Showing posts with label Euclid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Euclid. Show all posts

Euclid’s Solution…The Progressive Line That Will Work

by Midnight Freemason Guest Contributor
Matthew Walters


My brethren, I, like our ancient brother must exclaim “Eureka!” I have found the Holy Grail, the lost Ark, the end of pie (3.14…not mama’s pecan pie). If we as the modern Craft want the beloved and time-honored tradition of the progressive line to work, it lays in one simple word…Secretary.

Buckle up and hold on folks this is going to get loose, wild, and a bit crazy! Your lodge has this thing called the progressive line. It like many other “theories” in life could work fantastically if properly applied. But like most collegiately studied theories it was heard about, misquoted, and fully applied in broken form. Hang with me a minute, if the Master of the Lodge has a Ph.D., and the Senior Warden has a master’s degree, with the Junior Warden a bachelor’s degree. Flip the Deacons and Stewards into a Community College two-year transfer program heading to a university for that coveted Bachelors. The Treasurer and Secretary being a Past Master (Ph.D.) with a teaching license. Now add “in Masonry” behind each educational title. We then have a functioning Lodge at the heights of universal knowledge progressing towards perfection at each step. We have just created here a perfect Lodge with a perfect progressive line.

Enter your Lodge and mine. We have a Worshipful Master with a year in community college trying to figure out if he wants to go to a university that his parents have told him is the best thing for him and his future. A Senior Warden with a high school diploma. A Junior Warden who is still in high school. Deacons and Wardens who are still in community college on year four of a two-year transfer program or high school juniors who skip school and have just gotten their first car and driver’s license and want to be on the road listening to music cruising and enjoying a carefree no responsibility life. A Secretary and Treasurer with and associates degree who fought in the Great War, are hard noised, by the book of tradition and history (their own not always the Grand Lodge’s or Constitution’s). This progressive line is in fact full of the men who were initiated, passed, and raised and thrown into an officer’s chair. If it was a “thriving Lodge” they may have been a Deacon year one. If it was a “struggling Lodge,” they were thrown straight to a Wardens chair upon being raised.

I am not throwing stones at those men who were any of the above. There are some amazing authors, educators, and ritualists who hit the fire and were better for it on the back side. They have given more to the Craft, their Grand Bodies, and Lodge than most will ever know. However, they are the 1%’s. “Varsity Patched” Masonic self-taught, well read, or properly groomed outside of Lodge by an amazing mentor who saw something in them and wanted to ensure they “made it.”

You ask where I am going with this theory or article and my “Eureka moment.”  Well brethren, here it is. Start all new brothers wishing to enter your progressive line at the Secretary’s chair. Not a typo, the Secretary’s chair. The brother who you look at to know your Code and Constitutions, the bylaws, the opening and closing, occasionally a word in the degree when a brother grid locks, the record keeper, communications manager for the Lodge, and brother who has to speak with the Grand Lodge and District officers to fix things.  If we all started there, we then become the Lodge given in example one with the Ph.D. by the time you hit Worshipful Master. If we do this model, we stop breaking Masonic law, guard the west gate at a better rate, manage our books better, and are forced to learn the business of Masonry with that every loving sprinkle of the Ritual or learning a lecture if you have free time.

 

