THE CRAFT- IT GIVES. IT TAKES.

The island of Crete was the location of one of the first major cultures that grew to significance about 4000 years ago. We know that culture as the Minoans.  Along with giving us the day off,  Minoa may also be able to give Freemasons answers to the nature and future of the culture of freemasonry and how it will evolve. 

In exchange for giving us metals and materials, the earth extracts a price. We call it pollution.

The world of freemasonry is different today than it was in the beginning. We often can't determine specific points in time but we have context that gives us reliable guesses. Our history was less 'Big Bang' and more molecular. What we know today as the practice of freemasonry came about gradually over time, influenced by social change, invention, history and evolution of science and ideas but always changing. Freemasonry did not absorb every idea, nor reduce every question into useful information.  Some of us realize to inject the Craft with a sense that what has been gained, we must realize it is still growing, influenced by the flotsam and jettsom hitting the shores of freemasonry.  Yet despite that there are freemasons convinced shrinking membership is a sign of risk.

There are some who even trifle out of a belief freemasonry is the Constitution.  I always thought Freemasonry is a bundle of ideas with a dilettante soul. That part doesn't need protection but we apprentices do.  We need organization. We need the validation of constituion. We need exposure to scholarship.

So is freemasonry elemental or not? If we could advertise intelligence we could give away freemasonry gratis. Me? I know freemasonry is about ability, effort and maturity.