LIVING REALITY IN A DREAM

It is the eve of the New Year- 2024. It is not to be denied, life as we know it moves on in an expanding infinite universe, with a beginning we cannot find and an ending we do not know. Of the antient landmarks we promise to preserve, we are remarkably selective. We know within the fabric of our Order, there are scholars examining how our principles are effected by the passage of time and cultural movement. Lodges take the education of masons seriously. Learning is exposure to 'masonic' ideas and self directed enquiry.  What are we improving if we don't have a base line? What is it we are attempting to improve? Outcomes?  Reducing poor decisions? Mistakes? It takes more than a minute to describe what a moral human is like. What does he do? What does he say? We admit we can shape thinking with the help of explanations because that is the raison d'etre of our Brotherhood.  But time hasn't slowed for us. We were never a machine. We were never an army. Our history tells us we began and grew organically. Some limbs wither and die, others find new direction and still others thrive.  What feeds our growth is something we can't actually define- this thing called intelligence.  Is it a way of thinking? Is it memory? Wealth? Accumulation of power? Is it the ingenuity shown in actions? Is it our display of or reverence for the arts? Despite decades of examination, the best we can explain is when it is absent. Masonry would work for most contemporary settings if not for the word merit.  Is that the meaning of intelligence, to understand our relationship with merit? If I smile and am friendly then you are obliged to do the same, except that isn't equality in action to be presumptuous. Though our work is serious, it is not gloomy. We can be serious without being solume or tedious. Do we need to treat our purpose with the respect it is due. The tasks of a mason are called challenges for a reason.