Legendary Freemasonry

A Lodge asked me to define it

Last night I spoke at St. John’s Lodge in Seattle, about Legendary Freemasonry. The text of my remarks is below:

Months ago, my friends Tom and Ken asked me to speak to St. John’s Lodge about a term I frequently use, Legendary Freemasonry.  Since that time, the term hasn’t been far from the front of my mind.

It’s stuck there because I know what the Lodge wants me to explain.  What is sought is my definition of the term Legendary Freemasonry.  And I’m just not entirely sure that I can make others understand what I mean when I write or say that we need to create truly Legendary Freemasonry.

Famously, in 1964, the United States Supreme Court ruled on an obscenity case, Jacobellis -V- Ohio.  In that case, Justice Potter Stewart explained that he may well never succeed in intelligibly defining obscenity, but that “I know it when I see it.”

I think that I rather find myself in the same box as Justice Stewart.  Perhaps I can not explain exactly what I mean by the term Legendary Freemasonry, but I certainly do know it when I see it.

Legendary Freemasonry, to my mind, is a Lodge Experience of such value that men such as Elias Ashmole, Benjamin Franklin, Benito Juarez, Simon Bolivar, William Upton, Teddy Roosevelt, and George Washington wanted to be a part of it.

I don’t think that we attract very many men of that caliber today.

But, we could.

We could, if we offered a Lodge Experience as high in quality as the Lodge Experience those men found.  If we offered truly Legendary Freemasonry.

Perhaps Legendary Freemasonry is best defined by what it is not.

It is not a Lodge that neglects the West Gate, allowing any man with a pulse, good or bad, to receive the Degrees of Masonry.  Do we believe that the famously fastidious George Washington would have ever joined a Lodge that was home to a man he found distasteful?

It is not a Lodge that performs poor ritual and poor degrees.  Do we believe that the famously active and busy Teddy Roosevelt would have wasted his time going to a meeting or a Degree  just to hear the ritual butchered?

It is not a Lodge without high quality Masonic education and discussion.  Do we believe that Benito Juarez and Simon Bolivar would have taken time away from their work founding their nations to attend a meeting where little was discussed but how to pay the rent and what color was going to be painted on the ceiling?

It is not a Lodge, or a Grand Lodge, that watches silently as other Lodges or Masons act in ways that we know to be immoral.  Do we think that our Grand Master William Upton would have ever become a Freemason had he not believed that our Craft would someday address the racism prevalent within it?

It is not a Lodge or a Grand Lodge so hide bound by meaningless tradition and rules that it becomes impossible to face current needs.  Do we believe that Elias Ashmole would have allowed himself to be initiated had he thought that our institution could never grow or change to remain meaningful to the men of changing times?

It is not a Fraternity that feels a paternalistic need to legislate against everything anyone might not like.  For decades and decades in this country, Freemasonry was dry.  Still to this day we have dry Lodges.  This despite the fact that our very ritual contemplates refreshment and fellowship with alcohol.  Do we really believe that Benjamin Franklin, who so loved his wine that he wrote a song about it would have ever joined a Lodge so hung up on the form, rather than the practice of morality that it declared itself dry?  Apparently forgetting that Freemasonry was founded in Taverns?

Legendary Freemasonry is not a bad meal, followed by bad ritual, followed by a dull business meeting, in a room marred by men who never should have been made Freemasons.  It is not a complete absence of quality fellowship among men.  Legendary Freemasonry is not Masonic Temples filled with racks of cheap cotton loaner aprons because the men within them do not honor the Ancient lambskin emblem of a Mason.

But…

For far too long, for decades and decades, that was the Lodge Experience.  That is why the life went out of our Ancient Craft.

I am happy to report to you tonight that things are changing.

Changing for the better.

