Bookhouse.

Like the Freemasons, they have their own secret gesture, a stroke with a finger on the temple.

The Esoteric Order of Dagon

You may remember these fellows from H.P. Lovecraft's story The Shadow over Innsmouth:

It was called, she said, "The Esoteric Order of Dagon", and was undoubtedly a debased, quasi-pagan thing imported from the East a century before, at a time when the Innsmouth fisheries seemed to be going barren. Its persistence among a simple people was quite natural in view of the sudden and permanent return of abundantly fine fishing, and it soon came to be the greatest influence in the town, replacing Freemasonry altogether and taking up headquarters in the old Masonic Hall on New Church Green.

Although it's true that I didn't know much about the Masons and certainly never gave any serious thought to joining a fraternal order until last summer, it's interesting to read through that list and realize how many cultural cues I grew up with. All of the "funny hat frats" on TV helped reinforce the stereotypal view of lodges as goofy, harmless stag gathering places, while The Bookhouse Boys and the Esoteric order of Dagon were examples of the more mysterious, shadowy sort.

Wait, we do have secrets?

2008-06-06T06:35:00.002-05:00

The Philadelphia Masonic Temple has been undergoing a multi-million dollar exterior restoration, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer article at http://www.philly.com/inquirer/business/20080606_Masonic_Temple_project_nears_completion.html.

The article covers the history of the building, and then covers some of the usual bullet points about the Shriners, declining membership, younger men joining, et cetera... and then closes with a teaser from RW Stephen Gardner, Grand Master of Masons in Pennsylvania:

To be a Mason, he said, "you must acknowledge the existence of a supreme being. In that sense we're religious, but we don't discuss religion."
Another thing they don't discuss are Masonic rituals, which Gardner said were based on the Bible, but "not really religious lessons."
Asked to explain more, he replied, "I would prefer not to go into that, per se."

Compared with "We don't have any secrets, really," which do you think would make someone vaguely interested in Freemasonry curious enough to learn more?

A Year to the Day

2008-06-05T07:02:00.006-05:00

I started this weblog one year ago today. At that time, I had just started a new job enabling me to work at home. This stirred up a few issues which I realized had been troubling me in a larger sense for several years.

Probably the biggest perceived issue for me was lack of local social contacts... The combination of working far from home, living in a tiny rural town, not being a "joiner", and not having kids to make acquaintances by proxy had conspired to leave me feeling isolated. Working at home, I realized, would totally cut me off from the outside world unless I actively sought out some kind of social interaction.

Another issue was a general sense of malaise, a feeling that my life was somewhat adrift, in terms of both spirituality and long-term goals and aspirations. Last spring my wife and I had just paid down a significant portion of our debt, but the prospect of buying a house still seemed beyond our reach. (Little did I know at the time that we'd close on our first home just six and a half months later!)

Really, I said it best myself in that first post:

At age 32, the realities of adulthood are starting to set in. I'm not talking about the music getting too loud, lamenting my high school or college glory days, or agonizing over the couple of grey hairs that have shown up in my beard. I'm talking about finding oneself removed from the built-in support networks of a place like college or high school, and close enough to middle age that horizons don't seem quite as wide-open as they did in my twenties.

Not that I'm preoccupied with death - just that I've had a growing sense over the last couple of years that it's time to stop screwing around. I don't rightly know what that entails, but I have some ideas, and it is here that I intend to explore some of them.

My first order of business last summer was to find a local community group to join, to get myself out of the house and hopefully make some local friends. Elks, Lions, Kiwanis, Odd Fellows... I scoured the internet for such information and (most important to me) first-hand descriptions as I could find, hoping I would be able to find some kind of experience that would be like "Boy Scouts for grown-ups."

The group that kept popping up peripherally again and again in my searches was the Freemasons. I didn't really know anything about them other than the typical vague notions of ritual, secrecy, and exclusivity. As I started to actiely dig for more information about the Masons it was easy to discard the Masonophobe nonsense for what it was, but I did have my own suspicions about the ritual in terms of the Masons as a basically religious group, which was not really what I was looking for. I can still remember quite strongly the cognitive dissonance I felt about Masonic ritual; "If Freemasonry isn't a religion, then what the heck is the ritual for?"

The more I read, though, the better sense I got about the ritual's place in the overall Masonic experience... and thanks to helpful first-hand accounts from various Masons online a lot of things were de-mystified for me. I was intrigued by weblogs by self-professed "esoteric Masons," and my suspicion started to give way to excitement that such a group of intelligent, well-spoken people existed. It still took a while to get used to the idea of becoming a Freemason myself... I spent a lot of time turning the idea over and over in my head, and it was around that time that I decided to start this weblog.

Freemasonry wasn't going to be my main focus... I had initially imagined this as a place to think out loud about any number of "deep thoughts", using a pseudonym so I could write freely about anything without worrying about friends, family, or spouse stumbling across it.

Needless to say, the Masonic aspect took over as I chronicled my eventual decision to petition, and the long wait that followed. A lot of the time I was forming opinions or expectations based on the experiences of others; Like a lot of people I was drawn to the Masons because of their history and metaphysical/philosophical Light-seeking aspect, but I read so many laments about lax ritual, stubborn old-timers, lodges abandoning their grand old buildings for steel sheds in the suburbs, and "fork and knife Masonry" that it almost seemed like disappointment was a foregone conclusion.

So here I am, a year later... a Master Mason, all of the secrets of Masonry revealed to me, pseudo-lambskin apron tucked away in my dresser drawer, Masonic ring on my finger, edging inexorably towards the officer line.

Am I deeply disappointed, or feeling betrayed that the Freemasonry I've inherited has strayed from its glorious roots?

No, not really.

