TRESTLEBOARD

October 2001

The horror is still vividly on our minds of the tragedies of September 11, 2001, in New York City and at the Pentagon ... In its aftermath, an overwhelming sense of national pride and patriotism has been aroused - a feeling that should be even more intense in the hearts of Freemasons, along with our age-old ideals of tolerance and brotherly love.

The Grand Lodge of Ohio has been notified of a special appeal by the Masonic Service Association for the Grand Lodges of New York and Virginia ...

Grand Master Jack L. Allen has directed that the Grand Lodge of Ohio send $10,000 from our Emergency Relief Fund to this effort and is urging every Lodge and all Ohio Masonic brethren to contribute to it as they are able.

Please make checks payable to the MSA Disaster Relief Fund, and send them to 8120 Fenton Street, Suite 203, Silver Spring, MD 20910-4785.

Also, fly your U.S. flags proudly, consider giving blood, support the actions of our country, and hold your head high as Masons . . . and as Americans.

The Grand Lodge of Free & Accepted Masons of Ohio

George O. Braatz, P.G.M., Grand Secretary

Freemasonry provides opportunities for sincere, honest, forthright men who want to contribute to the improvement of themselves and of their communities. Through our Masonic fraternalism, we reaffirm our dedication and unity to become involved citizens who have a strong desire to preserve the values that have continued, and will continue, to make America great.

You should have already received your annual membership renewal notice. It arrives with a handy pre-addressed return envelope the inside flap of which states the amount of your annual dues and provides a place for writing in a contribution to the Ohio Masonic Home. Last year the members of Medina Lodge No. 58 generously contributed $1,285.00 to the Home. Each contribution is recognized by a "Thank You" note from your Secretary and is tabulated under your name for recognition by the Ohio Masonic Home. Accumulated contributions of $200.00, $300.00, $400.00, $600.00, $700.00, $800.00, and $900.00 each receive a recognition letter from the Home. In addition to a recognition letter, when your accumulated contributions reach $100.00 you are gifted with a wallet size Gold Card. At the $500.00 level, you receive an inscribed marble desk weight, and at the $1000.00 level, an inscribed marble pen set. These gifts are illustrated on the inside of your return envelope.

Our Grand Secretary, MWB George O. Braatz, reports that the number of Endowed Memberships statewide has grown tremendously in the past year as Lodges and individual members are realizing the value of the program. Beginning with the 2002 membership year, dues cards for brethren who have purchased an Endowed Membership will be imprinted with the word "Endowed". Currently the price of an Endowed Membership is $600.00 but legislation has been submitted for consideration at this year's Grand Lodge Communication to raise that figure to $800.00. Even if the legislation passes, the price will remain at $600.00 until August 1, 2002. You may obtain more information on the Endowed Membership program by contacting your Lodge Secretary.

Given that we have 332 members, 21 of whom have confessed to having a computer and an e-mail address, the Webmaster takes pleasure in thinking the website may be reaching non-Masons.

Courtesy of http://www.msu.edu/~benyouss/fmason3.htm

(Continued from the September Trestleboard)

As a result of that which Masons know as "the principle of universality" (a lodge is permitted to exist wherever it can exist) lodges are at work in remote countries. How can this be? How can an institution that must be accepted on its own terms be accepted in vastly differing cultures?

Without knowing the other's language, a Korean cannot converse with an Englishman, nor could a man of Burma understand the language of a man of Michigan. From one of these countries to another there also is an unlimited variety of costumes, customs, traditions, ways of thought, and ways of life. How can Masonic lodges, which must remain alike, take root in the midst of such unlike conditions? How is Freemasonry translatable?

There are two large answers. One is that it consists in essence of a number of fundamentals which all mankind need, know, and understand, such as brotherliness, charity, good will, fellowship, friendship, character, and the search for the Divine.

The other is that it uses rites, symbols, and emblems. A symbol says much without saying anything, and what it says may call for thought or for exposition but does not need to be translated. The level, the square and compasses, lights, the plumb, all such are immediately understood by any normal man anywhere. Gestures, symbols, postures, emblems, signs, it would be incorrect to describe such things as a language; if they were, they would constitute as nearly a universal language there is capable of being.

Some years ago, Douglas Malloch, a beloved Masonic poet, began one of his lyrics with two stanzas which ever since have thrilled the blood of Freemasons.

Fine men have walked this way before

Whatever Lodge your Lodge may be,

Whoever stands before the door,

The sacred arch of Masonry,

Stands where the wise, the great, the good

In their own time and place have stood.

You are not Brother just with these,

Your friends and neighbors; you are kin

With Masons down the centuries;

This room that now you enter in

Has felt the tread of many feet,

For here all Masonry you meet.

For many generations Freemasonry has numbered among its members an accounted number of "the wise, the great, the good," and if the Fraternity has often celebrated the famous men who have been Masons it is not because it has ever been self-conceited.