Very recently I attended a Degree at a Lodge somewhere in this Jurisdiction.  The meal was cold sandwiches and bad coffee.  The Degree was actually completely stopped, twice, so that a Past Master could tell the men performing it that they were doing it incorrectly.  In standard jackass from the sidelines fashion, he was the one who was incorrect, both times.  Later in the Degree, during one of the longer passages of ritual, the poor guy delivering it received so many unwanted and unneeded prompts from the sidelines that he finally had to turn around and tell people to shut the hell up.  When it was over, everyone just went home.  To use George Orwell’s phrase, it was Double Plus Ungood.

This was, incidentally, the very first Degree that this Lodge had done in years.

As I made the long drive home that night, I remembered.  I remembered that when I first became a Freemason, that was how most of the Degrees I witnessed went.  Most of the Degrees, in most of the Lodges I attended were bad.  Bad to that extent.  Bad meals, guys yelling out the wrong prompts from the sidelines, little or no opportunity for education or fellowship.

But it isn’t that way anymore.

That bad Degree really stood out to me precisely because I now very rarely see bad Degrees.  

Things have changed, drastically, for the better in the time that I’ve been a Mason.  I think though, that improvements have happened so slowly, that we tend to not recognize just how far we have come.  Might not see how much better things are now.

We are on the path to creating truly Legendary Freemasonry.  It’s a good path, and we have come quite a long way down it.  We simply have to keep working, continually, towards betterment and the day will come.  We will once again attract the very best in large numbers.

Earlier this week I read something wonderful from Sadie Hartmann (Mother Horror) that sums up quite well what we must do if we are to create Legendary Freemasonry.  She wrote:

“...set the bar really goddamn high because I assure you, there is more to be done.  There are improvements we need to make.  We have room to grow and learn.”

If we hold her words in mind, and put them into practice, we can create Legendary Freemasonry within our Lodge.

Some years ago, you honored me with your votes.  You selected me as your Junior Grand Warden, placing me on a path at the end of which I would become responsible for the present and the future of our Craft.

That is a responsibility that I took extremely seriously, and I gave a great deal of thought, over a long period of time, to how I could best have a meaningfully positive impact on this Ancient Brotherhood.

Day to day decisions are of little importance to the future.  For they are just that, decisions dealing with today.  Words are what stand the test of time.  Words, and the people who receive them are how lasting change comes about.

But, what form of words?

Albert Pike wrote:

“The spoken discourse may roll on strongly as the great tidal wave; but, like the wave, it dies at last feebly on the sands. It is heard by few, remembered by still fewer, and fades away, like an echo in the mountains, leaving no token of power. It is nothing to the living and coming generations of men. It was the written human speech, that gave power and permanence to human thought.”

I understood our Brother’s words to be true, so I decided that the most important thing I could do, for the future of our Craft was to write.

But once one makes the decision to write, he must figure out how he will publish.  

Books are of course the traditional route.  And books are very high status things.  There is something truly special about having one’s name on the cover of a finely bound work.

But, facing reality, one should understand that people don’t read books.  

Last year, approximately three million books were published in the United States.  Of these three million books, the average book will sell less than three hundred copies over its lifetime.  We see a Stephen King or a Ken Follett sell millions upon millions of books, and it makes us forget that most books sell far less than one hundred copies.

Of course these are for general books.  Books written specifically about Freemasonry would have an even harder go of it.

Knowing that if I were to write, and publish that writing in book form, no one would ever read it, I made the decision to publish online.

As of today, 2,198 people receive in email, multiple pieces of Masonic writing from me in their email boxes, each and every week.  Additional people receive it through Social Media channels, or read it on the web, or in an app.  All together currently, between 1,500 and 4,000 people read each Masonic essay I publish, some being quite a bit more popular than others.  This is well distributed with readers in every State, the largest readerships in California, Washington, New York, Texas, and Florida.  Internationally, it has subscribers in 124 countries around the world.  This is after about three years of regular Masonic writing.

I tell you all of this because this is my effort to create truly Legendary Freemasonry.  It is what I am doing to push our Craft into a very bright future.