Having gone through the degrees and attended half a dozen or so Masonic functions I have seen instances of those things that newer Brothers can find so frustrating, but I tend to reject the notion that the Masonic grass was always, always greener in the days of yore. True, there are plenty of passages written 80 or 100 years ago by Masons lamenting the sorry state of the Craft, and you could take that to mean that Freemasonry has been in steady decline since the first speculative lodge was opened however many hundreds of years ago.

On the other hand, you could spin that as proof that there have always been people who are never satisfied with anything.

I'm being a little bit glib, but I think I have a valid point. Don't get me wrong - I do have some reservations and frustrations about the current state of Masonry in the U.S., but I'm not crazy about the "desperate call to action, throw the baby out with the bathwater" attitude often presented as a solution. The changes we seek will happen if we devote as much energy to implementing them in our lodges as we do writing about our frustrations online. It won't happen overnight, but if we truly believe that they're fighting for then we should have the patience to wait it out.

I think that a lot of the Light we seek comes from the overall Masonic experience... not only the ritual but the dinners and collations, the road trips to other lodges, the joking around during rehearsal. Those things couldn't sound less esoteric or spiritual on the surface, but from what I've experienced so far Freemasonry is greater than the sum of its parts, which is what gives it that elusive X factor that makes it so hard to describe succinctly. To put it another way, I think that while poring obsessively over our symbols and rituals for hidden messages and meaning, some Brothers miss the forest for the trees. That's not to dismiss the idea that there may be deeper messages or meanings in the ritual, just that they are only a part of the Masonic whole.

Speaking of experience: I recognize that my experience is my own, and that I may be more fortunate than some having joined the lodge and jurisdiction I did. I am not trying to invalidate or belittle the some of the very real frustrations or problems that I know exist in other lodges and/or jurisdictions. I simply want to add a positive voice to the chorus.

Travel in Foreign Countries

2008-06-04T11:27:00.004-05:00

In the unlikely event that anyone reading this is 1) A Mason, 2) A FileMaker developer, and 3) Going to DevCon in Phoenix, Arizona next month: Drop me a line at theexlife@gmail.com and maybe we can at least meet up long enough to grab a cup of coffee during the week.

Good Questions from Bro. Accuosti

2008-06-03T14:47:00.005-05:00

VW Bro. Tom Accuosti left a thought-provoking comment on my last post, in which I wondered aloud why so many brethren disappear after the third degree:

Good question. What about the mentors and avouchers for the new guys. Do they keep in touch with them? Does the investigation committee mention that they would like the new guys to participate?

When I go out on interviews, I usually tell them that we'd like them to commit to at least one event per year. A Child ID, an afternoon making sandwiches, a cleanup day, something. That generally sets the tone that we expect something, but nothing too vague or arduous.

Do you rehearse every week? That's great!

These are good questions, which I can only answer from my place as a relatively new member myself:

What about the mentors and avouchers for the new guys.

From what I could tell, the assignment of mentors is fairly casual at my lodge - it seems like that duty usually falls to the Secretary.

Do they keep in touch with them?

Yes and no; early on I got calls asking if I was planning on attending district Lodges of Instruction, and the invitation to stop by on Monday night is open-ended, but there haven't been any "just checking in to see how you're doing/if you have any questions" conversations or phone calls.

Does the investigation committee mention that they would like the new guys to participate?

The committee who investigated me asked if I was prepared for the time commitment involved in joining the Masons - the three month timeframe at two or more nights per month - but other than telling me "you get out of it what you put into it," that request/expectation of minimal commitment wasn't expressed.

It's definitely a tricky balance; on the one hand, Freemasonry is not supposed to interfere with your family or professional commitments... on the other, there's the stubborn part of me that wonders why someone would bother joining if they knew they would be too busy to participate in their Lodge.

Of the four of us who were raised in April, only two of us came back for the next regular communication in May, and as far as I know I'm the only one who has gone to any functions (exemplification, table lodge, Lodge of Instruction) at another lodge.

Ultimately, though, it's not fair for me to speculate as to why Brothers don't show up or get involved unless I'm prepared to ask them about it. I have my interest and enthusiasm, and it's OK if it's not shared by everyone.

Do you rehearse every week? That's great!

As far as I know, at least some folks show up every week (assuming there's a degree happening at the next meeting) unless it's a long weekend. I'm not sure whether that carries through the summer break or not.

This is how it happens

2008-06-03T07:16:00.005-05:00

My lodge is open most Monday evenings for degree rehearsal, and so candidates can go over their ciphers with a mentor.

Knowing this, I stopped by last night to poke through the lodge library, which I had not had a chance to explore yet.

When I came back down from the library, the officers were just headed into the lodge room to begin running through the second degree, and I was heartily invited to come in and watch... I had been encouraged to come and watch before, but I hadn't had a chance since taking the third degree.

As everyone filed into the lodge room and took their chairs, it was realized that there were no Stewards present. The Senior Steward arrived shortly thereafter, but not before I agreed to sit in the Junior Steward's chair, you know, just for the sake of the rehearsal.

It has not escaped my attention that we do not currently have a Junior Steward installed. If I keep showing up on Monday nights, I will probably wind up sitting in that chair next year.

Is this why so many new brethren disappear once they're raised, for fear of actually getting involved?

One-Word Movie Review: National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets

2008-06-03T07:15:00.001-05:00

Meh.

A New Obsession

2008-05-31T06:28:00.005-05:00

When I lived in Southern California, I was fascinated by post-modern googie architecture - partly because of a general interest in 1950s design but also because it was nothing like what I grew up with in Massachusetts. After I got my first decent digital camera in 1999, I got into the habit of planning pilgrimages to various buildings I had read about so I could see and photograph them.

