Monday, March 24, 2008

Masonry and Vice

The history compells us, and personal experience proves it, that the fraternal spirit includes a propensity for brothers to be together and tolerate eachothers vice without comment. It has been that way as brothers seeking common ground, attempt to ignore the refreshment in excess. So the midday sun ensues and vice, while not encouraged, is certainly accepted. In the jargon of the day we enable eachother. Do we serve the fraternity as we follow the path of least resistance, do we serve our communities, or eachother. Obviously we make a mockery of the working tools, which require us to remove vice and superfluity. The work is not square and masters rarely comment. Unadulterated self service is the nature of vice. One thing I enjoyed about Sparta was the pursuance of group discipline. At what point did we give up on our encouragement of integrity. If the plumbline was used to judge Freemasonry today, a goodly percent of the the work would be found out of square, we all know it. What master are we serving when vice is celebrated?

2 comments:

M.M.M. from the North Eastern Corner said...

Brother,
I can't agree more. This is something that I struggle with when at labor among my brethren. I try my best to use the working tools of our profession at all times, which indeed is hard labor, but at times I feel as if I am the only one working while the others just carry the tools around as trinkets. If we lived as we should we would be a shining example of what men should be.

Radcliffe said...

I agree, of course the internal struggle we all are compelled to it, and often enough we drag eachother down.