Darin A. Lahners

For Bill:

Another day, another Freemasonry Reddit post that echoes another hard truth.  For a fraternity that traces itself back historically to some of the most skilled, dedicated, and hard workers in history, why have I written articles in the past, and why did I just read a Reddit post that suggests that we are the opposite?  A Worshipful Master at the end of his rope. A lodge that isn’t helping the Master.  Is that bad leadership or a bad lodge?  I can’t fault a Master who is working his tail off to try to keep his lodge functioning, but he’s only one guy.  The non-helpful “Hand out the work and oversee it” comments on the post aren’t helpful.  To the folks replying in that fashion: You’re missing the plot.

I tend to call it like I see it. So, I’m calling it. The fraternity as it stands now is full of guys who are Freemasons in name only.  We have a few tiers of these members.

We have the bottom tier:  The members that should be suspended for NPD, but the secretary (who shouldn’t be chasing these guys down) is too buried with the other administrative duties to do a final appeal to them for money they won’t pay…so they can officially appeal to their Grandmaster to suspend them for NPD.  Something that might simplify this?  Codify an amendment stating that if a member is NPD for more than four years, they automatically become suspended for NPD.   In my mind, this saves time for the lodge secretary and for the Grandmaster.  I’m being kind with four years; personally, as a secretary who deals with them year after year, I’d be fine with three.

The second tier: The members who pay dues but don’t show up to lodge.  Let’s face it. We need these members.  They make the machine go.  They don’t want to be involved. They don’t show up, but they are at least proud enough of the membership to pay their dues.  They help fill the tills.

The third tier: The members who show up but don’t want to contribute.  They show up for the lodge, but when the rubber hits the road, they are nowhere to be found.  Stay home, bros.  We’re all better off this way. See below.

The fourth tier: The doers.  These are the workers.  They’re doing the stuff to keep the events going and make things happen for the lodge.

Why are lodges failing?  Because we have a smaller number of doers than ever before.  A craft full of speculative Masons who are not dedicated to their craft.  Which, if you’re not going to be dedicated, I’m not casting you in a bad light.  We need you to keep paying your dues. Just don’t show up and do nothing.  But if you’re showing up for lodge and you agree to do something and then don’t do it, well, I have a problem with that.

Freemasonry, at some point, decided that success meant that quantity was better than quality. So here we are. We continue to base our membership philosophy on this idea.  These Members prop up lodges that should be closing by showing up to meetings, but doing nothing to grow their lodges.  These men have a choice; they can continue to tread water and pray the next big wave doesn’t pull them under, or they can swim for safety.

Many choose to continue to tread water.  Treading water doesn’t expend as much energy.  It keeps you alive.   But without action, without the labor of swimming for safety, you don’t know if your lodge will survive or not.  The thing about treading is…you’re going to tire eventually.  So, when one of the numbers shouts for them to swim for safety, to try something…anything to save their lodges, and they agree… and that member starts to swim, only to find he’s alone.  Well, when those waves are hitting him, and that water is getting in his mouth, and he’s feeling like he’s drowning, he’s alone.   All those brothers who agreed to swim with him are nowhere to be found; it’s a crippling and isolating feeling because you realize you are going to drown by yourself.

For a fraternity that clings so tightly to its tradition and landmarks, they only seem to do so because they seem to be a convenient excuse for many to avoid difficult discussions regarding the future of the Craft.  We turn a blind eye to the many hypocrites in our membership who have somehow forgotten about the real lessons that our operative forefathers left us.  I’m just going to stick with medieval Europe here but do me a favor if you’ve never looked at the architecture and grandeur of Chartres, Cologne, Milan, Seville Cathedrals, or Notre-Dame in Paris. There are other smaller works of mastery: Sainte-Chapelle, Rosslyn Chapel, St. Cyriacus Church, Kilpeck Church, and Urnes Stave Church, to name a few. This list fails to mention the numerous castles and other churches from that time.  All of them in their own unique ways, are the works of master craftsmen. How were these masterpieces built?  Because everyone was dedicated to their craft, and they did the labor.

We have multiple allusions regarding labor in our ritual and our degrees.  Yet, we seem to have forgotten the definition of Labor.  Labor is the expenditure of physical or mental effort, especially when difficult or compulsory.  The designs are on the trestle board.  Yet, the workmen in the quarries are sparse.  As I look around, it seems we have a bunch of members who are acting as if there are no designs on the trestle board, even when they are written in permanent marker with a neon arrow pointing them out.

 I’m not the only one who sees it.  At our Grand Lodge townhalls, the Grand Line officers were bemoaning the lack of Certified Lodge Instructors and Grand Lecturers.  While that’s not quite in my skill set (never say never, but my coordination is bad, so I don’t think I’d pass the rod work); however, my point still stands.  Our Membership isn’t doing the work it once did.  I can only do the work on myself, and I have always been one to try to lead by example. I am challenging myself to learn more ritual.  Why?  Because if not me, who?  Who is going to be able to perform these parts when the 70- or 80-year-old man whom we currently rely on is gone?  More on this in a bit. Are we going to get to the point where we accept that reading it out of a book is a good thing?  We’ve already lowered our standards at the West Gate; should lowering them in other places follow?