Since getting back to New England I haven't really had a similar photographic subject to focus on, but lately I've been taking a lot of photos of things Masonic and related to other fraternal/civic organizations. It's fun to have a photographic obsession again. As with the googie architecture, I like finding and shooting things that not many people are paying attention to any more and feel some of the same sense of urgency to capture them before they disappear.

On The Wearing of Rings

2008-05-27T15:28:00.003-05:00

One of the things I remember reading early on last summer was that Masons aren't supposed to wear rings or put bumper stickers/emblems on their cars until they are raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason.

I don't remember where I read it, and I don't know if the claim was made about North American Freemasonry in general, or if the writer was posting about their own jurisdiction and I didn't really make the distinction at the time.

I should read through it again, but I don't recall any mention in the Massachusetts' members handbook of who is "allowed" to wear rings or put stickers on their car. I certainly don't recall any mention of a proper way to wear one's ring (compass points out vs compass points in, on a certain finger, or whatever); it strikes me as a slightly fabricated topic of discussion, as though someone recently assumed that there must be some kind of tradition or significance, and kicked off a debate where none existed previously. I like this answer best. (via the comments on Bro. Shane Hale's recent post - congrats, Shane!) However, I may be totally off base here and flagrantly dismissing a matter that is much more important in other jurisdictions. My apologies if this is the case - if there are Grand Lodges (or local lodges, for that matter) with official stances or policies about the wearing of rings I'd love to learn about it.

I've been wearing my ring with the points out for fairly pragmatic reasons. It's easier for someone else to recognize it that way in most situations, and that's half the point of wearing a Masonic ring (at least it is for me.)

As for auto decals: there was one tucked into my handbook, and I received that right after my Entered Apprentice degree. I don't think it matters too much in Massachusetts. Plus, as far as I know there's nothing stopping anyone, including cowans and eavesdroppers, from ordering a whole Lodge's worth of regalia, rings, hats, bumper stickers, et cetera from someplace like LAFSCO... the ring (or the manner in which it is worn) does not the Mason make.

Lodge as Retreat

2008-05-27T11:32:00.003-05:00

Over the last couple of months I have gained a real appreciation for Lodge as a retreat/refuge from the outside world. Stresses of work and our imminent move into the new house (which still needs much work to be habitable) have been mounting, and I am very much looking forward to leaving that all behind for a while during tonight's dinner and Lodge of Instruction.

It's a bit different than going out for a drink or a movie with a friend; I have a hard time taking an arbitrary break if I know there's something I could/should be doing with my time instead. While being a member of a Lodge definitely includes a large social element, it's the extra bit of structure, formality, and commitment that lets my inner taskmaster accept it as something I have to do, not just something I'd like to do.

Worcester Masonic Temple

2008-05-24T06:49:00.005-05:00

I had an errand that took me to downtown Worcester, Massachusetts. I had never seen the Worcester Masonic Temple before except in an old postcard view, so I plugged the address into Google Maps and discovered it was right around the corner from my destination.

I was surprised to discover I actually had seen the building before, about 6 years ago when I was trying to find the RMV and used Ionic avenue to turn around. When I saw it again I remembered being struck by the place the first time and assuming it was an old high school. If I had looked closer I would have seen the square and compasses over the entrance, but at the time I wasn't the least bit interested in Freemasonry, and didn't notice.

The building was totally deserted on a Friday morning... not surprising really, but tucked away on a downtown side-street with no other adjacent businesses except a Boys and Girls' Club that was also closed up tight, it felt a little bit lonely and forgotten.

Nevertheless the building looks like it's in good shape --at least on the outside-- and I believe it also is home to the Scottish Rite Valley of Worcester and a Knights Templar Commandery. I noticed that it also serves as a 32º Childrens' Learning Center... I'm sure that if I came back on a weekday afternoon or evening the place would be much more lively. I'd love to get a look at the inside.

The temple was completed in 1914 and originally used by four lodges from the city of Worcester. You can read more about the history of the building and one of the venerable lodges that meets there at: http://morningstarlodge.homestead.com/MorningStar.html

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Not Your Founding Fathers' Freemasonry

2008-05-18T08:18:00.010-05:00

In his post John Quincy Adams, Masonry & The Free, Invisible Car, Wayfaring Man examines a stinging description of Freemasonry by John Quincy Adams in a letter to William A. Stone in 1832. Here’s a brief excerpt that sums up Adams’ view:

...nor is it conceivable that any such Entered Apprentice, on leaving the lodge after his admission, should fail to have observed, with pain and mortification, the contrast between the awful solemnity of the oath which he has taken, and the extreme insignificance of the secrets revealed to him.

It’s actually not so much different than the tired quote from Benjamin Franklin:

The great secret of Freemasonry is that there is no secret at all.

At risk of putting words in those esteemed gentlemens’ mouths, here’s my take:

Adams is saying that upon being initiated, the new Entered Apprentice’s first reaction is, “That’s IT?!” Adams then posits that the full initiation is spread across three degrees to keep those disappointed candidates hoping for the real secrets in the second and third degrees; otherwise, everyone would bail after the first.

Franklin is saying that you’re missing the point if you obsess on the secrets and ignore the three virtues of brotherly love, relief, and truth.

It seems like there are two main types of disappointment expressed by new Masons here in the 21st century. One is from candidates who are expecting “instant enlightenment,” or as Wayfaring Man writes:

But there is another group of men who have passed through the west door: these men are under the impression that when they reach the third degree they will be given the spiritual equivalent of a new car, and when they find that this is not the case, they lose interest rapidly.

