Like many brothers on the web, I have spent a significant amount of time following the back and forth occurring on various Masonic Blogs. Many blog posts have been ripe with disagreements, fights, arguments, contention, hatred and generally un-brotherly un-Masonic conduct. Like daytime TV, gladiatorial matches and professional wrestling, these examples of the most basic of human emotion has attracted me like a moth to a flame. I have paid unnecessary attention to it, like a passer-by gazing at a car wreck. Not giving assistance, yet transfixed and focused on the destruction. These brothers are not building the temple while they fight and I am not building the temple while I idly watch. This is not Masonry.
This bad energy has permeated my being and has nearly poisoned my own love for Masonry. After the long summer months I have felt dread about returning to my labors, not because I dread my lodge, my valley or my district. But because I have convolved the bad blood being shown over the internet with what real Masonry is. I have somehow confused the ill will shown by brothers in this land of bits and bytes with the brothers of flesh and blood.
Real Masonry is your lodge. Real Masonry is your brothers. Real Masonry is your community. Real Masonry is helping the poor and distressed. Real Masonry is looking to God, thanking him for his beautiful gift and continuing with your labors no matter how much the world-at-large has been sullied. We labor not in spite of our flawed humanity, we labor to better our flawed humanity, not to give into our more base instincts.
The brothers of my lodge, my valley, my district and my Grand Lodge have recently reminded me why I labor. This was not a conscious reminder on their part. No one stopped and noticed the corrosive forces at work in my soul. No one stopped, said that I looked lost and actively showed me the way. They didn't need to, they did what Masonry is meant to do. Masonry gives no man light. Masonry shows no man where the light is. Masonry isn't light. Masonry reminds men that there is light in this world and that we are all seeking it together. A calming joke at the right time, a friendly hand shake, a shared pizza, a chat about life; this is Masonry. Being there when your brothers need you and finding your brothers when you need them. This is Masonry.
Turn off your computer. Close your laptop. Thank God for the light in this world. Lock arms with your brothers and find a ray of that life-giving force which serves to enlighten our hearts and minds. Live Masonry.
".....that cement which unites us into one sacred band, or society of friends and brothers, among whom no contention should ever exist, but that noble contention, or rather emulation, of who best can work and best agree."
