‘Ritual: script or oral history?’

     

Title page of Grand Lodge’s current book.

A Past Master in Kansas, a DDGM actually, regularly offers his views on things Masonic, kind of in blog format, on Faceypage. He posts in “A Past Master’s Thoughts” almost daily. About a month ago, in reflection on a lodge experience the day before, he wrote:

The topic of ritual came up. It seems there is a lodge that requires ‘word perfect’ ritual. Let me say I get that, but even Grand Lecturers stumble… It was brought up the difference between perfect and proficient. There is a difference. 

Do you know the work? Does it resonate with you? Ritual is energy. Can it be felt, or are we just spewing words? 

For those who say they cannot learn ritual, I have a few questions: Do you know your address without looking it up? Your phone number? If your favorite song came on the radio, but the volume turned off, could you sing it? If you said yes to any of those, you can be proficient, at least, in ritual.

At issue is rote memorization which, whatever your method might be, has been essential to preserving how we do things and passing it to our posterity. I believe that emphasis on letter perfect ritual has two origins:

1) The process of education, training, maturation, etc. in operative building involved the apprentice learning from the master mason without deviation. I can’t imagine there could have been interpretation by the pupil of the teacher’s instruction. Failure to learn The Way of Doing Things would terminate the apprenticeship in failure.

2) About a century ago, our grand lodges in the United States began publishing their own ritual books, resulting in a fundamentalism in which the memorization and flawless recitation of ritual became paramount.

From ‘A Past Master’s Thoughts.’

How many inept leaders have you seen win high office for no other reason than their demonstrated ritual skill? When the fraternity was larger (if you don’t know, the number of regular Master Masons in this country has returned to nineteenth century levels), obviously there was more talent to provide the ritual experts needed for continuity of the work. And having the book isn’t enough; we need the “actors” to bring the written word to life. This isn’t as easy today, thanks to changes in how the young are schooled. The rote memorization, aided by mnemonics, that older people, like myself, relied on appears to have been retired. (I don’t know if something else has replaced it.) So the task of studying, learning, and recalling Masonic oratory, which never was easy for most, looks today like an unduly difficult and outdated method to a thirty-year-old. Generally speaking. I always see exceptions.

But—finally arriving at my point—would it help to rethink ritual, changing our concept of it from a script to our oral history? This isn’t to allow any encroaching changes to the words—although our ancestors did okay without official ritual texts—but rather to dilute the intimidating pressure to memorize the printed page.

I consider myself an amateur historian. Part of the mental gymnastics in my own labors to learn ritual is my knowledge of ritual history. I don’t claim an all encompassing knowledge, but realizing how there have been huge and numerous changes in what we do, and being familiar with a number of the specifics, has proven very helpful to me. That knowledge demystifies what some may call the unapproachable, and with that barrier breached, one can take possession of the words. They become digestible facts.

The phrases, dialogues, etc. have evolved over the centuries and they likely will change in the future because they are written by men, so there is no reason to hesitate in studying and learning them. Our Past Master in Kansas likens the dynamic to knowing song lyrics but, for our purposes, maybe embracing Masonic ritual as oral history (there still are jurisdictions that employ the mouth-to-ear method) will change a chore into the enriching challenge it should be. I just envision greater intimacy this way.

The Oral History Association defines oral history as “a field of study and a method of gathering, preserving and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities, and participants in past events. Oral history is both the oldest type of historical inquiry, predating the written word, and one of the most modern, initiated with tape recorders in the 1940s and now using 21st-century digital technologies.”

While ritual isn’t cited specifically, everything we do in life derives from custom, habit, observance, practice, procedure, etc. Change the Ritual Committee name to Oral History Teachers.

Speaking of ritual, tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of England’s Emulation Lodge of Improvement, and I hope to find time to delve into that then.

     

‘You guys give your $3M today?’

    

According to the loathsome “United Nations,” today is International Day of Charity, so join me for a minute in the following discussion on Masonic charity. Obviously, there’s much that can be said, but I’ll skip the Rite of Destitution and the measured instructions to assist brethren, widows, and orphans, and I’ll challenge our orthodoxy on “giving to charity.”

You’ve heard it countless times: “Masons give $2 million a day to charity!” And there’s a high probability that you have repeated it yourself. From what I understand, that unquestioned figure is now $3 million. “Masons give $3 million a day to charity!”

Let’s be reasonable and think this over. That daily $3M factors to about $1.1 billion a year, so the implication is Freemasons in the United States annually dig into their pockets to that sum to help others, but I’m not buying it.

The $2M figure dates to mid twentieth century, when membership in America crested at four million in 1959–or, if not precisely then, it at least was from that era. Therefore it sounded plausible, believable, and logical enough to become the mantra we all came to know. However, today the nationwide membership is down 80 percent from 1959, and we are back in nineteenth century statistics with approximately 800,000 regular Master Masons in good standing—and that’s with inconsistent census-taking from grand lodge to grand lodge. Are 800,000 Master Masons donating $1.1 billion during Anno Lucis 6023?

Come on.

Due to the manipulations of the Internal Revenue Code of the United States—try deciphering those 6,900 pages!—the nature of charitable giving has been altered, forcibly, in recent decades, and today we have charitable corporations of the 501(c) variety. Some are big, like Shriners Hospitals for Children; some are modest, like your lodge’s square club’s charity fund. The square club’s checking account is where you find the actual cash from the pockets of Masons. The Shriners Hospitals, which always has been the engine that drove the “millions per day” claim, are endowed to the billions of dollars, and actually do not need the fraternity. The fraternity needs the hospitals to legitimize its existence. When the Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine inevitably ceases to exist, the hospitals corporation will change its name and carry on.