The other kind of disappointment is from Masons who are excited to join the fraternity after reading about its role in the 17th and 18th centuries… how it provided a safe haven for open-minded men to learn and discuss philosophy, spirituality, and science on the level. Upon joining, though, they feel they can’t find any brothers interested in discussing something more stimulating than who’s going to man the griddle at the next pancake breakfast. 2 Bowl Cain writes:

American Freemasonry of the 20th and 21st century has changed and become a 501c10. The Freemasonry of our Founding Fathers is dead and gone in America. Pre 1800’s it was an entity on its own. Today it is one of many other 501c10’s.

The conclusion of these Masons is that three degrees have become little more than a vestigial curiosity and otherwise there’s not much separating us from the Elks, Lions, or Kiwanis. To borrow the car analogy, these new Brothers are expecting to learn how to build a car from scratch, and are crestfallen when they’re handed the keys to a regular old Chevy that’s already been built.

In their disappointment, some of them never discover that the Chevy is a 1958 Corvette Roadster, which needs a lot of work but will be a priceless classic when it’s done.

The thing that seems to be constantly overlooked in these comparisons of modern and early American Freemasonry is that our society has undergone tremendous changes since the revolutionary period… industrialization, urbanization, and then the backlash and willful self-isolation of suburbanization. We’ve invented cinema, radio, television, video games, and the internet. These changes have all affected the ways in which we interact with others and view the world around us, and even if our ceremonies and language haven’t changed much in the last 200 years it’s not reasonable to expect the Masonic experience not to have changed along with the rest of society.

The plain truth is that Freemasonry isn’t needed today as a safe, private forum to discuss political and religious matters in the same way that it was in the 17th and 18th centuries. While you’ll still find plenty of intolerance and small-mindedness on those subjects throughout this country, you generally needn’t fear being jailed or executed for expressing yourself in public.

So what is our relevance?

One of the biggest scapegoats for the decline in membership among all fraternal/service groups is the fact that the free-spirited baby boomers rejected these groups as part of “The Establishment,” and left their parents’ generation holding the torch from the 1960's onward. As generation X and Y have come along, we have been inculcated with the notion that the Masons, Elks, and Odd Fellows used to be popular/relevant/bigger than they are today, but nobody except a few old guys belongs any more. As institutions they have been stripped of any kind of relevance as far as younger generations are concerned, because in so many cases our parents never felt any relevance either. My generation’s attitude seems to be “Aww, it’s kind of quaint that there used to be organizations like that, instead of the way society is now when nobody knows their neighbors or gets involved in their communities. Oh well!” The thought of joining such groups ourselves doesn’t even occur to us unless it’s a family tradition, because we never got those cues from most of our parents’ generation.

I can still remember quite clearly my deep sense of surprise last year upon learning that a 26 year old co-worker was a member of the Elks. The idea of a young guy joining one of those clubs who met in those old buildings I’d been driving past for years knocked something loose in the back of my head, and ultimately led to my becoming a Mason. While I was attracted to the Masons in particular because of its emphasis on the art and science of character building, in a more general sense I joined because I wanted to feel some of that sense of community and fellowship that was lacking in my life.

I think that we are sometimes too quick to dismiss that basic, social/community aspect of the modern Masonic experience as being “just like the Elks” and therefore somehow distasteful. As humans continue to create more diverse and effective ways to isolate and distract ourselves, plain old fashioned social gathering and interaction will become an increasingly valuable commodity. I don’t see that as anything to be ashamed of.

As for the “missing” philosphical aspect of modern Freemasonry, I think that we newer Masons have the wrong expectations when we petition… there seems to be this concept of esoteric or philosophical discussion as a monolithic thing, like a bullet point on the meeting agenda:

Open Lodge

Read minutes

Read bills

HAVE ESOTERIC DISCUSSION

Close Lodge

The approach seems stilted to me; I wouldn’t sit down next to a Brother at our next dinner and say, “So, would you like to have an esoteric discussion about Masonry?” Sitting down next to a Brother and asking a more specific question like, “So, what were you thinking about during the second section of the third degree?” is a much more targeted question that might jump start an interesting discussion about what Masonry means to the other Brethren at my lodge.

It’s not reasonable to expect the lodge experience in the United States (and from state to state, district to district) in 2008 to be the same as it was in England in 1717. Nor is it reasonable to expect broad changes to happen or be embraced instantly, no matter how spoiled we are by one-click shopping and overnight delivery.Keep in mind how long it takes to become a Master Mason in some jurisdictions: at least one month between degrees in most of the ones I know of, and longer than that in others where they’re serious about proficiency. It was 8 months between the day I applied and the night I was initiated.

Keep in mind how long it takes to become Master of a lodge: seven years assuming there’s a full officer line and nobody drops out. When was the last time you spent seven years working on anything except perhaps your Master’s degree or PhD?

The first operative mason who had an idea about how it would be possible to construct soaring, thin stained glass walls by using flying buttresses probably didn’t figure it out during the first year of his apprenticeship. He probably didn’t get it right on the first try, either.

If we aren’t finding the experience we seek, it is up to us to draw the blueprints and provide the guidance, and more importantly the patience to bring it to the Craft.

Wor. Brother R. Theron Dunn

2008-05-15T11:18:00.003-05:00

I would like to extend my sympathies to the family and friends of Worshipful R. Theron Dunn, who passed away on Tuesday after a brief, unexpected illness.

Theron’s weblog, Beacon of Masonic Light, was among the first that I encountered when I got interested in Freemasonry last year, and it provided some of the strongest counter-arguments to the voices of discontent calling for radical changes, Grand Lodge reform or even the formation of new Grand bodies like the UGLA/GOUSA. I never met or interacted with Theron personally, but his counterpoints were partially responsible for helping me form my own middle-of-the-road attitude toward Freemasonry. I am not the first to say it, but while I may not have always agreed with some of Bro. Theron’s arguments and positions I usually understood where they were coming from.

