Form Your Own Blue Lodge, by WB William A. Isabelle

Brethren, there seems to be a number of very intelligent brothers who, by their contributions, seem to be saying a lot of the same things.

"How can I improve the Craft in my area?"

"How can I give back to the Craft, what it has given to me?"

"How can I enact positive and progressive changes in the Craft?"

"How can I create a Masonic environment, that will attract new Masons?"

"Where do I go to find Masons my age, who share my perspectives and my interests?"

These kinds of questions seem to be coming up more and more frequently in discussions amongst brothers everywhere, and there is no easy answer.

However, there does exist an opportunity to perhaps explore these kinds of questions in a new light.

If you know other Masons like yourself, who are as motivated as you are, who are seeking more light in Masonry, and are dedicated and dependable brothers, then I have a suggestion for you...

Form a new Blue Lodge in your jurisdiction.

Create your own Lodge. Build a Masonic Temple around the shared interests and pursuits that you and brothers like you, share and enjoy as Masons and as friends.

Most of us have never even considered the prospect of forming our own Blue Lodge, but I am here to tell you brothers, that it is not really that difficult a task to accomplish.

Where do you think all the Lodges in your area came from in the first place? Brothers just like you, thats where.

If you feel like you're "banging your head against the wall" in your Lodge and there doesn't seem to be an opportunity for you to make a contribution of your own unique talents and abilities to the established practices and Landmarks of your Lodge, then start your own.

Every Grand Jurisdiction has it's own individual requirements for forming new Lodges, but there are a few things that are necessary which are the same everywhere, and here is a shopping list:

1) A like-minded group of twenty or so Master Masons

2) A progressive Grand Lodge, willing to support growth and change in their own backyard.

3) A "Petition for Dispensation" available from the respective Grand Lodge administration office.

4) Money. Starting your own Lodge requires resources and money, you will have expenses, foreseeable and unforeseen.

5) Brothers who are proficient and can confer the 3 Degrees of Masonry.

6) Brothers who can chair the elected and appointed offices of the Lodge.

7) An appropriate place to meet as a Masonic Lodge.

8) Lodge furniture and regalia, most of which can be collected as donations of surplus items from supportive and established Lodges in your area.

9) A meeting schedule that all of the members of your effort can abide by and commit to.

10) The gumption and dedication to see your project through to conclusion and constitution of your very own Blue Lodge.

There you have it, brothers. For those of you who feel like you are being held back in your current Lodge, and would like to do more than the average bear to strengthen and improve Freemasonry in your neighborhood, round up the brothers who you already know feel as you do and start your own Blue Lodge.

You will never regret it, because it is easier to build a new Lodge from the ground up, than it is to try and fix an old broken Lodge that doesn't want to help itself.

Freemasonry is an individual journey, brethren. Don't ever stop looking for new and undiscovered roads to take in your travels.

What Young Freemasons Want, by WB William A. Isabelle

What do young Freemasons want?

Why do young men go out of their way to become Freemasons in the first place?

Why did you become a Freemason?

A generation or so ago, there was something called “anti-establishmentarianism”. As an attitude, this notion changed the world we live in today.

Today, we have “political-correctness”: no one is a winner or a loser; everyone is now a participant with no set standard to follow, or to be held to.

Parents no longer discipline their children; “they talk about their issues”; children no longer fear consequences because they don’t have any.

Men no longer have a definable role in society.

The term “man’s work” is sexist and discriminatory; Using such phraseology is considered to be harassment.

Most of Generation X came from broken homes, from parents who got divorced because they could, unlike many of our grandparents who really believed it was “’till death do us part”.

Most young men of today who are becoming the young Freemasons of today, do so because they perceive our fraternity as a bastion, an island of social constants where your word is your bond and the prerequisite is that you must be a man, good and true.

Most young Freemasons today are starved for adequate role-models because the society of today seeks to produce an androgynous homogeny, where the consideration of one’s Manhood is a misnomer, because today we seek to achieve “Actualized Persondom”.

What most young Freemasons want is a place where they can go and be around MEN. Men who have contributed in their way to the greatness and growth of the modern world. Men who have wisdom, and are not Dr. Phil.

What young Freemasons want is to make their mark on the world, because we believe it is our right and our responsibility to do so.

What young Freemasons want is to be a part of something greater than ourselves, something that will last longer than the popularity of the latest and greatest video gaming console.

What young Freemasons want is to be good Freemasons; the problem is that we don't have enough good examples to follow, because for most of us, we’re a generation too late.

I'm a young Freemason, and I want to leave the world, my Craft and Fraternity better than I found it.

Thank you.

10 Planks of Lodge-Building, by WB William A. Isabelle

Brothers,

A lot of people right now are complaining about what Freemasonry isn't to them. I submit that if the following initiatives were put into practice, things would improve dramatically and quickly.