Emperors, kings, presidents, and princes have been, in the quaint language of a very old writer, "of this sodality." Frederick the Great, Garibaldi, Mazzini, Napoleon, and a number of American Presidents have been Masons, and two of the latter have been Grand Masters. George Washington was Master of his lodge at Alexandria when he was inaugurated first President in 1789. Great composers have been active members, as represented by Purcell, Mozart, Samuel Wesley, Sibelius. Books have been written to list them. They have come from all possible walks of life, statesmen, scientists, theologians, scholars, authors, poets, actors, financiers, industrialists, artists, farmers, and men of the sea. Even Arctic and Antarctic explorers have been drawn to it, and there is nothing to wonder at the fact that a Masonic flag was dropped on each of the poles by the first men to fly across them in an airplane. Nor does any Mason find it a cause to wonder that Benjamin Franklin was both a Worshipful Master and a Grand Master and published the first Masonic book (1734) ever issued in America. Masons have long since ceased to feel amazed that such men should be of "their sodality"; there is no occasion to wonder because the greatest will find Freemasonry as great as will the humblest.

The word Freemasonry has entered our language as a common noun to denote private understanding, secrecy, mystery, as in the saying that "There is a freemasonry among railway workers." (There is such a thing.) But of all the mysteries connected with that name, and to Freemasons themselves, the greatest is Freemasonry itself. It began many centuries ago. It has ridden out the storms of revolutions and uncounted wars. It has planted itself in all parts of the world. What has enabled it to do so?

If the answer to that question should be that it has had a clearer understanding and a better practice of fraternalism than any other organization in the world, a reader must not be disappointed. Fraternalism itself is as everlasting as mankind. It ranks along with religion, government, science, business, the fine arts. To discover the heights and depths of it, its length and its breadth, and the unsearchable riches in it, is sufficient justification for any man to work in it throughout his life.

(The End)

Ritualist's Corner

One of the problems that most often plague Masonry is poor ritual. By this, I don't just mean getting the words wrong -- I mean ritual that is drab and uninspiring, which fails to actually *teach* a candidate. Ritual is often mediocre, and it doesn't have to be; anyone can do ritual well, provided he knows a little about acting.

It isn't hard, actually; it's mostly a matter of knowing how to do it, plus a lot of practice. This article is intended to impart some guidelines on how to do Good Ritual. It doesn't demand a lot of time, or any particular talent, just a little drive to do well. Read it and play with it. With some practice, you should be able to use these techniques to good effect in your Lodge. The course is specifically aimed at dealing with the longer speeches, but much of it is also relevant to shorter pieces; I commend it to junior officers.

This is adapted from a lecture that I worked up for my own lodge; having done that, I figured I should try to spread these tips around for the common weal of the Craft. (Caveat: I do assume that you have some kind of cypher book, with encoded ritual. If your jurisdiction doesn't use this, you'll have to adapt these lessons.)

1: Figure out the Words

The first step of learning any ritual is to know what you're saying! This should be obvious, but is often overlooked, because brethren are afraid to admit that they don't already know the right words. Don't be afraid to admit your own limits -- I've never met *anyone* who gets every single word right every time.

Start out by listening to someone say the speech, preferably several times. (You should be doing this the entire previous year, listening to your predecessor.) Listen carefully, and make sure you understand what's being said; ask questions if you don't. (After Lodge, of course.)

2: Understand the Speech

This step gets overlooked even more often than the previous one. Read through the ritual a couple of times, and make sure you really grasp it. Don't just know the words -- know what it's talking about. Find out who the characters being talked about are. Again, ask questions.

Now, start trying to understand the speech structurally. Any ritual is made up of components, separate pieces that are linked together. For example, a section may be talking about symbols, with three paragraphs per symbol: concrete meaning, abstract meaning, and purpose. Figure out what these pieces are -- you'll use them later.

The next step is especially useful for long speeches -- visualize the speech. Any speech can be thought of in terms of movements, places, rooms, stuff like that. Words are hard to remember in order; places are easy. The canonical example is the Middle Chamber Lecture, which walks through King Solomon's Temple. That's no accident -- that path is easily visualized, and makes a good example of how to learn ritual, which is probably why it is the first major speech an officer learns. This is why we use symbols in the first place: because they are easy to learn and internalize. Use them.

3a: Small-Scale Memorization

This is never anyone's favorite part; anyone can do it, but no one finds it simple. It's considerably easier if you do it right, though. Start out by reading the speech over and over. Don't move on to the next step until you can read it from the cypher quickly, without breaks or hesitation. Read it *out loud*, when you get the chance. This step is particularly important, and skipped more often than any other. Don't skip it -- this is how you get your brain and mouth trained to the words. It may sound silly, but it really matters -- the mental pathways used to talk are distinct from those used to read.