Sometimes I didn’t, though, and I will admit that there were times that I had started (and abandoned) cantankerous rebuttal posts of my own. I bring this up not out of any kind of guilt or apology; I still have my opinions, and Theron will no doubt have many stimulating discussions about his with all of our Brethren in the Celestial Lodge above. I bring it up because his untimely passing puts those differences of opinions in a better context; Being brothers isn’t about any one person being “right”, or about agreeing on everything all the time, (good lord, how boring that would be!) it’s about tolerance and mutual respect. As Brother Dunn was fond of saying, "It's not about me changing them, it's about me changing me."

Virtus Junxit, Mors Non Separabit.

Whither the Odd Fellows?

2008-05-12T07:21:00.006-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about the Odd Fellows since my post last week, saddened to see a once-vibrant fraternity disappearing and wondering how it was that the Masons have remained comparatively strong as the Odd Fellows seem to be fading away. Looking at the directory of Massachusetts Odd Fellows' lodges, most of them are in the greater Boston area and some of the ones further west are indicated on the map, but no longer listed below... presumably gone dark.

Is there some vital difference that has kept Freemasonry alive while Odd Fellowship has faltered? Or (and I suspect this may the case) did the Masons' state-by-state Grand Lodge system provide better regional autonomy and support for lodges during the leanest years than the IOOF's internationally sovereign structure?

There's a part of me that feels like I should petition Naukeag Lodge in Ashburnham, Massachusetts if only to try and help keep it alive --and, I admit, to satisfy my curiosity about how the Odd Fellows' degrees compare and contrast to the three Blue Lodge degrees. As a motive for joining, though, that feels rather empty compared to the visceral "That's what I've been looking for" feeling I had when I asked to become a Mason.

Good thoughts for W. Brother Theron Dunn

2008-05-10T07:14:00.004-05:00

http://freemasonsfordummies.blogspot.com/2008/05/wbro-theron-dunn-gravely-ill.html

Call it prayer, call it "thinking positive thoughts," call it "sending good vibes" - whatever it is that you do, please do it for Brother Dunn.

Nice.

2008-05-07T16:34:00.003-05:00

I am not much of a jewelry purchaser or wearer. In high school I succumbed to the Jostens sales pitch and had a class ring for a while, but I lost it somewhere during my senior year and it wasn't until I got married that I acquired another hunk of metal to put on my finger. And even then, my wife and I bought our wedding bands from a vendor at the Sherman Oaks street fair in 1999 or 2000... plain old sterling silver bands for about $8.00 apiece, picked out from between all the flaming skull and iron cross rings on either side. (Of all the things on which we might have spent thousands of dollars we didn't have, teensy metal loops was not at the top of our list. Neither of us even particularly likes gold or diamonds.)

Masons' rings mean a lot of different things to their individual wearers. As for me, I decided to get one to show my pride in belonging to the fraternity, and to provide a mode of recognition to others when I'm peregrinating. I didn't want to spend a lot of money, though, and some of the rings you see at the low end of the spectrum (on Ebay, for example) look like Cracker Jack prizes. I found this on Amazon, and I'm very happy with it for the price; I find it elegant in its simplicity and understatement.

(Obligatory disclaimer: I am not affiliated in any way with the vendor, I don't get any kind of referral, et cetera. I'm just a contented customer.)

And...?

2008-05-06T08:06:00.005-05:00

This past weekend was the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts' official 275th anniversary blowout, with Grand Lodge tours, a black tie dinner, a ball, guided Masonic tours of Boston, and other goings on. If I weren't still working away at my house (The end of June is alarmingly close, and I really can't spare any weekend days for at least the next couple of months) I would have volunteered to lead some tours of the Grand Lodge (which I have yet to visit, myself)... but oh, well... I figure by the time the tricentennial rolls around I should be in a much better position to participate in all the festivities.

So with all that was going on this weekend, you'd think an accompanying article in the Boston Globe might have gone into a little bit of history, touched on Prince Hall, or generally departed from the same fluff written about the Masons in pretty much any newspaper... but no, you get the usual:

Mention the conspiracy theories right away
Mention the Freemasons in in the American Revolution
Mention the presidents who were Masons, throw in Ben Franklin and John Hancock for good measure
"We don't have any secrets" quote from a prominent Mason
"Resurgence in popularity thanks to the Da Vinci Code and National Treasure" seems to be the new bullet point replacing "aging members dying off and lodges struggling for survival"

Of course, shallow articles about the Masons are just part of our secret plot to lull the public into a false sense of disinterest.

(Clippy graphic purloined from a post by Bro. Christopher Hodapp a while back.)

Childhood Glimpses

2008-05-05T11:27:00.006-05:00

Last week I had occasion to drive through Worcester, Massachusetts on Route 190. Having grown up in a town near Worcester, I rode through many a car trip along that major artery through the city, and one building used to dominate the hillside to the north of the freeway: The Odd Fellows' Home. It's still there, but another building has sprung up between it and the Freeway, so it has receded into the background a little bit.

My parents would often point it out, partly because it's a neat building, and partly because it's fun and mysterious to talk about a group of people called "The Odd Fellows". My parents never had much of an answer for me as to who the Odd Fellows were, other than that they 1) had been around for a long time, 2) did a lot of charity work. 3) were a private sort of a group (they might have gone so far as to use the word "secretive".)

What they didn't know was how people got to be in the Odd Fellows in the first place... and as a kid, any question your parents can't answer is surely a deep, deep mystery of the universe.