Not in my lodges.   I can still do my part to make my lodges more self-sufficient.  So, in degrees where I know how to do one part, as I stated above, I’m learning other parts.   I’ll think of myself as a Swiss army knife.  Or for the younger folks, a plug-and-play mason.  As for the other brethren in my lodge, I’m challenging them to learn ritual.  If they sit in a chair, they need to learn that ritual.  Some of them will be understudies.  Others will be stars.  But, the point is that we’ve set a standard, everyone has bought in, and we’re holding each other accountable.  Because brethren, those aforementioned magnificent buildings that we marvel at today, it took a team of dedicated men to build them.  Think back to your third-degree lecture, where you were regaled with the number of men that it took to build the Lord’s Temple in Jerusalem.  It was not just the three principal Grandmasters.   In Illinois, we’re told that fifty-three thousand three hundred and three workmen built the temple.  I assume it is a similar figure in other jurisdictions that use the Preston Webb ritual as their basis.

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again.  We do a poor job of succession planning in Freemasonry.  Sure, we have it in the officer line.  If the Master is absent, the Senior Warden steps up, the JW goes to SW, etc.  But what I’m really talking about is the intangibles. Let’s talk about an archetype of a clique that I have found throughout ancient Craft Freemasonry.  These are those formal or informal degree teams. I’ve seen enough of them in my time, so I’m painting with a broad brush here.  But essentially, they for the longest time knew they were the cat’s meow and didn’t want anyone else to join their team unless you were ideologically compatible with them.  They wanted younger versions of themselves instead of allowing for men who are different from them.

If you could fall in line, shut up, and drink the Kool-Aid, then you would be welcomed into the club.  If not, well…sometimes they’d tolerate your attempts to help.  At other times, they would decide to pick on someone.  Unfortunately, I have witnessed more of the latter than the former.  I have seen more attempts to run someone out of the Craft for reasons only known to themselves.

For years, maybe decades, they went from lodge to lodge in the district, doing the degree work, and sure, they’d kind of bitch about it, but you knew they liked doing it; and they did like doing it because it allowed them to continue to have that smugness or holier-than-thou attitude about them. Until…they got older, and the guys on that degree team started dying off, and unfortunately, they were just smug enough to have pissed off the guys who would have eagerly helped them back in the day. As the grand leveler claims one of them after another, and they see their inner circle dwindling to the point where they are the isolated ones at the degrees instead of holding court.  Why? Because these degree teams rarely do any succession planning.

While they may have forgotten the meaning of brotherly love at one time, we should not forget it.  They still have knowledge to transmit.  It is incumbent on us to be the better men, to bury the hatchet, and to forgive their transgressions.  Why?  Because we are the better men.  Offer them parts, get their insights, and use their experience for the good of your lodge or lodges.  If they don’t want to, then you have your answer.  But if you don’t ask, you don’t know the answer.

These degree teams haven’t done the Grand Lodge or the individual lodges in their districts any favors either.  In their quest to keep their egos satiated, the degree teams allowed the rest of the lodges to become lazy and dependent upon their teats.  When Grand Lodges look around and wonder why no one wants to become a CLI or Grand Lecturer?  Look no further than the degree teams.  If you want more of both, then get rid of the degree teams.   Force individual lodges to do their own work.   Raise the standard.  Make lodges do their own work. Maybe legislate or have the Grandmaster make an edict that for every degree there must be at least one CLI or Grand Lecturer present?  I don’t know.  It seems like if you want more CLI’s and Grand Lecturers, and lodges want more members, then you’ll have more members from lodges who want to bring in more members to get their CLI or Grand Lecturer certifications this way.

In Freemasonry, I have found that many are so afraid of failure, so afraid of lodges closing, so afraid of drowning, that we lack the vision of what success might look like.  Status Quo has held us back, and honestly, we were not helped by the post-WW2 membership boom.  I believe it has changed the mentality of Grand Lodges to care more about membership numbers and less about the quality of the membership.  We continue to hear platitudes about membership quality, but at the same time, we seem to have this idea that if we don’t bring in new membership in spades, we’ve failed as Freemasons.  We need to stop with our collective guilt.  I personally no longer care if our Grand Lodge membership decreases.  It’s not something I can control.  It’s out of my hands.  I can only control the membership at the Lodges in which I am a member by making sure they’re active in their communities and trying to bring in new membership.  I can only be involved in the succession planning for my own lodges, not for the Grand Lodge.

To the Worshipful Master who wrote the Reddit post, don’t demit from Freemasonry, but you have every right to walk away from your lodge.  Not immediately.  You took some oaths when you became the Worshipful Master, so please finish your term. But you have every right to find another lodge.  Find a place where you’re not taken for granted.  They exist.  Find another lodge and plural up, do this while you finish your term at your current lodge, by doing the bare minimum (what’s good for the gander is good for the goose), at the next election for your old lodge, decline to be Master again, and force the rest of the lodge membership to elect another one, and then once you’re out of the chair, submit your withdraw.  Don’t look back.  Don’t feel guilty for whatever happens to them going forward.  You asked them to swim for safety.  They said they’d do it, but when you looked around, nobody was with you.  You can either stay there and drown, or you can keep swimming.   I’d keep swimming if I were you.