I can hear brothers calling this crazy now “as there has to be continuity within the Lodge and that starts with a good Secretary.”  Wait what?!  The office who can single handily cost a Charter is the Master, the most seasoned, well rounded, educated, frankly liked Mason should be the CEO, and I do not know, MASTER of the Lodge.  Think about the term “Master.”  One who is an expert, the teacher, the boss, the cream of the Lodge. How can we expect the progressive line to work if we allow a brother to run the line like he just hit a fast ball high in the zone and over the center of the plate? Brothers that is a homerun and a fast trot around the bases (chairs). We must honor the role of Master with men that are worthy. We must educate men along the way to the East and show, teach, and mentor them for what they will need. This article is to take nothing away from the role of Master nor that of Secretary. I am after all a secretary of five years and I constantly get asked how, what, why, and who by master’s and frankly Past Masters.  This should not be. Men with a 25-year pin and a term in the oriental chair should not ask a Junior Steward turned Secretary (me and my Masonic path) what the Code and Constitutions says.  It happens in my Lodge; it happens in your Lodge. It has become the norm of a Craft, and it saddens me. Look at our history, more men can tell you who the Masters were who came together in the 1717 and later 1813 mergers in England. Why can the average historians not tell you who the Secretaries were? Why can we now tell you who all Grand Secretaries, Lodge Secretaries are but not who was the Master three years ago without looking at a board or wall of photos in the Temple? Because we devalue the role of Master and how fast it has become normal to get there. Furthermore, we have made it a death sentence for Lodge Secretary’s. Brothers are dying in office after twenty- and thirty-year careers as such. We must use progressive lines as they were intended. Uncle Ben told Peter Parker “With great power comes great responsibility.”  Why then are we allowing the East to be a place to race to and race out of and not the guiding star to help journey to that distant land of masonic knowledge and betterment? WBro. Ben Wallace (Freemason in North Carolina) gave an oration at the Annual Communication of the Grand Lodge of North Carolina and later released as a YouTube video with permissions, titled “You Can’t Rush Enlightenment.”  I challenge you all to listen to it, as it is an amazing piece. One main take away from it for me is that we must get the education to the brother on the backend if we failed on the front end during their time between degrees. Brethren that are for our general membership, we cannot afford to allow men to advance to Wardens and Masters who do not know the basics of Masonic law, Roberts Rules of Order, and the Ritual and teach them such while in the East. We must get men that want to be here as officers, leaders, who have been properly educated. Versus what we are doing in most every lodge, of having Masons who want to be leaders (or not in most cases) and are not a Past Master and thus pushed to through the chairs to the East. Install them and continue to groom them while they are slowly educated in our Craft to properly lead the fraternity from the East. Learning how to be a surgeon during surgery and teaching it the following day is not the best time or idea, but we do it. Starting at the Secretary desk before being a Steward forces one to read, learn, and study the business of Masonry all the while learning who can best work and best agree in that Lodge. If you do not already know this, the Secretary is the sounding board of the Lodge. You learn more than the Code and Constitutions in that role. You learn a lot of valuable steps and items that could benefit a Warden or Master down the road. If you think this is crazy and a horrible idea, you can continue your fast track to Master with new members and I will continue to watch good men leave and see that as better than hanging around to hear about the parking lot adding spaces to rent versus increasing the dues of the Lodge.  Again, look at the trend, when did we as a craft start re-electing Secretary’s year after year for the excellent job they were doing and not the Master of the Lodge?  But the Master runs the Lodge, correct? The Master is the highest honor a Mason could strive to receive; however, it is also the fastest chair a brother is looking to vacate. I love being Secretary, I asked a lifer to teach me when he announced mid-year, he wanted to step down at the end of the year to spend more time with his grandchildren (he passed away about 12-months later). He was happy to teach me. I in turn was happy to teach others across my District and the eastern part of my State when we flipped from Mori to Grandview. Again, with many hands there is light work, with many knowing systems the machine cannot stop, we want more coaches, mentors, certified lecturers but we do not want a back up to the back up for Secretary and Treasurer for that matter. Brethren if the logic is crazy as you say by the time a brother learns it, he will be moving out of the chair, what then is happening at the Masters chair. He has more yelling a word at him during an opening or closing than helping groom him along the way. Wardens, what are they doing in most jurisdictions? Serving on committees that are not used, serving as an education officer (again it is being used), and planning the meal calendar. What about that prepares a man for the East? Making a budget, emailing the craft, spending time on the phone with brothers about their problems paying dues, health, or planning and disseminating logistics of the Lodge is a much better “training session” than lining up a caterer for the next month’s meal on paper plates that allow a faster clean up.  Stewards are not being used and taught much except preparing the candidate with the Junior Deacon (JD). However, “if you have a good Tyler, he will have them prepared before the JD can get the Stewards and step out.”  Again, where is the grooming happening for the current progressive line? Degree practices are not preparing an officer for his role in the Lodge, they are preparing him for his role in the Degree. There is a difference. Starting at Secretary will not really happen in any Lodge; however, it is the correct application of the Progressive Theory if we want to miss apply and miss quote a theory as mentioned earlier and have a positive result. Learn your role and that of the next position and then you will know you are ready to progress. When you are Master the Secretary is being guided and told what to do by the Master like every other officer in the opening or closing of a Lodge (listen to it at your next meeting). One can learn a lot when they watch and listen, again allowed by being Secretary.

In closing my brethren this again is to not cast stones at you, your path, or your Lodge. It is a thought, a theory on how to best work. I will leave you with a parting thought about the speed of the line, or how you vote for who is an officer, and one larger leap on guarding the west gate. The next man you vote to bring into your Lodge or to be Warden, Master, etc. do you trust him or know him enough to think him capable of being the Secretary of your Lodge? Could he be interviewed by the I.R.S. during a tax audit as to the records and receipts of the Lodge for your “non-profit?”  Could he maintain all required items per the Code or Constitution for your District officer’s audit? Is he an upright and just man in his daily occupation? If the answer is anything other than yes, should he be in the Craft much less the Master or a simple Secretary. Again, vote for the good of Masonry.

~MW

Matthew Walters resides in North Carolina with his wife and two children. Raised a Master Mason in 2018, he is currently the Secretary of his Lodge and has been since 2020, as well as serving on the Lodge Education Committee.  Other fraternal memberships include the York Rite where he has served as HP, IM, and EC (2023-present). He is also a member of the Allied Masonic Degrees, Knight Masons, and York Rite Sovereign College.