Looking at the large, victorian building perched atop a hill with its prominent logo (three interlinked rings) across the tower, it's exactly the sort of dramatic place you would expect a group called the Odd Fellows to meet, and as a kid the fuzzy mental picture I developed went along with the building; old guys in fancy clothes meeting at night behind locked doors, doing mysterious things. The fact that such a phenomenon existed was intriguing to me, but did not strike me as relevant to my own existence, nobody in my immediate sphere being involved; over the years it was an interesting bit of cultural trivia to know of the Odd Fellows, and to recognize the three linked rings on the occasional building or cemetery headstone, but it wasn't until much more recently that I ever contemplated finding out how to join such an outfit.

I was not a particularly popular kid growing up, and was never at the top of anyone's list to invite to any "clubs" that might have been formed... but the notion of clubs and club houses definitely appealed to me. One of my favorite book series as a kid was Alfred Hitchcock's Three Investigators... the titular teenaged characters had their own detective agency run out of an old trailer completely buried in a junkyard. They could surveil their surroundings via periscope, and access to the clubhouse was via a series of hidden tunnels through the debris, with special knocks and everything.

I would bet that aside from all of the noble ideals of spiritual temple building and service to mankind, inside just about every Mason is a 10 year old boy who really digs being part of a "secret club". I'll cop to it, how about you? Apart from those of you whose fathers/uncles/grandfathers were Brothers, How old were you when you became aware of groups like the Masons and Odd Fellows? How did you learn about them? What did you think? Looking back, what do you think now?

That's Better

2008-05-02T18:41:00.004-05:00

I still have plenty of distractions whirling around in my head, but I managed to break the logjam that prompted my last post and now don't feel quite so much like I'm stealing time away from something more or important, or wasting precious free moments by nattering away on this weblog. So, in no particular order, here are thoughts that have been knocking around my head this week... (fair warning, this turned into a rambly one.)

Last Saturday evening I attended my first Table Lodge, which you could also say was my first "non-newbie" Masonic function - that is to say, I wasn't receiving a degree, and I wasn't required to be there as with a Lodge of Instruction. Also, I was the only person there from my lodge so in a way it was a little bit like that first time you take the car out by yourself after getting your license.

It was a lot of fun, and I can't wait to attend another. (although I will have to budget myself; $25 is not much to pay for an evening of warm fellowship and excellent food, but enough of them would definitely start to add up!)

A few observations:

As mentioned, I was the only person there from my own lodge, which meant I didn't have any "default conversational partners" for the evening. I had met some of the Brothers who were there from other lodges at my degrees, or at Lodges of Instruction, but for the most part I was on my own. I wound up sitting next to a Brother from the northwest corner of the state. He was very friendly and welcomed me warmly to the fraternity, but I didn't really converse much with him through the evening. I didn't really converse much with anyone through the evening, and because I'm the sort of person who tends to watch and listen before diving into most situations, that was Ok. I wasn't being actively ignored or shunned, and feel I could certainly have struck up a conversation if I had wanted to.

The overall sense of fellowship was really something... I described it to a profane friend as a general, mutual feeling of "I've never met you before, but if you're here you must be an OK guy." The food was good, and the evening's 7 toasts (with wine) were way more fun than they had any right to be. Looking around from time to time, I saw that I was not the only Brother choosing to just watch, listen, and passively enjoy the company.

With the exception of the entrée and the wine (apple juice for those choosing to abstain), the meal was served on paper plates. I did not feel that this detracted especially from the overall experience, which was simply one out of what I hope will be many, at many different lodges over the years, some more formal than others, some more "traditional" than others. If after all that I want a table lodge with real dishes, glasses and silverware, I can damn well become Master of a lodge and try to make it happen during my year in the East.

Which segues into a CD that just arrived in my mailbox today (gotta love SwapaCD), Broken Boy Soldiers by The Raconteurs. It had been on my wishlist since it came out in 2006, and promises to find itself in heavy rotation as spring gives way to summer. Anyway, a couple of lines from the track Together struck me:

You want everything to be just like
The stories that you read but never write

If I want to change or improve something in my life, or at my lodge, or wherever, then all I have to do is actually get off my ass and do it. Sometimes it's easy to lose track of the simple equation:

x not done + someone doing x = x getting done

Most of the time it's easier to complain about x not being done, or write about all the reasons x should be done, than to actually do x. Probably the most profound example of this equation in my life happened about 12 years ago, when I went with my brother and sister to the iMax theater at the Boston Museum of Science and watched a film about special effects - specifically, the kind old-school miniature building that made Star Wars such a ground-breaking phenomenon, and has since been almost entirely replaced by CGI. As we left the theater, I made a comment like "Wow, I'd love to do that for a living", and my older brother flippantly said, "Well, then you should go do learn how to do it!" He probably doesn't even remember the conversation, and at the time I didn't think much of his comment.

A month or two later, I moved to Los Angeles with my then-girlfriend (now wife), who got a job at a foam fabrication/costume making shop herself, thanks to skills she had picked up doing 3D illustration in college. Since we only had one car, I would drop her off in the morning and then pound the pavement all day trying to get my foot in the door with a web design company. I got to be a familiar face around the shop where my wife worked, and one day when they were up against a shooting deadline, I was asked if I wanted to help work on some stuff for a Saban (you know, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) production... and just like that, I was doing special effects for a living.

Granted, the pay was crappy and it was a far cry from Industrial Light & Magic, but if I had been passionate enough about effects to put in the long hours and work my way up the food chain in L.A., ILM would not necessarily have been out of reach. Want to work in special effects? It's easy: move to L.A. and start cold-calling the small shops around the San Fernando Valley. Sooner or later you'll find one that needs warm bodies for some project or another, and if you demonstrate any kind of competence at all you stand a good chance of being kept on after the crunch.