1. We need to immediately start taking ourselves much more seriously than we currently are.

There is nothing more noble and valuable to this Craft, fraternity, culture and society of Freemasons than taking pride in ourselves as Freemasons and bringing honor to our institution will follow accordingly.

2. Don't walk, but rather run to your Blue Lodge and start giving a damn about the kind of Masons we bring into our midst!

Immediately cease the flow of the unprepared into offices of power that wield consequence to the detriment of all those in their care.

3. If your Lodge is broken and beyond repair, don't waste any more of your precious time listening to stupid, childish, nonsensical bluster and fuss over nothing.

Take charge of your own Masonic experience and go start your own Lodge with a group of like-minded and equally motivated Masons. You will be amazed at the social-alchemy that will be wrought amongst those who work together, to achieve a SHARED VISION.

4. Make Masonic Charity mean Masonic Charity!!!

Stop shoveling money to the administrative fees of faceless charities that don't need your money. Instead, go visit a widow of one of your departed Lodge Brothers and see if her home is in disrepair. Find out if her yard is in need of attention, or even go to lengths to see if she is eating cat food because she is in financial peril and too proud to say so.

If one finds such a situation in their midst, then fix it and stop writing checks to organizations that are endowed beyond this lifetime. Masonic Charity should look after its own house first, and then worry about those beyond our existing responsibilities and obligations.

5. Set an example.

Stand up in Lodge and show the new members that they too can stand up and voice their opinions or offer their individual expertise to benefit the Lodge. Read your Lodge By-Laws and identify the things that must change to adapt to the world we live in today, and vote it so. Read your Grand Lodge Constitution and By-Laws and identify what needs to be changed to adapt to the world we live in today, and write a Resolution or Amendment to that effect.

6. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, has any right to push anyone around in this organization and fraternity of enlightened souls!

If you see someone taking advantage of whatever pitiful authority they think they have, that has convinced them that it's OK to push around the new guy or an Entered Apprentice that doesn't know any better, then it's your immediate and imperative responsibility to step in and correct the situation!!!

7. Bring an immediate end to the promotion and acceptance of incompetence and arrogance!!!

To do so is despicable and patently un-Masonic. I don't know when or where the tenets of Masonry became trifling and petty favors to be bestowed upon the undeserving.

8. Make sure that every man who passes the West Gate of your Lodge has a solid and deepest understanding of how honored he should feel to have been accepted into your Lodge and that he realizes that it is he who owes his Lodge and not the other way around.

9. Past every other trifling concern and non-priority, ensure beyond all else that the ritual which your Lodge represents to its members and to its initiates is deserving of being labeled Masonic and enlightening.

Be ever watchful and ever-ready to provide resources for additional Masonic education to the occasional bright-eyed and overly-interested newly-minted Master Mason.

10. Call your Brothers, go for a beer or a Scotch!

Hang out with your Brethren, get to know each other and start building on the relationships that will define the necessary development of the Masonic community that you will ever be proud of , honored by and grateful for, to have the opportunity to support for the rest of your years.


If we start with this list, I guarantee that the resulting positives to the Craft and your individual journey will be swift and priceless and more than that, you will be on the road you were looking for when you first petitioned the Lodge.

Sincerely & Fraternally,

WB William A. Isabelle

Building A Positive Masonic Culture of Change, by Paterson Burns

As Masons, we are by our own admonition an institution that has flourished over the centuries and eons of evolution, adapting to suit the needs of the members of the time. Think of the social change that we as Masons have been fortunate enough to participate in. We all agree that the fraternity of today is "Night & Day" different from the fraternity it was 50, 100, 200 years ago.

Just as we the Craft, will continue to evolve over the course of the coming years and adapt to the further change and evolution that will occur, and become the norm of tomorrow.

I support my Blue Lodges because frankly, if it is within my power to influence one Master Mason's journey, from his entrance to the Lodge, to his place in the East, I certainly will do my best to convince him to put forward his best, and to expect it in others as well.

Having access to a Blue Lodge atmosphere that is not a vacuum, but is in fact a nexus and a conduit for like-minded progressive Master Masons to assemble, share and discuss their perspectives and goals for the individual Lodges that they represent, is a positive for any Masonic community. It is also an opportunity to agree on and pursue shared positive change related agendas, and impact the outcome of such endeavors that require group support and the votary of officers from many Lodges, in many districts.

Unfortunately in today's society, we are told to accept mediocrity, because its all about everyone getting a chance to participate and nobody’s a winner or a loser. Well, I personally didn't go to all the trouble of becoming a Master Mason, Master of the Royal Secret, Knight Templar and Noble of the Mystic Shrine, and everything else that I make a commitment of my time to...to discover that I should be comfortable with social mediocrity.

