From the Worshipful Master

With this month’s trestle board, we decided to do something a little bit different. Rather than choose a subject and discuss it from three different viewpoints, we decided to each choose an article from a Masonic site and comment on it. I chose an article on women in freemasonry, at the following link:

http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/women_freemasonry.html

This is a pretty hot button subject to many, and I’m going to try to get through this without horribly offending anyone.

I’m not going to go through a blow-by-blow breakdown of the article, or discuss its merits or faults. It appears to be well researched and composed, and include references to many historically-attested events in which women were not just involved in freemasonry, but actually obligated as apprentices, in some cases. Though many of these cases appear to be a situation where a wife or daughter overheard a meeting, and was obligated in order that she be required to keep what she heard secret and inviolate, it is clear that there have been female masons.

Yet, at some point, certain branches of freemasonry—including the blue lodge, free and accepted Masonry that we practice at Wayfarers—chose to not allow women as members. Whether this happened in those branches at inception, or later, is a question outside the scope of the article, and certainly outside my scope to answer. There are still lodges that are specifically for female masons, as well as lodges that are co-Masonic, for men and women. We don’t recognize these lodges, and in fact, this is one of the reasons we do not recognize the Grand Orient of France, as some of their lodges allow women to become Masons.

The whole thing feels a bit “boys playing in the tree house” to me, though… to the point that when women ask me why they are not allowed to become Masons, I typically answer, “Because girls are gross, and have cooties.”

(This usually leads to eye rolls on their part).

Without getting too deep into why we don’t allow women, or the ramifications of this, one stumbles directly into another question, which is, “Should we allow women?” And I’m going to admit something here that I don’t like to, which is that I just don’t have the answer. And I’m not sure anyone else does, either, because I don’t think there is a simple answer.

The kneejerk reaction, I suppose, would be that we shouldn’t allow women, because women are not allowed to be Masons. Of course, we know that isn’t 100% true, and it might be better to state that we in the US blue lodge do not allow women. And in Masonry, “We’ve always done it that way” is a pretty strong argument, for most men, to keep doing something. Yet more and more, marriage has shifted from what we might think of as the “black and white TV ideal” of the man being the focus and the woman supporting him, to equal partnerships. Society has shifted to acknowledging that women are more than capable of doing all sorts of activities that have traditionally been considered a man’s prerogative, and to be honest, I consider this good and right, but it does lead to the question of whether Masonry should be equal, in this respect, as well, and the answer is that… I don’t know.

Certainly, this is something that needs to be talked about. Whichever side a brother falls on, it is a subject that has to be discussed, that must be. There are many reasons not to allow women into our form of Masonry, and yet, there are many reasons to allow women into our organization. I could spend pages going through a list, but I think any reasonable man and Mason can come up with arguments to put into both columns. But the thing about the future is that it never stops arriving, and it tends to hit like a semi-truck loaded with change. One day, we will have to direct the truck down the road, or get run over by it.

(I might have lost track of that analogy).

Nonetheless: women in Freemasonry is a subject that we will, sooner or later, need to address, and not in a kneejerk way, but in a thoughtful and considerate one. We owe it to future Masons, and indeed, past Masons, both men and women, to give the subject the full weight and gravity it deserves. I can’t say what the right path is. As a simple lodge master, I’m not qualified. But I can say that the article raises a lot of interesting questions, and I urge everyone to read it and give it serious (and open-minded) thought. We are Masons, after all, and equality has long been one of our by-words. One day, Masons may wake up to find that this has come to mean Masonic equality of gender, as well as skin color and religion and social status.

Bryan Bullock
Worshipful Master

From the Senior Warden

My Brothers, this past week I received my Knights Templar magazine in the mail. It is not so much of a magazine as it is a small booklet. This little magazine/booklet is a publication from the Knights Templar that I started receiving once I joined the Order last year in December 2015. In the past I have been given several older publications by Gene Hutloff to read through. I have some articles I have breezed through easily, and some articles were incredibly in-depth and required vast amounts of mental energy to comprehend. The first article in this magazine I read was entitled “Three Distinct Classes of Masons,” by Sir Knight Philip G Buchholz, PGC. This Brother is a past Grand Master of Masons in Wyoming in 2004 and a Past Grand Commander in the Knights Templar organization. Brother Philip’s article was adapted from a speech he gave while he was Grand Master in Wyoming.

In his first several beginning paragraphs, he makes two points that stuck out to me. First, he quoted the definition of Freemasonry that we are all familiar with as it is stated “Freemasonry is a system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.” His observations over the past 150 years is that our system of morality does not need to change. His point being that the “moral and ethical values of our lessons need no improvements.” He states that Freemasons need to change, and to “improve their methods of teaching and exemplifying our lessons…” The second point he makes is in the form of a question. He points out that as times and society has changed, “which do you believe needs to change, Freemasonry or Freemasons?”

Next Brother Philip generalizes Masons into three main categories. The first he describes are BUILDERS. These are the people that strive to live Masonry, and improve their masonic knowledge and better themselves “morally, ethically, and spiritually…” These are Brothers that value the fraternity. He describes the CARETAKERS as those who are only focused on survival of the craft. He describes these men as treating the craft like a social club. Next Brother Philips describes DRONES. He describes drones as those who make little to no effort to better themselves masonically. These are men who are part of the craft for their own personal gain, and are the ones who typically complain about the petty issues and do not contribute.

Brother Philip summarizes his thoughts with two wards: Personal Responsibility. He states that the future of the craft in all of our responsibility, and that the craft needs more BUILDERS in order for the craft to grow in the future.

Reading this article reminded me of one of my favorite poems and I would like to share it with you.

By Charles Benvegar

I watched them tearing a building down,
A gang of men in a busy town;
With a ho-heave-ho and a lusty yell
They swung a beam and a side wall fell.
I asked the foreman, “Are these men skilled,
And the men you’d hire if you had to build?”
He gave a laugh and said, “No, indeed!
Just common labor is all I need;
I can easily wreck in a day or two
What builders have taken a year to do!”

I thought to myself as I went my way,
Which of these roles have I tried to play?
Am I a builder who works with care
Measuring life by the rule and square?
Am I shaping my deeds by a well-made plan,
Patiently doing the best I can?
Or am I a wrecker who walks the town
Content with the labor of tearing down?

This article can be view at http://www.knightstemplar.org/KnightTemplar/

Christopher Huson
Senior Warden

From the Junior Warden

The idea behind fellowship in a lodge is that brothers should come together as brothers, and nothing more or less. It’s common knowledge that we are to leave politics and such at the door when coming to a tiled lodge; as when we are in the lodge proper, partisan politics have no place in Masonry, and among other things, detract from what we hope to accomplish as Masons as a whole.

This, I say, should be our practice towards brothers outside of the lodge as well. Whatever our political or ideological beliefs, when brothers come together for any purpose, we should come together as nothing less than the proud company of men that came together on each other’s first night as a newly initiated Entered Apprentice.

We are who we are, and we’re not always going to agree on everything. Under many circumstances, these differences make us stronger, not the other way around. We can all certainly attest to getting involved in a riled political discussion or two. The principle of fellowship, however, should call on us to use wise judgment in what topics support fellowship between the brothers, and what detracts. If it means the difference between a heated discussion and an enjoyable evening when brothers of any number meet, perhaps the topics that lead to the latter should be chosen.

In short, while there are important topics that bear discussion and focus, I myself see so much of the negative emphasized in conversation. Amongst brothers, let us focus on the positive, and enjoy the qualities that brought us together in the first place. That is fellowship.

Cameron Smith
Junior Warden