I did manage to do some work I was proud of on some props and costumes that appeared in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but my heart wasn't in it... there were guys who would sacrifice their nights and weekends without overtime pay on the mere possibility that they might get their name in the end credits of a movie. Me, I just wanted to go home and crash.

Speaking of making change happen: I'm psyched about yesterday's announcement of The Masonic Society, which I probably would have joined already had I not spent almost exactly the same amount of money on an inexpensive (but tasteful) Masonic ring only hours before. I think I will join The Masonic Society as a housewarming present to myself after we have moved into our new house later this summer.

As for the ring, it's something I'll be proud to wear, and I'm also very curious to see what kinds of places and situations I'm in where it might be noticed by a fellow Brother. Photo to follow when it arrives.

And finally, I need this t-shirt:

The More Noble and Glorious Purpose

2008-04-28T11:29:00.003-05:00

I haven't been using my 24 inch gauge very effectively lately, and the rhythm of my day-to-day life has gotten a bit out of whack. This is not surprising, with the pressures of my day job, a house that needs to be move-in ready within the next month and a half, and overly optimistic voluntary commitments I'm trying to fulfill so that I can then extricate myself therefrom.

In an effort to right the ship, so to speak, I'm trying to make a conscious effort to avoid blatant time-sinks like surfing the internets or blathering on and on here. (A tough thing to do when you build web sites and applications for a living.) Nevertheless, with discipline I hope to get back on track.

So, I may be going quiet here for a while, but it's only because of the natural ebb and flow of life's priorities; about six months ago I was playing banjo and mandolin so much that I was seriously contemplating trying to get a band together. Now, I've barely touched either instrument over the last 3 or 4 months.

Late in 2006 I optimistically purchased a years' membership in the Guild of American Luthiers; I've been interested in Lutherie for quite a long time, and I thought last year might be the year I actually build a playable instrument from start to finish. The entire year of 2007 went by without my completing so much as a 3-string cigar box guitar, and I let my membership lapse... I highly doubt I'll have the time or space to work on instruments any time this year.

My siblings and I are total card and board game junkies, having wiled away hundreds of companiable childhood hours over many of Parker Brothers' and Milton Bradley's finest. I have board games that I either purchased myself or received as gifts that have gone unopened and/or unplayed for more than a year.

I've been struggling with this issue of having too many interests and too little time and/or money for the last few years, and although I don't know if there's really a solution I think there's at least a healthy attitude with which you can approach the problem: Recognize that it's OK to put an interest back on the shelf for a while. I think too many people equate "taking a break from" with "being a quitter" or "being a failure", and wind up being way more bitter and/or frustrated than they need to be.

And there... I just chewed up most of my lunch break putting this together. I really must take a step back for a while!

The Young Master Mason and Not Taking The Bait

2008-04-26T07:49:00.003-05:00

"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.

U.S. News and World Report Article: "Inside the Masons"

2008-04-25T07:07:00.003-05:00

I hadn't seen this article by Jay Tolson before. I just came across it on Gary Dryfoos' venerable web site, and it's a surprisingly respectful, non-sensational piece. It's even fairly accurate - there are a few statements that you could quibble with, but I think they were probably just simplifications, made without qualification for the sake of brevity.

As it is, the article comes to a rather abrupt end that pretty much skips the 20th and 21st centuries... I wonder if they ran out of room in that issue, or just figured people weren't interested in reading about their Grandfathers' Masonry.

The article was written in 2005, and I thought the observation at the end was interesting... basically, it states that membership is stabilizing thanks to large numbers of retirees joining, and then closes with a line that reminds me of 1950's science textbooks on the subject of man going to the moon... "And who knows? Those aging boomers might even figure out how to bring younger Americans back into the craft."

2005 wasn't a long time ago, but in the interim it does seem like there's been a bit of a groundswell as far as those younger Americans go. Anyway, here it is:

Inside The Masons

In Summary

2008-04-17T05:33:00.006-05:00

Since my induction in February I've been to five lodge meetings; my three degrees, a Lodge of Instruction, and my district's Exemplification. The exemplification happened the very night after I was raised, and as the only person crazy enough to show up without being obliged as an officer, I wound up playing the part of the candidate again, and got to experience the short and long forms of the second section - how many Masons do you know who were raised thrice in two days?

Five meetings isn't a lot, but it's been enough for me to start to get a sense of some of the personalities and dynamics within my lodge. I still have a long way to go in terms of learning and understanding the ritual, but receiving the third and final degree did have the feeling of "completing the picture" for me. That is not to say that I was somehow suddenly elevated to a state of full cosmic enlightenment, far from it - but after 9 months of trying to figure out what it's all about, the third degree left me thinking "Oh! Now I think I get it," even if I can't put into words what "it" is.

I am quite pleased to be able to leave all of that speculation behind, and my plan henceforth is to write about actual experience as I continue in Freemasonry. I feel a little bit like I'm closing a book, and so before I move on I want to write down some impressions and observations based on my own experiences from discovering Freemasonry, to petitioning, to investigation, to induction.

So you just got kind of interested in the Masons

Assuming you're in the same boat I was, with no direct context among family or friends, the whole business can seem a little bit mysterious or even sinister, especially since every TV show or newspaper article about the Masons begins, "There are over 6 million Freemasons worldwide, but they are very secretive and little is known about them."

The first thing a lot of people notice about Freemasonry is the heavy use of symbols, some of which may seem a bit strange; a coffin? A dagger pointing at a heart? A big disembodied eye hovering over everything? Unfortunately, it seems like many people leap to the immediate conclusion that such symbols must be somehow occult or macabre, rather than simply archaic; The first Grand Lodge was formed in 1717 and the Freemasonry has been around longer than that in one form or another, so we're talking about symbols from 300+ years ago. They didn't have emoticons back then.