I want to socialize with brother Masons who share my interests in philosophy, who devote a portion of their time and effort to improving their Masonic surroundings. I want to have conversations about the essence of the Fraternity, not the cost of gas.

Too often, the lonely voice of evolution is drowned out by the roar of the sound of resistance to change, and isn't then heard by those who would listen, subscribe and apply. However, if we band together, and choose to make an individual commitment to supporting and maintaining the machinery of change, the vehicle will serve its purpose and again have a life of its own.

Adaptability and evolution are ever-present forces in our Masonic culture; perhaps you could say they are the survival mechanisms, or safety resets for the machine of Freemasonry.

Used by permission of the author

Young Masons & Social Capital, by Paterson Burns

Brethren,

How many of you are or have been fortunate enough to have had the benefit of ongoing relationships with those you would consider to be your Mentors?

How many of you are, or have been Mentors to new Masons?

It would seem that most of the resistance encountered by our respective Peanut Galleries comes from those who perhaps don't actually live a Masonic life.

I interpreted the lessons, symbols and charges delivered to me to mean that by matriculating through the proscribed Masonic process of self-discovery and enlightenment, that I would become better enabled and prepared to self-actualize.

At this point, I can't say that I see myself ever living my life any differently, because I can't. How could I unlearn all that I have been exposed to and unthink all of the thoughts that come from studying and appreciating our Craft?

What I'm getting at is that it is conceivable to believe that a large measure of our constituency doesn't have a clue what the hell they're talking about as they deliver rote historical lectures to moony-eyed newly minted Entered Apprentice Masons.

If for two generations, this fraternity has not been realizing new membership from Baby Boomers and the Viet Nam generation, that suggests that those who we met when we first entered the Temple, are the ones who outlived the rest of the greatest generation of joiners from the last great surge.

So, if for fifty years these guys just sat around going through the motions, and did nothing to improve the fraternity over that period, why should we expect them to just jump on board with our platform and promote our agendas like they were their own?

Not gonna happen.

Sure, there are lots of Grand bodies waiving flags designed to get the attention of Generation X, but they're really not adding any new line items to the Grand budgets being proposed, are they?

How many grand jurisdictions have a Membership Development Committee whose focus is to attract young people to the Craft?

Every one of them.

Now how many grand jurisdictions have any young people on these committees whose purpose is to identify ways to attract young people?

I'm betting the answer isn't every one.

The reality is this, the kinds of initiatives that we like minds work to promote and support, are the same kinds of things that get the more wizened brethren all riled up and cogitating on our "Innovations" to the Craft, long and short is that for Grand Lodges to support us, the very small minority statistic in their membership, they inevitably alienate the greater, much larger majority of aged brothers who don't want a damn thing to change, for fear that they will lose control (over what I don't know, control for the sake of control I guess) and be replaced.

So, now we're down to the crux of it, these guys must think they're going to live forever because they have no interest in succession planning or the downloading any of their social capital.

Why?

I guess one could surmise this phenomena exists because they feel they own their Masonic jobs, offices, chairs or whatever because no one ever replaced them, as would have happened, if the Lodges they belong to were doing their job and bringing new candidates, to generate protégés.

So in ten years, when 80-90% of them are dead, those of us who have not thrown up our hands in disgust and quit, will inherit the onerous task of sorting through our fraternity and the administration of the same, with no real good guide to follow, because we were not mentored and our coaches didn't ensure that we were at least as competent as they assumed themselves to be.

Any thoughts brothers?

Used by permission of the author

How to Improve the Craft, by Arthur Peterson

You have a great idea that you think will benefit the lodge.

What do you do with this idea?

My experiences have shown that no single man can change Freemasonry or a lodge. You can have the best idea in the world, but if it does not sit well with your other Brothers, it will never blossom.

Here are my tips:

1. Thoroughly research your idea. Know what it costs, know how much time it will take out of your lodge, know what kind of manpower it is going to require.

2. Sell the idea. Discuss it with members of your lodge outside of lodge. Find supporters. Find the men who will dedicate the manhour time you have come up with.

3. Present it to the lodge. Give a full presentation. Explain the costs and how you budgeted it, explain who is going to dedicate the manhours to it, explain, explain, explain!

4. Be prepared for rejection. Even the most thought out plan does not necessarily get the majority of Brothers to agree with it. Be prepared for them to say no in the worst case, be also prepared for it to be refered for committee. If it goes into committee, meet with the members and assist them in developing a plan to implement your idea.

5. Never stop trying to improve the craft. Don't count the rejections, only count the approvals! All it takes is one improvement to make the craft better today than it was yesterday. Rejoice if you ever get just one improvement implemented!