Weekly Message
Unless you’ve been living in a cave in the Tasmanian wilderness, you will be familiar with some of the environmental problems associated with the emission of pollutants into our environment. Global warming has become a politicised scientific notion. The word ‘emissions’ has now become well known as the emission of airborne pollutants’.
For many years our community encouraged ‘low emissions’ of its brothers. “Freemasons don’t need to boast” and “we work quietly in the community” attitudes have done us a disservice to the extent that more people in our society will know, and have access to, a Rotarian or Lions Club member than they will to a Freemason. Over time ‘low ego emission brothers’ were conferred and awarded many privileges and accolades, whilst ‘high ego emission brothers’ often burned all their enthusiasm and zest, leaving the brotherhood due to lack of support from those around him. Let’s be serious now when we say that the term “band of brothers” has only come back into public masonic use in our community in the past two years.
So then it got me thinking and I took a look the breakdown of how many men under the age of 30, 40, and 50 currently have the opportunity to represent to our new members the masonic ideas of a generation of men willing to engage in the community. There were no surprises as I found none under the age of 30, two in their thirties, three in their 40′s. It made me think even more when, at a recent 3rd degree, there was no representation to share the ideals of the Grand Master. No one to welcome him as a full member. A missed opportunity to commission and empower the member to go out into the world to engage and involve himself in the wider community. And this, my brothers, is not an isolated event.
I am somewhat concerned by this and spent some time thinking that the majority of Freemasons in Sydney still seem (on average) to be more comfortable with a ‘low ego emission’ style. Collectively many lodges, districts and regions have a hard time engaging in the community. Some may say that it doesn’t matter how no matter how strongly we hold to our philosophy if it is unseen by those around you. Showing others an external symbol of Freemasonry on your lapel pin seems to involve a lot of ego, even though it isn’t actually ego at all, but love of the brotherhood. To our public, and sometimes other brothers, love of the organisation and negative stereo-types of high ego are hard to differentiate.
Perhaps, my brothers, we need to stop worrying quite so much about being mistaken for the high-ego men in our society who grab headlines and try to control of the world we see around us. Should we all muster enough ego-based-on-masonic-
philosophy to look our friends and community in the eye and say ‘I am a Freemason and a brother of Lodge Southern Cross’ — and then argue with the old conspiracy theories and un-researched or uneducated comments given in response? For this reason, my effort has been to wear a masonic tie to work a couple of times a week. No walls have collapsed. The sky is still in its correct position. Definitely I have not heard any goat jokes from those in the next cubicle and more surprisingly no negative arguments.
David Coburn
Master, Lodge Southern Cross
