What came you here to do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.)

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^* 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.