A LODGE AT WORK
Bro. Walter M. Macdougall is a
member of Piscataquis Lodge # 44, Milo, ME and a Past Grand Master of the Grand
Lodge of Maine. Bro. Macdougall is a faculty member at the College of Education,
University of Maine where he teaches philosophy. Bro. Macdougall also authored
the 6-95 STB, Surprised By Joy. --Editor
A Lodge is a certain number of Masons
duly assembled, with the Holy Bible, Square, and Compasses, with a charter or
warrant empowering them to work.
Ask a brother how his lodge is doing,
and his answer is very apt to be either that things are going well because there
has been a lot of work to do or that the life of the lodge is at a low
ebb because there hasn't been much work lately. Ten to one, he is
talking about degree work. There is no doubt that performing degrees is a vital
part of the work of a lodge, but it is a common short circuit in our Masonic
thinking to conclude that exemplifying our degrees constitutes the work
of our lodge. Degree work is a means not an end.
Another possible and closely related
short circuit lurks in the word jurisdiction. In our everyday Masonic
usage, this term signifies the geographic area from which a lodge draws its
candidates. Just as the work of a living lodge embraces much more than doing
degrees so there is more to the concept of a lodge's jurisdiction than the place
a lodge draws its candidates. The working of a lodge of Freemasons is a many
faceted business which takes place, not just within a lodge hall or just among
its members, but within the lodge's jurisdiction of compassion and service.
Suppose we find ourselves standing
outside "Builders Lodge" in a place called "Needsville, " Here, according to our
ritual, gathers a certain number of masons duly assembled, inspired by the
Sacred Book and guided by the compasses and the square. They are, by a charter,
empowered to work-that is they have the honor of laboring as Freemasons. On
reflection, we realize that Builders' Lodge, like all Masonic lodges, exists
even when there are no masons meeting in the building. It exists in the shared
belief system of the brethren and in their united endeavor to give concrete
evidence of their beliefs through their service to others.
Every Mason who has received his
training in Builder's Lodge should know that the dimensions of his lodge spread
symbolically to the ends of the earth and that nothing short of universal
compassion is the aim of the Fraternity. In more immediate terms, the dimensions
of Builder's Lodge spread across Needsville to the borders of the lodge's
jurisdiction. Jurisdiction defines a certain community of lodge members and
wayfaring brethren alike. It is a community within the community at large, a
community of the Craft, alive and operative.
As in the case of the Masonic terms
work and jurisdiction, the word "lodge" with its varied
meanings may cause confusion. Your wife asks you if you will be at home this
evening. "No" you answer, "I am going to lodge. " In this response "lodge" means
a place and an event. You are signifying a communication of the officers and
brethren at the lodge hall. Such usage indicates a partial manifestation of
the lodge, but, in this last instance, "lodge" identifies an entity neither
limited to a particular place or to a special event. Put simply, lodge meetings
represent a vital and special function of the larger lodge which is the local
community of Masons. The lodge hall houses the operating and training center for
this larger lodge. It houses the nerve center, if you will. From this place of
focus, the leadership of the Master, assisted by his officers and his
committees, radiates outward and assumes the responsibility for "putting the
Craft to labor" within the lodge's jurisdiction of compassion and caring. [These
officers are the future masters in training. It is in leadership training,
instruction on how to build an administrative team, and in schooling Masonic
educators that our Grand Lodges play their most essential role.]
Consider the extensive dimensions of
the lodge's mission! This labor falls into three categories all of which are
interrelated and partake of the vision of the Craft.
(a) Care for the Masonic family
(b) Serving the needy and building a
better community
(c) Training the builders
"Take care of the widows and the
orphans' " this is the great charitable charge we have received from our
operative predecessors. This noble charge still stands, but it has been expanded
to the entire Masonic Family. Our obligations have enlarged with our growing
conception of what we as Freemasons came here to do and as new needs have
demanded. We feel it our wider calling to support the aging members, the young
Masons laboring to bring up their family amidst an enlarging circle of dangers,
and our youth who may find their first introduction to the great beliefs of
humanity within our youth organizations.
