I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a Masonic Leadership Conference this past weekend. Held on the campus of a small but very comfortable military school, it was a chance to come together with others who are interested in the future of our fraternity. Freemasonry is about those who ‘can best work and best agree’ and this was a time share ideas, aspirations and concerns while meeting those with whom we might have remained at a perpetual distance save for such an opportunity.While there, we participated in discussions about the differences between generations: ways of looking at the world and expectations. As we discussed and debated amongst ourselves, it became increasingly easy to assume that we - the current ‘leadership’ - bore the blame for all of the ills of Freemasonry today and that clearly we needed to make sweeping course corrections if we were to save the ship that was rapidly sinking. It is obvious that different generations have different expectations and that those of the ‘millenials’ are far, far different from our membership of (primarily) ‘traditionalists’.As I began the trip home, an albatross swoped low and crossed in front of my car. Having been at a Naval military facility and barely avoiding his demise, I thought of the ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and how we almost seem doomed as a result of some event. We’d killed the albatross and it now hung around our neck as the skeleton ship approached.Yet even as the friendship and fraternity of the meeting mingled in my tired brain with various thoughts of forboding, I began to realize that this was not unlike several other meetings I’d attended recently: we’re flogging ourselves because we aren’t all things to all people. We see whines from a small handful of folks online who are upset that we don’t spend our meetings looking for secret meanings in the writings of Albert Pike or that we’re having too many fish fries and not enough dressing up in tuxedos. We hear whines from those who’ve decided - based on precious few years and precious little activity within Freemasonry - that it’s not what it should be. They want to steer the ship and don’t understand why those who’ve so faithfully held the tiller for so many years aren’t eager to give it up to untested and untried new hands.
The next day as I was about to leave for work, my attention was drawn to the television screen where I saw on the Today Show the woman who’s popular shout a few years earlier had been “STOP THE INSANITY”! It’s strange how several seemingly unrelated events can cause a clearer focus on the issues at hand.
The simple fact is that Freemasonry is not, can not and should not be all things to all people. We have those who say they wouldn’t join because of this reason or that. So be it! We have those who join and then set off to remake the organization in their image. That must stop! Freemasonry is, at its core, a group of men who can share frienship and fraternity and who can work together on common goals. It can not and should not become an organization where the loudest, newest voice gets to do what he wants while pushing aside the interests and needs of everyone else. It must be for ALL - not just a select few - a place of sanctity where we aren’t threatened, where we can trust one another, and where we share our petty joys and sorrows with those whose compassion is as great as our closest blood relative. We need to stop the hand-wringing over dissident voices and get back to being true friends and BROTHERS. Every organization that involves group ‘togetherness’ has lost huge percentages of members: we’re far from being alone. Simple social pleasures like bowling together on a Tuesday night have given way to extra work hours and flailing rants on a computer screen. Society has changed but the values of Freemasonry don’t need to change to the new lesser standard of complacency and inattention. We can continue to be a beacon to those who want something more - something different - than the fad du jour. We have the oldest fraternal organization in existance: we need simply to show potential members what FRATERNITY really means.
We haven’t allowed those who come through our doors to understand that there is a great and profound value to sharing the simpler joys of trust and caring. We’ve been hell-bent on inclusion to the point of abandoning what made the organization a place of value in the past. There is no silver bullet to declining membership and commensurate declining revenue to feed the many philanthropies we’ve adopted along the way. Tough choices will need to be made and there’s sure to be an ox or two getting gored in the process. (Imagine if you’d spent decades promoting a program only to now have it be seen as superflous. How would YOU react?) We must let our long-time members, young and old, know that their efforts have not been for naught and that they have contributed something of consequence. Simultaneously, we need to avoid the lure of the quick fix in whatever guise it arrives while we never forget to take each new member by the hand and make them feel both welcome to and included in the various activities of the lodge. It’s not just stuffing someone into a lodge officer’s chair but rather showing them by deed and word that their thoughts and feelings are of concern to us - and that we expect AND DEMAND that they should value ours as well.
Let’s start moving back to the point where men will want to ask to become a part of this institution rather than snaring them off of the street, offering their captor a chance to win a free Caribbean cruise with the Grand Master, and bragging in our publications about how many have joined in some performance class. We need to show the world at large, by word and deed, that Freemasonry can be inclusive but that there are some things that can not and WILL NOT be condoned, including acts that denigrate our leadership or try to make Freemasonry into something the newest member fancies but something which it has NEVER, EVER been. I believe the time has come to ‘Stop the Insanity’: to quit the hand-wringing and to put into place behaviors in ourselves and our lodges that will bring the generations together as MEN and as BROTHERS, to share the friendship and fraternity that was, is and will be the core of Freemasonry. The lodge is a place where a 90 year old can enjoy the company of a 25 year old - and the same in the reverse direction. It’s the sharing of ideas, the frienship and fellowship of good meals with good friends, and the desire to help the world around us: Freemasonry is all that - and its what SO many men, both young, old, and everywhere in between, are seeking today.
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