Just One More Reason To Love Freemasonry
Experiencing contrasts
As you know, over the past days, I had to step away from Freemasonry, and Emeth to deal with some difficult family business. Near where I was staying was a fast food restaurant. I wasn’t in much condition to fight traffic or explore around, and the place had excellent food, so I ate there more days than not.
The thing was, I was there at a rather odd time each day. Too late for lunch, too early for dinner, so on most visits, I was the only customer.
But, on one of my final visits, I pulled up, and despite it being the same time of day, the place was quite literally packed. I waited in a long line to order, the parking lot was full of cars, and the small dining room was filled with people.
It took me a moment to realize what was going on, but seeing the food in people’s hands, I remembered that there had been a sign out front for the past few days, promising a free ice cream cone on this particular day. People were there, in droves, for the free ice cream.
The thing was though, it wasn’t exactly free. Yes, the restaurant was giving away free ice cream cones, but in exchange, it was asking for a one dollar donation to Seattle Children’s Hospital. A worthy cause, and in my view, a great thing for the restaurant to do.
I stood in line to order my food, and that took a while, because they were making the ice cream cones. Then, after ordering, I had to wait for my food to be cooked, and that took a while too, because they were making so many ice cream cones.
So I sat and waited, watching as all of these ice cream cones were ordered and taken away.
Here is what I found rather shocking…
Not a single person donated the requested dollar to charity.
These were people of all ages, even the slightly elderly looking well dressed couple that came in for their free ice cream and then took it out to their fancy new luxury car.
Not one would give a buck.
Out of all those people, I also only saw two order anything in addition to their free ice cream.
The whole thing was surprising to me.
But more importantly, it was sad. Quite sad.
Here was a business, working to raise a few bucks for a good cause by giving away one of its products in exchange for a very small donation, and not a single person I saw was willing to donate.
Extreme selfishness is rampant in our society today, and harmful to it.
If no one is willing to work for the betterment of all, our society can’t continue as it has, and we will be in for a very rude collective awakening.
But, I contrast that with Freemasonry, and the Masons I know.
Last Friday night I was able to attend an annual fundraiser held by a Lodge local to me. A fun little event they do each year to raise money that is then used to buy school supplies, school clothes, and Christmas gifts for the poor children in their tiny community.
The event had about twenty-five Masons attend, and those twenty-five Masons gave thousands of dollars.
Seeing the generosity of our Brothers again reminded me of the tremendous will Freemasons have towards helping others and improving our world. It reminded me that not everyone in our society thinks only of himself or herself. It reminded me why I love Freemasonry, and am proud to be a Mason.
Excessive and harmful selfishness comes in a wide variety of forms. It isn’t simply financial as discussed above. We can be selfish with our time, our emotions, our empathy, and our love.
But if we hope to improve ourselves as Masons, and thereby improve the lives of the people closest to us, we must examine ourselves. Are we overly selfish with our money? Our time? Our emotions? Our sympathy? Our love?
If we are, we can improve, as Freemasonry calls on us to do.
As my current Grand Master says so often, ‘know thyself.’
It isn’t just the knowing though, it is also the dedication to continual improvement as we utilize the working tools of our Craft.
First may I say I am sorry to hear about your family problem.
I must have missed what you had said in your last post. The post's stopped I thought I had been knocked off the list . I must say I missed your post's.
Most people don't know what we do to help people out because we never tell anyone. We seem to keep our selfs out of the press but people do come to us for help my lodge has helped a school a lady who's car was hit we got her back on the road. People will always take what is free but never want to help give something back.
For many years, I would do shifts at our local rest area on Interstate 5 (Southwest Washington State) to raise funds. I usually shared the duties with a particular Past Master of my home Lodge who actually kicked back and enjoyed talking with the people, but didn’t have much tolerance for those who decided to run off with “Free Coffee.” But we both knew that somewhat averaged out. What really drove WB Art nuts was the children who were starting to learn the bad habits of the adults around them. “Hey, mister, do you have hot chocolate?” Art would sternly inform the children that this isn’t a McDonalds or a Dairy Queen, but I’d give them a cup of the hot chocolate anyway, as it did keep the youngster occupied. But all too often a child would come up and ask, “are the cookies free?” Then Art would lose his temper and say something like, “ARE THE COOKIES FREE???” then start making noises like the Tasmanian devil on the cartoon (when he was actually saying more angry things), startling the kids. I would have to calm Art down and explain to the children that while they can have a cookie, it’s for a donation to our organization. Then the kids understood and asked their parents to put some money in the pot for them so they can take a few cookies. While I’ve had many Brothers tell me that Art was out of line for unleashing his frustration on innocent children, I must admit I can see where he’s coming from. Let me continue…
One day Art and I were manning a rest area in the winter, and two youngsters came up and asked for coffee. They were in sleepwear and had no shoes on. And yes, they were shivering.
Art said, “Where’s your coats?”
“In the car, sir.”
“Where’s your shoes? You’re barefoot!”
“In the car.”
“You’re not drinking coffee, so who is?”
“Our parents.”
“Where are they?”
“… in the car.”
But this time, Art didn’t blow his stack. This time, he got out the tin of hot chocolate, and prepared a cup for each of the children, and gave them cookies. He kindly, but firmly, noted that these are for THEM, not for their parents. Please get warm and enjoy. They heartily said thank you and left for the car. When the kids were clear, we waited for the parents to come, and he was loaded for bear. They never came.
Yes, it’s a long story here, and we had plenty of good times as well, but it was really sobering to see how the real world works, and where it’s going. That being said, we, as Masons, can do better. We SHOULD do better. And most of us do, but we all should be encouraging each other to continue to do the right thing even when the temptation is there to throw in the towel and join the masses in their trend in the wrong direction.