WALKING PASSING

Thomas Moores reminder, Utopia is never far from reach. Utopia but at a cost. At least it might be a cost I am willing to pay within my own reality. Soothing is not avoiding or minimizing. Ignorance is not bliss.  Faith has given way to reason, but left a shadow outline of a body on the brickwork, that I think is me. I so want to ask that quiet man, going about his business, content with what he has, in love with life, what he does when the corruption of men trickles bye. Pretending to be sincere was long crowed out by a troubling little ritual, concocted for a brotherhood of men. Truth, unvarnished, exacting, incompletely visited at the centre within the circle.  Solitary influences, solitary journey. Among masonic aethetes, we notices differences more than the motivating purity of thought and being. Eventually, they are encroaching on the noise with their silent contemplation. And to the passing crowd, they are spoken about.  Some repelled, not by their presence but what challenge the present. They take their discipline beyond words and ideas, and make a statement by acting on them. In the moment. What of us? Do we produce aethetes or are they born of what we are? Let's ask Hiram and three collaborators what they think. Was it worth it challenging him? Was it worth dying to preserve Utopia? The passing crowds are so well and properly dressed and coiffed but they know. They know the truth. No one escapes it's grasp. And thank goodness FM acknowledged what we could not.  How we live makes a difference. A man may learn what it is he is trying to influence but finding it within himself. "As above, so below."