Masonry What Did I Get Out

Once my full acceptance had been given following a regular meeting, I was now a full member of the lodge and some of you will be asking, so what does that mean? As I said before this could mean a whole range of things but I shall just focus on me for now.

1. Ritual
2. Learning
3. Friendship
4. Evening out
5. Charity
6. Evening functions – variety
7. Research
8. History
9. Structure

So if you will permit me I will try and talk about these a little more, hopefully to pique your interest as a non mason.

Ritual – each full, regular meeting consists of a ritual ceremony, do not start jumping to conclusions here, this isn’t the kind of religious or anti religious things you may imagine, this is genuinely ceremonial, and ritualistic learning of circumstances, if you will, to promote learning within yourself, making your own journey into being a better person. Each lodge has it’s own ritual and whilst all based on the same theme, they can vary in words and looks quite dramatically. One would assume from the fact that masonry was not passed down in written form but rather by word of mouth. Leading to many different takes, like chinese whispers I suppose.

Learning – each ceremony has different parts to play out and so dependent on your position within the lodge, you have certain things to learn and do. I have been delighted to see lots of people, especially of an older age who never thought they could learn many pages of copy perform word perfect for their ceremony. I am quite lucky and people get annoyed with the fact that I can learn quite large chunks of ritual in a very short space of time. This isn’t anything other than years at education learning to take on board information and regurgitate it back. The thing that makes it very interesting is the old english form of language which can really muck up your efforts.

Friendship – Every week, come wind, rain, shine, or snow we turn up and practice these ceremonies, finishing in the bar for a drink and catch up on each other’s lives. Personally, due to my break up, I was very insular, I had work and I had my boys, but outside of masonry I didn’t get out at all. This friendship really helped me through some very dark days and nights. Bothering to listen to people’s stories, actually, really listening, and attempting to be available to help, really made a difference. You could see these were not fair weather friends, but life long buddies, like would be forged in the trenches, through blood, sweat and tears. We learned together, drank together, ate together and moaned together. Problems at work or in your personal life could be resolved easily from the wealth of knowledge and experience, and a willingness to want to help.

Evening out – that meeting every week became the high point of my life, since I had little else in it at the time apart from my boys, whom I saw once every two weeks. People there often said that they wished they could learn the ritual like I could, and I replied I wished I had a family life like you do, horses for courses. It was important to me and I would be looking to stay as long as possible until we were thrown out for closing time.

Charity – each time we officially meet we collect for charities, every function we arrange will take an opportunity to try and raise funds not just for masonic charities but external ones, such as Kent Air Ambulance and major equipment in hospitals, when you look behind the scenes a lot of charitable donations have been done by the masons. When a natural disaster occurs, you will find that the mason are amongst the first to make sizeable donations for the relief funds.