As I travel I encounter lots of Lodges doing innovative things, working to improve the Lodge experience, and filled with excitement. In fact, I visited two such Lodges just this week.
Unfortunately, I also encounter Lodges doing the exact same things, in the exact same ways as they have been doing them for at least the past seven decades.
The former are Lodges that men want to attend, and that are attractive to potential candidates. The latter are neither. Honestly the latter are dead in spirit, and likely dead in reality sometime soon. A good friend of mine, a very active Mason, refers to them as Zombie Lodges.
Fortunately with each passing year we have more and more Masons seeking to improve the Craft, and more Lodges snapping out of their long stupor, figuring out how to become meaningful once again.
This week I ran across the following quote and felt it described the way we need to approach examination of our Lodge if we hope to bring a spiritually and emotionally dead Lodge back to a thriving space that makes a difference in men’s lives:
“It is your responsibility to take risks, challenge conventional wisdom, and (dare we say) allow yourself to be creative - not in the art school ‘I’m-creative-just-like-you’ way, but in the Elon Musk ‘I’m-going-to-Mars-F-U’ sort of way. This is not about being outrageous or controversial for the sake of attention. It’s about taking the world somewhere new because you are already living in the future. And you’re on a mission to get everyone else there with you.” -Category Pirate’s Newsletter
One of the things we as Masons can rightly be extremely proud of is the Shriner’s Hospitals for Children.
Let’s think about the above quote as we consider the millions who have been helped by these institutions.
One hundred years ago Shriners decided to take a huge risk, they decided to start a hospital for children that would provide world class care, all while charging nothing for that care. This was unbelievably imaginative, creative. Those Shriners decided that they were going to do this amazing thing, were going to improve the lives of children and give their membership a truly powerful purpose. They made the decision, they imagined the future, and then they went out and created it.
When we are looking at how we can improve our Lodge, we have to do the same thing. We need to imagine what we want our Lodge to look like, commit to that vision, and then do just that. There is certainly nothing that will stop us from improving our own Lodge experience, except ourselves.
To have a vision for the future of our Lodge. To communicate that vision to the other members of that Lodge. To get their buy-in to that vision and their help realizing it. This is the essence of Lodge leadership, this is how we can turn even a seven decade negative trend.
This week finds me in Guthrie Oklahoma for the Guthrie Scottish Rite 2022 Reunion. It is an event that I’ve wanted to attend for a great many years, so would like to thank Esoterika Lodge for allowing me to tag along with them. I look forward to reporting about it to everyone here upon my return.
Every year my home Lodge, Sultan-Monroe 160, holds a Roast of the Grand Master. This year, alas, I guess it is my turn to be roasted. Tickets have just gone on sale.
Please join us if you are able:
Saturday, May 7
6:00PM
Sultan-Monroe Lodge, 125 S Lewis Street, Monroe WA
Tickets must be purchased in advance at the link below:
I’ll have plenty of suspension letters for everyone!
If you enjoyed this little essay, will you consider forwarding it along to a Masonic friend?
My oft repeated axiom when speaking with brethren…”we have to stop using a 19th and 20th century model of Freemasonry in the 21st century if we want to be relative in the 21st century”.
Good morning Grand Master,
First, it's long shot for me to be in attendance at your May 7 Roast, but whether I'm there or not I'm not the least bit worried about your pre-printed stack of suspension letters. You've had plenty of opportunities to yank my ticket and thus far you've exercised remarkable restraint, for which you have my sincere admiration.
Yes, radical thinking is what it will take ... thinking so radical that we'll actually have to do what we say we do. We say we make good men better. Now put a stop watch on all the things we spend time on and let's see how much of our time is actually spent on making good men better. We all know the answer: not enough. The only way to get out of this rut is to start and the top. We good men gather and spend an inordinate amount of time checking ourselves against the WMC. And of course to be able to do that we have to study the WMC so we can have spirited disputes about what the code really says. I'm not disparaging the good men who do this; they made an obligation to obey and that's what they're doing. I'll probably not live long enough for the WMC to be right-sized. In the meantime there might at least be an opportunity to avoid future code mutations.
When our daughter was little my wife came up with some very simple guidelines for her behavior. She had to let us know where she was, she had to finish her homework, and she could pick any activity she wanted as long as she had one routine physical activity that was adult supervised and she couldn't do anything to harm her health or property or that of others. With that baseline she had free rein. Thirty one years in we have an intelligent, healthy, compassionate, empowered, and accomplished daughter. And it looks like she's just getting started.
Without re-writing the code what if a similar framework was advocated by a string of Grand Masters, who in turn implored their Deputies to promote the same. And what if ... and this is big ... the Grand Master simply rejected any proposed resolution to the WMC that didn't advance that framework, the point being that the last thing we need is better rules. We need a better and simpler guiding framework.
Grand Master, once again you've caused me to stand up and cheer early in the morning. Thank you.