From the South

By Andrew Hawes, PM — Jr. Warden

Brethren, I am writing this to you from Portland, OR.  Just came up for a day trip, no time to visit local Brethren (Hi, Ron!) and I thought I would share a thought with you about weirdness.  

Portland where we are visiting is a bit weird.  It is a city that embraces its weirdness, and celebrates it, or so it seems to me.  As it should.  We should all celebrate the weird, the unusual, the different, the divergent, the oddities and the peculiarities that may come into our lives.  More, we should seek them out!  How do you know if you like something until you consider it with an open mind?  Variety is the spice of life, and what dish doesn't use spice?  Phil's chili comes to mind, but he likes it, and I respect his opinion to like it, as weird as it may seem to me to like that stuff. I mean, it beats eating matzoh. Who would want to eat nothing but unseasoned flatbread forever?  Have you had matzoh?  I mean, who would choose to eat that stuff and ONLY that stuff?  No one that I want to know, let me tell you- but I would respect their choice, if they made it.  Weird, but there you go.  When we push back against things that seem strange to us, that seem odd, that seem a little weird... we deny ourselves salt, pepper, garlic...  we eat our matzoh balls, with no soup.  We chew our crusty bread of life with no butter or cinnamon sugar.  WHY would we make that choice?

What's even worse is when we try to enforce our beliefs on others.  No, no, we say, you cannot have cilantro on your tacos, it tastes like soap!  You cannot have salsa, it is too spicy!  You cannot have that meat, it is too heavily seasoned, that sour cream is too rich, those tomatoes too red, that lettuce too green, tortilla too flat.  Here.  Have a matzoh ball.  No eggs in it, that's cruel to the potential little unborn chickies, so let's just use water...  mmmmm... tasty. ( ...it's really not.)

As Masons, we should be better than that.  If you want no cilantro on YOUR tacos, great... but don't take mine.  You don't like spicy ok, no problem... but leave me my hot sauce.

You make choices for yourself (well unless you're married, but let's not get into that...) and you want and like it that way- we all do.  So let us live and let live.  Share, and share alike.  Do unto others as we want them to do to us.  Be kind, be caring, be honest, be true, and be a good person. 

Be weird and embrace the weird in the world, it's what keeps it interesting.

If you don't want to be weird...  well fine... but that's a bit weird to me...