Who are we as Masons if we do not look
after our own? But there is more. What do we understand about our work
if we curtail our mission within our own Masonic house? We come to work upon a
fairer city of humanity; this is what we intend to do. It is our vision to bring
a new era of hope and joy within our lodge's jurisdiction of compassion and
service. It is the result of our calling as builders within our given
jurisdictions of compassion and service which constitutes the work of our
lodges.
We all like to see a large number of
brothers out to our meetings, for, after all, fraternal companionship is one of
the great joys of Freemasonry. However, it is not the primary business, or even
the business at all, of the master or his officers to entertain the brethren in
an attempt to populate the "sidelines. " Lodges at one time may have served as
places of entertainment, they may properly do so now, from time to time, for
happiness is part of our business, but lodges are not primarily about
"sidelines." They are about mainlines of action and vision. Masons, even those
who seldom attend lodge meetings, are duty bound to practice and to live Masonry
within their own Needsville.
Recently I had the opportunity to
present a fifty year veterans medal. As so often is the case, the receiving
brother began to apologize for not having come to lodge more often. When he was
done, a young mason rose and said, "Don't you apologize. I watched you all the
years I was growing up in this community, and I wanted to be like you. You and
your life are why I am here."
It is the master and his officers'
duty to see that the living of Freemasonry throughout the jurisdiction is not
haphazard. Every member according to his time and his capabilities should be
given some part to play in the work of the lodge, as it promotes the
human conversation, as it conciliates true friendships, as it stands for justice
and equality, and as it "restores peace to troubled minds." It is from the
"nerve center" of the living lodge that such direction and leadership of the
Craft must come. All this is implied in the phrase "a lodge duly
assembled"-assembled, coordinated for the accomplishment of its work.
All successful lodges are operative
lodges. Find such a lodge and you will discover leaders (or a leader) who knows
how to bind the brethren in a significant expression of the Masonic enterprise,
and who has the skill to set them to accomplishing this purpose for themselves.
Perhaps we have not given enough thought to how much skill, how much informed
art such leadership demands.
[And this too must be primary in the
concern and the services of a Grand Lodge to its lodges.]
Perhaps we have not sufficiently considered how
much sophisticated skill is demanded if we are to help create within the
community that communication, networking, and coordination which is now required
in the building of a better world. Certainly we all tend to forget that below
all that we do, welling up and giving strength to all building endeavors, are
those moral principles which illuminate and stimulate the Masonic vision.
So now we return to where we began this
exploration of a lodge and its work. We find ourselves realizing why our degree
work is a vital means and not an end in itself. At the "nerve center," the
officers and those members who possess the special gift of being ritualistic
teachers assemble to set another man upon the degree joumey-that greatest gift
which the lodge has to give a brother. One man at a time, heart to heart, mind
to mind, the Craft builds its working force. The meaning which gives
significance and purpose to the builder's life and to his labors must be
discovered; it must be journeyed after. This is the purpose of the degree
journey, and this is the work of the degree givers, to share the old guideposts,
to go in companionship as far as a brother can go, and to celebrate the new
understanding and dedication found.
The brethren of Builders' Lodge have a vision to
give to Needsville. In giving that vision, the brethren, themselves, will come
to understand its immense value. Through the work of the lodge which is
going on within its jurisdiction of compassion and service, the brethren will be
drawn back to that "nerve center." In that "sacred retreat of friendship and
virtue," they will find the quiet joy of renewal. When the Sacred Book is spread
and the working tools displayed, there will be created a special place apart
from the press of time and the urgency of life's demands. It is a place we name
"our lodge. " It is a place from whence we go out renewed and shoulder to
shoulder to work again.
"Wherever they came:' writes Mr. Hope in his
Essay on Architecture, "in the suite of missionaries, or were called by
the natives, or arrived of their own accord, to seek employment, they appeared
headed by a chief surveyor, who governed the whole troop, and named one man out
of every ten, under the name of warden, to overlook the other nine, set
themselves to building temporary huts for their habitation around the spot where
the work was to be carried on, regularly organized their different departments,
fell to work, sent for fresh supplies of their brethren as the object demanded,
and, when all was finished, again they raised their encampment, and went
elsewhere to undertake other work."
From: The Builders
back to top |
