Unless we see in the work we are doing a modest and sincere effort on a small scale to lift men into a closer relationship with their Creator, I'm afraid we are wasting our time, and theirs.

2 - What's It All About?

Dear Tom:

ou made your old Mentor happy with that telephone call last night. Something in the urgent tone of your voice made me know that a young Senior Warden is getting on fire. May it ever be thus!

This morning I dispatched by parcel post the two books you asked to borrow, Claudy's Introduction to Freemasonry and Haywood's The Newly Made Mason. Keep them as long as you need them. They served me well; may they serve you well also.

One observation you made in that telephone call sent me scurrying to my bookshelves.

"I've been doing a lot of thinking," you said, "trying to get a clear understanding in my own mind of what it's all about."

Those words had a familiar ring. "It just has to be Mark Twain," I kept telling myself as I rummaged through dust-covered paperbacks. Sure enough, it is in his Autobiography, that poignant description of his seven-year-old daughter Susy as she went to her mother and, in halting and inadequate language, revealed her perplexity that life should be filled with struggle, pain, misery, heartache.

Then she asked, "Mamma, this life--what is it all about?"

Tom, my lad, I daresay that a great many other minds more mature than Susy's are asking today, "What's it all about?" Institutions, beliefs, doctrines, standards, all are coming under the light of inquiry which cares not who we are, or where we came from, or how long we have been here, but wants only to know why we are here and what we have come here to do.

It delighted me that you have asked the same question with reference to Freemasonry. Masons should be asking that question, Senior Wardens in particular.

On my bedside table I have an old copy of Reader's Digest which features an article by the minister of a large, old and substantial church on lower Broadway in New York City. The author calls in question some of the attitudes of one of the most revered of all institutions. He says:

To many people the Church today is a pleasant community activity where one's children attend Sunday School, where adults go to worship occasionally, and where one goes during the week to meet other nice people and raise money so that the Church can stay open. On Sundays the parish is a religious institution, but the Gospel proclaimed on Sunday finds no translation into the relationships of the week day.

During the week the church is a series of promotional, organizational and semi-commercial activities. We have all become so caught up in the successful running of the Church that it is common for many to think that numerous activities are identical with religion. To pay mortgages, to build new parish houses, to put on a drive for new members, to hold bazaars, lunches, dinners, bake sales-- all this is admirable, but it is not religion . . . The only picture (the average American) has in his mind of organized Christianity in action is that of a church on Main Street. If what goes on there is a sample of how the world is going to be saved, we can hardly blame him if he fails to be impressed.*

I laid that one aside to send to you, also, Tom, for I'm sure you will be struck with the fact, as I was, that by substituting the words "Masonic Lodge" for "Church," the minister's indictment can fit our own situation in many respects.

Like the New York clergyman you are now asking, What is Freemasonry all about?

First, let's consider some things that it is not all about:

• The purpose of a Masonic Lodge is not to erect, equip, and maintain a building.

• The purpose of a Masonic Lodge is not to furnish members for other organizations.

• The purpose of a Masonic Lodge is not to subsidize groups that have been attached to the Craft, nor to provide facilities for those groups, however worthy they may be.

Masonic Lodges can do all these, and more, as a by-product of that great, compelling, inspirational force known as Freemasonry. But to proceed as if buildings, and subsidizing, and prospective membership pools were the basic purpose of Freemasonry is to get the cart before the horse.

Then what is the purpose of Freemasonry? What is it all about?

Do you remember the second question that was directed to you when you were memorizing the Entered Apprentice catechism:

"What come you here to do?"

In your answer you said that you had come to learn how to make yourself a better man. "To improve myself" was the way you put it.

Take particular note of that short sentence. You sought the privileges of Freemasonry that you might improve yourself. Not someone else. Not society, nor its institutions. Not other nations, nor creeds, nor races. Just yourself; that's all. Once you have improved yourself, then there is some hope that others might be improved also.

Two stones are displayed next to the Master's station in the East. One is rough; the other smooth. One represents what we are; the other what we I can become.

And so, Tom, before you can even start digging into what it is all about, you must face up to the fact that the real purpose of Freemasonry is to take a good man, one at a time, and try by our teachings to make a better man out of him.

Our purpose is the same as it was in that day when the stones for King Solomon's Temple were hewed, squared and numbered in the quarries where they were raised. The mere fact that individual Freemasons may not comprehend its purpose doesn't mean that Freemasonry has no purpose, nor that its purpose is outmoded. It only means that the stones are not being well hewed and squared in the quarries where they are raised.

Acacia Lodge is one of those quarries, Tom. And you are its Senior Warden.

There is nothing faulty with Nature, nor with Nature's God, just because we have a crop failure now and then. When the crop fails we need to look to our practices, and particularly to the quality of our seed.

Unless we can see in the work we are doing a modest and sincere effort on a small scale to lift men into a closer relationship with their Creator, I'm afraid we are wasting our time, and theirs.

While you are thinking along these lines, here are some sources that might be helpful:

• The little folder entitled, Freemasonry: A Way of Life.

• The Declaration of Principles. Read it not once, but several times.

• Conrad Hahn's superb essay, "Planning for Spiritual Growth," published by the Masonic Service Association as a Short Talk Bulletin (October 1974) and sent to Acacia Lodge. Read it thoughtfully; then read it again.

Note in particular what M.W. Brother Hahn says about the job of a Masonic Lodge. It is to make Master Masons, he declares. No more; no less.

If Freemasonry is not a mighty force designed to make men better, then it is nothing.

And men cannot be made better in three easy lessons.

Men cannot improve themselves just by coming to Lodge on three occasions and getting it over in a hurry so they can rush on to something else.

Think about it, my friend. God willing, I'll be writing to you again on the same subject before the year ends.

--Your Old Mentor

* "The True Function of a Parish," by the Rev. John Heuss, D.D.; condensed in Reader's Digest, June 1962.