One More Year

By Bryan Musicar

So, one more year, one more year of adhering to the Way. It is traditional, at a time like this, to discuss some rather deep topic in an effort to get people properly motivated for the coming year. Let us, therefore, discuss the deepest topic I know: you.

Some time ago, I heard the comment made that the problem with Freemasonry in this country was that we had so many Entered Apprentices who fancied themselves as Grand Masters. I was not talking about the 18-year-old self-promoted types; I meant those Masons who had 20 or 30 years of experience, and had attained a very good reputation, but still for some reason had gone into a holding pattern at the Entered

Apprentice knowledge and skill level. Most of the problem is that too many people quit the learning process too soon: It is very hard to have an attentive ear when we are so busy wagging an instructive tongue.

Be that as it may, there are a lot of Brother Masons out there who are the same today as they were twenty years ago. The hair may be a bit grayer, or the tummy a bit more noticeable, but everything else is the same.

Now, back to you. Pause for a moment and think about what you were like a year (or a decade) ago. Same person? If so, something is wrong. Masonry is supposed to change you and, if you have not changed, you are not studying Masonry.

I am not talking about how much ritual you know, how much you have given to charity, or how many Lodge meetings you attended; I am talking about you, that essential element that makes you different from anyone else. Is that the same you living in there? If so, why?

At midnight on New Year’s Eve, great bells in temples throughout Japan will ring 108 times to symbolize the casting out of 108 evil passions. Why don’t you do the same: cast out 108 desires, or even one...make yourself less than you were, and then see what the Lodge plugs into that void in 2023.

...For your Lodge can never create a new you if you hold too tightly to the you that is.

(Article originally published in December 1993 by Fredrick J. Lovre. Lovret-Sensei was headmaster of three traditions of the Japanese martial arts, namely, kenjutsu (Japanese Swordsmanship), aikijutsu (unarmed combat), and aiki heihō (martial strategy). He was a prolific writer on such topics from the 1970s until his passing in 2015.)

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