I remember about fifteen years ago the expert consultants retained by the hospitals’ trustees to identify potential improvements to the system advised closing two of the then twenty-two hospitals that had gone disconcerting time without treating any patients. The trustees said no, so the two hospitals remained open, spending millions each year to maintain empty beds, and padding the famous “millions a day” boast.

Plus there are many other 501(c)(3) institutions at work: other hospitals, clinics, and care providers; medical research centers; homes for the elderly (which admit people who have no connection to the Masonic fraternity, thanks to Medicare regulations); special education schools; scholarship foundations; and who knows what else among the fifty-one grand jurisdictions in the mainstream of the Masonic society in America.

Maybe in the aggregate, and thanks to inflation, the corporate expenditures plus the local giving might total that $1.1 billion. I don’t have time to obtain the IRS 990s of all Masonic charities great and small. I just think it should be understood that:

a) bragging about charitable giving is self-aggrandizing and wrong;

b) the boast itself is misleading (if not myth); and

c) the boasting has skewed the identity and purpose of Freemasonry in this country irrevocably.

So try to defeat the lazy habit of leaning on funds donated decades ago to fashion an identity for yourself as we approach the second quarter of the twenty-first century. This edition of The Magpie Mason is dedicated to the Right Worshipful Grand Lecturer of the Grand Lodge of Kansas. Earl and I had a chat on Faceypage three months ago, during which I asked if he could explain his “more than $3 million a day” claim.

“There’s something called Google that was invented three days ago,” he replied charitably. “You should learn how to use it.” Eleemosynary Earl then blocked me, so I can’t tell him the internet actually is very limited in practical use to a researcher.

I was a Scottish Rite Mason as a younger man, and worked my way East in the local Rose Croix chapter (even before I reached the East of my lodge). I leave you with a snippet of Rose Croix Degree ritual (as it existed in the NMJ twenty years ago) that followed a reading from Corinthians 1:

“Charity means more—much more—than the giving of alms. It is respect for the personality of others; it is pity for the suffering; it is a sincere fraternal regard for all men—of every race and creed.”

It’s also hard as hell, and bragging about money, real or imagined, devalues us all.

     

‘Bro. Lyn Beyer: Friar of the Briar’

    
While the Craftsmen’s Calumet Club, by far the pre-eminent society for pipe smoking Freemasons in New Jersey, is off to a start, with three gatherings held since January 22, we’re always on the lookout for persons, places, or things that connect the Craft to the art of setting gentle flame to fragrant leaf. That is where the Spring 2013 issue of Pipes and Tobaccos magazine comes in, with its illustrated four-page feature article on Bro. Lyn Beyer, Grand Senior Deacon of the Grand Lodge of Kansas. (The grand lodge is only days away from its annual communication, and I do not know whether Beyer will remain/advance in the line.)

Courtesy Pipes and Tobaccos magazine.

In the cozy (read: shrinking under pressure) culture of tobacco enjoyment, Bro. Beyer is a giant in his home state. Writer H. Lee Murphy provides a biographical sketch of his subject, chronicling Beyer’s professional and personal love of pipes and tobaccos. Beyer (pronounced Buy-er) is proprietor of Cigar & Tabac, Ltd., “one of the heartland’s best retail shops,” located in Overland Park, Kansas. Beyer also is a co-founder and (naturally) sponsor of “one of the best clubs anywhere,” the Greater Kansas City Pipe Club, with about 50 members gathering in the store to greet guest speakers and enjoy tobacco samplings. (The store’s smoking lounge seats more than two dozen.)

The Grand Senior Deacon also is a craftsman; he carves briar pipes, makes repairs for his customers, and devises his own blends of tobaccos “with assistance from McClelland Tobacco Co., which is headquartered a short drive away.”

It’s enough to make me want to leave the New York City area to settle in Manhattan, Kansas.

Courtesy Pipes and Tobaccos magazine.

And there is a second shop, Town & Country Tobacco, located in Town and Country, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.

Amid all the words devoted to Bro. Beyer’s personal and professional histories, there is a quick and unexpected mention of our Craft. “Lyn now spends more time with one of his abiding passions, the Masonic Lodge. He’s a 32nd Degree Mason, is in the grand lodge line in Kansas, and is devoted to various fundraising projects…” These two sentences’ appearance pose a non-sequitur, so I gather their inclusion by the writer is to make the point of showing Freemasonry’s importance to his subject.

Read an excerpt of the article here.

I recommend subscribing to Pipes and Tobaccos to all pipe smokers. It is a quality publication on heavy, glossy paper with content devoted to its eponymous subjects that often is contextualized to reveal a bit more about the pipe world than one might expect, as is the case with this feature on Lyn Beyer. Reading this magazine is an excellent way to learn about the people who manufacture our pipes, blend our tobaccos, and bring them to market; and there are informed reviews of tobaccos, and lots more useful information written in engaging and thoughtful style. (The tobacco review feature is titled “Trial by Fire,” which might bring to mind a certain ritual element of esoteric initiation.) Regrettable is the reduced pipe events listings, which I suppose indicates a decline in the number of pipe clubs and their happenings and the preference for on-line advertising by many of the clubs still extant, but that is a sign of the times. Because practically every aspect of pipe commerce concerns small businesses, even the advertisements in the magazine can be counted on for helpful information and direction. Subscribe here.