Taco Tuesday

And the Lodge

Earlier this week, Tuesday to be precise, Melinda and I wandered on down to our favorite dive bar for lunch. Why? Because it was Taco Tuesday, and they make some mighty fine tacos there!

Photo by Xavier crook on Unsplash

While there, we both sort of realized that nothing ever really changes in the place. We go there often, and sit at the very same table in the back. The same eight or so people at the big table up front always greet us as we walk in. The elderly couple always says hi, and the lab always comes over for a quick scratch behind the ears.

Nothing ever changes, not really anyway.

But I guess this lack of change didn’t really strike us until this past Tuesday. This past Tuesday we noticed it because there was a change.

Sort of like how we wouldn’t realize that we were in the light if darkness didn’t exist. Wouldn’t recognize goodness if evil didn’t exist.

We need to see the thing’s opposite if we are to truly see the thing.

Our bar, during lunchtime (we only go there for lunch) has two kinds of people in it. Older retired people, and middle aged people who work in the city and stop in on their lunch break.

But again, this past Tuesday, there was a change.

Two younger women walked in. Dressed to party, not to work. They ordered jagermeister and vodka. We’d never seen either of them in the place before.

The seemingly never changing vibe of the place was changed.

That’s just how it is with Lodge.

Melinda and I go down to the Lodge. She handles the cooking, I handle the handshakes.

The same people are always there. It never really changes. Sure, sometimes some visitors come, but they are people we know, whom we’ve sat in Lodge with before. Sometimes new men become members of our Lodge, they and their family are quickly welcomed, integrated into the Lodge.

It’s all familiar, unchanging in a way.

Comfortable.

That’s what it is with the Lodge, and with the bar, they are comfortable places, because they are familiar places filled with familiar faces.

As time passes, of course new people come, and other people go, but it remains familiar and comfortable; the vibes don’t shift, because everyone fits.

Things can be disrupted if scantily clad younger women walk into the bar and start drinking jagermeister and vodka. Things can be disrupted if men obviously unsuitable for Freemasonry wander into the Lodge. We’ll notice the change.

And we, by that I mean probably most people, do value the comfort of the familiar.

So that’s likely a pretty powerful draw for the active members of a Lodge, much as it is for a bar.

But I have to wonder, is there a danger to this comfort?

Can the desire for the comfort of the familiar put us at risk of refusing any and all change, including clearly positive change?

I fear that it does put us at risk of exactly that.

And I think that risk is something that we do well to guard against, as Masons, and as Lodges.

We need to be able to clearly see the difference between harmful change and helpful change. We need to have the willingness to put down the first, and support the second. By doing so we preserve our Lodge for all the Brothers to come.

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I know that you can’t get enough of all the stuff I write, so I’ve gathered everything from last week into one convenient place! You can get there by clicking right here.