Freemasonry's Deepest Secrets
Don't make me come over there!
Tonight my Lodge is holding a holiday dinner. As I somehow ended up as Master of it once again (I keep wondering where my year as a sideliner comes into all of this) I decided that I’ll need to say a few words this evening while we all enjoy our meal.
Looking for something profound to say, I pulled a huge old book from 1870’s from its shelf. It’s a really interesting book. About 70% of it is composed of essays on Masonic topics from a very wide range of authors across jurisdictions. I’d guess that 25% of it is Masonic fiction, fictional short stories about Masons. Who would imagine such a thing today? The remaining 5% is about equally divided between poetry, and helpful tips for cleaning up the Lodge’s meeting place and its Regalia.
I spent quite a lot of time skimming through it (there are a couple thousand pages to skim) but didn’t really find anything for my use tonight.
What I did find was essay, after essay, after essay, all written by Masons, each attempting to explain in his own way, the meaning of Freemasonry.
An effort made in vain, for words can not adequately express what Freemasonry means to a man. Can not properly convey the impact Freemasonry had upon a man’s life after he truly embraced it, or indeed how that impact came about.
We can think about these things for ourselves, we can adequately understand them for ourselves, but we can never easily nor adequately explain them to another person.
Freemasonry must be experienced in order to be understood.
If it were otherwise, there would just be some book out there, written by some really bright Mason or another that we could read, and upon doing so find our search for truth and meaning at an end.
It just doesn’t work that way.
We could read a plain text version of our Craft Degrees a hundred times over and never understand their potential impact. That understanding can only come through our experience of those Degrees.
And those are the real secrets of Masonry.
Not the funny handshakes, or words, or obligations. Heck, all of those things have been openly published for public consumption for almost as long as the open existence of our Craft itself.
None of that stuff is secret, in a real fundamental way it’s known to all who possess an ability to use Google.
The actual secrets of Masonry are those things that must be experienced in order to be truly understood.
And they are the secrets of Masonry precisely because of that.
They aren’t secret because we won’t tell anyone, they are secret because we can’t adequately tell anyone. Words won’t suffice, they must be experienced to be known.
Sometimes life’s greatest discoveries are to be found on the way to a destination. Sometimes this results in a new course being charted.
I think the things we commit to and the obligations we make are intended to help us reveal that path. Unique to each and every one of us.
No two ashlars require the same work to be fit for the builders use. The answer of what is Masonry being found in our efforts with each swing of the gavel and every measurement we make along the way. Discovering the light as we work towards “Perfection” as Brother Tim wrote about not long ago.
Thanks for another excellent post, and a great time last night. You and Melinda really knocked it out of the park Brother! Have a Blessed one!
It looks like you've found your speech topic for tonight's dinner.