Then there's all the terminology; Rituals, Temples, Altars - in the 21st century, the use of these words outside of the context of a mainstream religion seems to have Temple of Doom-style connotations to people.

I know most of my own hangups were centered around terminology; "If it's not a religion, then what's the altar for and why do they call their buildings temples?" Once I learned that Freemasonry uses the allegory of the building of King Solomon's Temple as the basis for its teachings, most of my misgivings went away. If you're in the same boat I was last June, intrigued but a little bit weirded out, do yourself a favor and get a copy of Brother Chris Hodapp's Freemasons for Dummies.

Contacting a Lodge

Even if you've decided that the Masons aren't up to anything weird, taking the next step and contacting a lodge can be indimidating; after all, it's a "secret society", isn't it?

Things to keep in mind:

If you've spent any time reading up on the Masons, you have no doubt read that membership is down - your local Lodge(s) will be delighted to hear from a potential new member.
If they didn't want people to call them, they wouldn't have a publicly listed phone number.
If you're more comfortable with e-mail, and you find a website and e-mail address for your local lodge, by all means go for it. Just be mindful that a lodge's e-mail address may not be checked as obsessively as you check your own; if you don't receive an immediate reply to your e-mail, don't worry about it. One of the first lodges I contacted by e-mail took a few weeks to get back to me! If you're really raring to go, telephone is probably your best bet.
The person you talk to went through the same exact thing; they had to knock on the door and ask to join too.

Submitting a Petition

If you've pretty much made up your mind to join by the time you go and visit a lodge to ask questions and get a tour, you might want to bring along names, addresses, and phone numbers for people you want to use as references, so that you can fill out an application on the spot if you decide you want to go for it.

Other than that, there's not much to it. In my jurisdiction, the application form asked for the information you'd expect; name, address, contact information (day/evening phone numbers), and then a question you wouldn't expect on most other applications:

Do you believe in a Supreme Being?

By now you have probably read or been told that this is a key requirement for membership - but beyond an answer in the affirmative, you are not asked to elaborate.

The Investigative Committee

From my own personal experience, and having read about numerous other Brothers' experiences, you don't need to get nervous about your "investigation". Look at it as an opportunity to get to know a few of the men who will be your Brothers once you join, and obviously for them to get to know you. In my case, I got the impression that they relied more on my references to get a picture of what kind of person I am, and used the meeting with me to get a read on my social skills and general demeanor.

This experience probably varies widely from lodge to lodge, but in general, if you're an upright citizen who's not a jerk, you should be in good shape.

The Interminable Wait

This was the hardest part for me, once I decided I wanted to become a Mason; my timing was such that I applied right before my lodge broke for the summer, taking July and August off... and then my degree was scheduled on short notice in September, but I wasn't able to attend because of a long-standing, prior obligation! That's how I wound up waiting nearly 8 months to take the first degree.

I occupied my time by reading about Freemasonry on and offline, and I allowed myself to get caught up in some of the laments about the current state of the craft, and debates over reform and revitalization, speculating blindly about what kind of experience I'd find when I finally did join my own lodge, and generally steeling myself for disappointment, like I was joining about 100 years too late.

I don't know that there's really any way I could have avoided that; 8 months is a long time to wait for anything these days, and from the start Freemasonry was something I was very interested in; it was the white bear I couldn't not think about for three quarters of a year. If you find yourself in the same boat, waiting for months before your actual induction, at least do yourself the favor of not setting your opinions or expectations in stone. Like Sarastro said on his weblog:

Imagine that you've spent the last 15 years reading about riding a bicycle. You've read everything there is to know about balance, coordination, how a bicycle works, theories, training manuals, biographies of great bike riders, etc.

None of that can compare to actually getting your butt on a bike and riding it.

So as you speculate, remember that no one person speaks for Freemasonry, no matter how high their website ranks in Google search results. Consider this: even Grand Masters' authorities end at the borders of their own jurisdictions! As you read about frustration or indignation over the state of Freemasonry in one place or another, try to keep in mind that your own experience, once you finally take that first degree, will almost certainly be different than what some guy on the other side of the country is writing about! For that matter, it will probably be different than the picture you're building up in your mind (like that hypothetical bicycle above.)

One last thing I would say: avoid spoilers if you can! Skip the part about the degrees in Freemasons for Dummies, and stay away from complete descriptions such as can be found in Duncan's Ritual, which can be easily found online. I tried to avoid details about the degree ceremonies themselves, and although I couldn't help but be exposed to some details ahead of time, I definitely feel like the experience was better than it would have been if I knew exactly what was going to happen next.

The Induction

On the night of my initation, several Brothers went out of their way to reassure myself and the three other candidates that there was nothing to fear, and that everyone else in the lodge has been through the exact same thing. This was in contrast to some other accounts I've read where some Brothers will make jokes about "riding the goat", which might seem to them like a harmless enough joke or a good way to break tension, but does a disservice to the potentially nervous candidate and the seriousness of the event.

I'm here to spoil the joke for all the merry pranksters out there: There is no goat. Seriously.

When you are told early on in the first degree to Fear No Danger, it's the truth.

Thanks!

So this is the end of "Chapter 1" - I want to thank my Brothers who helped me learn about Freemasonry when I first got interested, and through their encouraging comments and insightful writings convinced me that this was something I wanted to be a part of. Thanks, Widow's Son, Tom Acousti, Chris Hodapp, Wayfaring Man, and the author of Horseshoes and Handgrenades, whose handle I am afraid I don't know! I read so many Masonic blogs and forums during my initial curiosity that I'm sure I am forgetting someone, so one last generic "thanks" to everyone else. Fiat Lux!