Lodge Education

Not just for the newly obligated Brother

By this time tomorrow, my Lodge will have a new Brother. He will be ‘fire hosed’ with tons of information that will make his head spin. I dare to say that there is not a Mason out there that doesn’t forget their Entered Apprentice Degree. For seven years, EA’s were to labor and learn from the Fellows, and Master Masons before moving up in the ranks. Now, if a brother takes more than seven months to prove up on any degree we wonder what’s taking him so long. Why is that? Is Masonry not for our enjoyment, our journey, and our own enlightenment. The way I look at the working tools of each degree is most certainly different from how you look at them, yet we read the same words.

When it comes to education of a Mason, I’m of the opinion that there is more than just learning the words of the Degree the Brother is studying. There is an esoteric side, but there is a practical side as well. Education for that Brother should be a balance of each. The Brother will lean naturally to side he’s more inclined with. Lodge meetings should have some sort of education, it shouldn’t just be another business meeting, if I wanted that, I’d just watch C-Span.

I enjoy education in my Lodge because it gives me a reason to come back. It enhances my experience as a Mason, and I learn things, not only about the subject, but about the Brother teaching the education, but about myself. I had a Brother talk about a painting, in that painting were so many signs and symbols of Freemasonry it was uncanny. He spoke about it as his experience of an EA. Yeah you read that right, an EA was giving education. You know what though? So many heads were focused on that painting, and whispers were moving around the Lodge of the things the Brothers saw.

Gerald Ford taught Brothers how the combustion engine worked, how cool is that?! Imagine sitting in a Lodge room, and Gerald Ford stands up, and pulls back the cover off an engine, and starts teaching you about it. Would you think it was boring? Would you think it was interesting given the time period?

I heard recently that a Brother was stifled because he presented education in his Lodge. He spent his own personal time looking up information, formatting it, making it interesting, and then asking permission to share it. Once he finished he nearly gave up his Masonic journey because the Brothers rejected him. To me, that’s pitiful, just because you as a Brother didn’t like what another Brother presented doesn’t mean you should be so hurtful to make him question his reason for being a Mason. It’s okay to speak to the Brother, give them guidance, give them a positive confrontation.

I understand not everyone ‘likes’ education, but to that, you don’t know it all, open up, let the Light of Masonry shine upon you and enjoy the fact that another Brother is just trying to entertain you and make your Lodge experience a little better.