But we all have different talents, skills, and things that we enjoy doing.  I scribble my thoughts down on paper, and people seem to enjoy reading them.  Things that you like to do are probably different from what I like to do, so I’m certainly not asking you to follow my lead.

What I am asking is that each and every one of us look at our Lodge and look at our Craft.  Find a place, or a way that we can improve it, and that we would enjoy helping with that improvement.  Once we find that thing or that place, I ask that you jump in and do it!  I’m working to create Legendary Freemasonry, a Freemasonry that the father of our country would be proud of through my writing.  Other Brothers are doing it through podcasting, or through cooking for their Lodge, or by perfecting their ritual, or by providing educational programs.  All of this is equally important, and all of us can have a hand in creating Legendary Freemasonry, if we will but jump in and try.

Indeed, this diversity is one of the greatest strengths of our Craft.

That leads me to the final thing I would like to talk about tonight:

Diversity among Lodge practices.

Every Lodge has something that it does extraordinarily well.

When I was a young Mason, new to the Craft, I visited a Lodge in Mexico.  While I was there, in the middle of their meeting, they did something that I thought was quite extraordinary.  It seemed quite simple once I had seen it, but it was certainly nothing I’d ever seen done in a Washington Lodge.

So I remembered it.  And one day, I became Worshipful Master.  And I did it.  And everyone loved it.  They declared me a genius for coming up with it.  What they didn’t know until I told them that I didn’t come up with it at all, I simply stole it from a Lodge I’d visited in Mexico.

This leads me to the final way we can create truly Legendary Freemasonry.  By learning from others and stealing their best ideas for ourselves.

There is a tiny little Lodge, down south of where I live that has maybe 2 or 3 really active members, 2 or 3 more sort of active members, for a total of eighteen on the books.  It is a Lodge barely even able to Open.  But that tiny Lodge operates a charity program that is more impactful on its community than any other Lodge in this Jurisdiction.

Now the secret of this story is, and I don’t even know if he is aware of the impact he had on this program, but a member of St. John’s Lodge, MW Gale, is largely responsible for the good works this program is able to perform each year.

The Lodge came up with the idea for its program long before it encountered our Most Worshipful Brother, but it was really small.  Reflective of the tiny size of the Lodge.  But then Gale became Grand Master, and he showed them how to make it big.  And I don’t know if he knows it or not, but they listened to him, and they followed his lead.  They made it exponentially larger and more impactful because of his leadership.

MW Gale, through what to him at the time was probably just some off the cuff direction, created a truly Legendary facet of Freemasonry within that tiny Lodge and its equally tiny community.  This shows that we can all have a tremendously positive impact, whether we know it or not.

The point I’m trying to make with this is that every Lodge, no matter how big or how small, how rich or how poor, has something that it does exceptionally well.  If, as leaders of our Lodges, we can travel, we will encounter these things, and can then bring the very best back into our own Lodge, taking it one step further down that path to Legendary Freemasonry.

But, we aren’t limited to traveling in the real world, we can travel virtually as well.  Lodges and other Masonic groups from around the world are hosting speakers via Zoom.  We can join in and learn.  Virtual Masonic education groups in which everyone participates are widely available.  Even on my own little website, 20 or 30 in depth comments are not uncommon following one of my essays.  Comments expanding on what I wrote, disagreeing with it, or simply offering a different perspective.

All of this is truly wonderful, because it is a way that we can learn from each other at a great distance.  Just a few short years ago, if we wanted to learn about Lodge practices in Scotland, we would have to beg Tom to take us with him on one of his trips back home.  Now we can sit in with Scottish Masons without ever leaving our home, right there on Zoom.

This sharing of information and practices will help us to create truly Legendary Freemasonry, if we bring the best of what we learn back into our own Lodge.

I thank you for inviting me this evening, and for giving me your attention as I talked of Legendary Freemasonry.  I hope that I’ve given you some insight into what I mean when I use the term, but if not, I’ll just have to fall back on “I know it when I see it.”