Now, start trying to learn sentences. Just sentences. Read the first word or two of the sentence, then try to fill in the remainder from memory. Don't fret if you can't do it immediately; it will probably take at least 5 or 10 times through before you're getting most of the sentences. You'll find some that are hard -- hammer those ones over and over (but don't totally neglect the rest while you do so). Again, get to the point where you're doing reasonably well on this, before going on to the next step.

3b: Large-Scale Memorization

Once you've got most of the sentences, try to move on to paragraphs. Again, some will be easy and some hard. Try to understand exactly why this sentence follows that one -- in most cases, the ritual does make sense. An individual paragraph is almost always trying to express a single coherent thought, in pieces; figure out what that thought is, and why all the pieces are necessary. Keep at this until you're able to get most paragraphs by glancing at the first word or two, or by thinking, "Okay, this is the description of truth," or something like that.

Finally, start putting it all together. This is where the structural analysis in Step 2 gets important. You visualized the speech, and figured out how it hooks together; use that visualization to connect the paragraphs. Make sure you have some clue why each paragraph follows the one before. In almost every case, the next paragraph is either a) continuing this thought, or b) moving on to a related thought. In both cases, you can make memorization much easier by understanding why it flows like that. Convince yourself that this paragraph obviously has to follow that one, and you'll never forget the order.

4: Smoothing It Out

You're now at the point where you've got pretty much all the sentences down, and most of the paragraphs, and you're able to get through the whole thing only looking at the book a few times. Now, start *saying* it.

When you're driving in the car; when you're alone at home; pretty much any time you have some privacy, try saying it all out loud, at full voice. Trust me, it sounds very different when you actually say it aloud. You'll find that you stumble more, and in different places. Some words turn out to be more difficult to pronounce than you expected. Try it a few times.

Start out by trying to do this frequently -- once, even twice every day. It'll be hard at first (and it's a real pain to pull out the cypher book while you're driving), but it'll gradually get easier. When you're starting to feel comfortable, slow down, but don't stop. Practice it every couple of days, then every week. Don't slow down below once a week. If you feel up to it, see if you can speed up your recitation. (But do not ever speed-talk the ritual in open Lodge -- that's for memorization and rehearsal only.)

5a: Mindset

Last part. You're now at the point where you pretty much have the ritual memorized. Now, the trick is learning how to perform it well. Very nearly everyone has some amount of stage fright; us acting types often have it even worse than most. The trick to overcoming it is control of the nerves.

Now that you're comfortable reciting the ritual, observe how you do it. By now, you're not thinking about it so much; your mouth is doing almost all the work, with the conscious mind simply making a few connections between paragraphs. That is the right state to be in. Think about how that feels, and learn it.

Before you go in to "perform", do some basic acting exercises. Take a few deep breaths; concentrate on not thinking. I think the ideal is a little light meditation, but it takes a fair bit of practice to be able to drop into that state on demand; for now, just worry about you're calm, you're unlikely to screw up too badly; if you're tense, you're far more likely to. Some people like to exercise the body a bit, to relax the mind; you should do what works for you.

5b: Acting

Now the final nuance, which separates merely competent ritual from the really good stuff. Now that you're able to let your mouth do all the talking, start listening to yourself. Think about the ritual again, but don't think about the words, think about what it means. What are the important bits? Emphasize those. How could you use your body or hands to illustrate a point? Try talking *to* the person in front of you, not just *at* them -- look them in the eye and make them get the point. You are teaching important lessons here; try to capture a little of the emotional intensity of that importance.

Think of your "performance" as a melding of two parts. Your mouth is providing the words, your mind and heart the emotion. Again, nothing beats practice. This is what rehearsal should really be for -- taking a dummy candidate in hand, and learning how to really get the point across. Don't fret if you find that you need to change "modes" now and then -- here and there you will need to think about the words briefly, when you change paragraphs or hit a hard sentence. That won't throw you, though, so long as you keep track of what you're saying; you've already figured out why each part leads into the next, and that will guide you when you stumble.

Conclusion

Don't expect to get all this down instantly; it takes most people a few years to really get good at it. Just try to advance yourself bit by bit. Learn the transitions and pieces first -- if you have that, you can get through the ritual. Next time, work on memorizing more thoroughly. The time after that, work on getting it really smooth. After a while, you can build up to the point where you have the luxury to act. And at that point, you will find that you start doing the kind of ritual that Masonry is meant to have -- both moving and interesting, enough so that the candidate (who is, remember, the whole point) actually *learns* what you're saying, and what it actually means. And, if you really do it well, you'll find that you come to understand the meaning of the ritual a good deal better yourself.

Ed: An extra hint; smile when you speak of happiness, feel happy and your voice will adjust itself to suit - the same applies to other emotions - if you get the facial expression right the rest follows. Gordon.