From the South

By Andrew Hawes, PM — Jr. Warden

As I ‘pen’ this, what I expect to be my penultimate article for our Trestleboard, I feel something of a sense of relief.  I’ve been writing these for four years now, and whilst I’ve tried to keep each article different from the others, and offer some potentially useful or meaningful insight with each, it’s doubtful to me that I’ve avoided repeating myself quite frequently.  I think that this can be forgiven, though, when considering that my purpose in these articles has been to try and emphasize the meaning and importance of various virtues and how they can and should give purpose to our lives.

Brotherly love doesn’t just mean “love your brother.”  It means – love all mankind as you would your brother.  Extend to everyone the kindness and love that you might share with someone from your own family, your own clan, your own country/creed/race – love thy neighbor, and thy enemy.  It’s really an important one.

Relief- the providing of help to others – isn’t just about helping someone who has lost everything in a house fire.  It’s about sharing words of encouragement to someone  you know works very hard or who suffers from an ailment that is making their life more difficult.  It’s about offering $20 to a homeless person begging on the street corner, sure – but even more so, it’s about thinking about how and why they ended up there, and if there’s anything you can do to help prevent more people from following that path to the bottom.  It’s about giving moral support, offering words of wisdom and comfort, hugging someone who is having a bad day.  Giving $50 to a charity each year is nice, but far below the level that we strive to achieve as Masons.

Truth.  I just cannot emphasize strongly enough how important this virtue is to me.  If you disagree with me, tell me, and explain why.  Being honest doesn’t mean “brutally” honest- if someone is unkempt, or smells of body odor, you can share that insight with them if you think they would want to know- but it’s not honoring the virtue to walk up to someone and say to them “you look a mess, and you stink.”  While true, those words are blunt and unvarnished – there is nothing that is a lie about them, but there is no reason that one cannot honor truth and still choose not to share information with someone that you think will hurt them.  “Lying by omission” is an insidious phrase, to me.  If I tell you 10 things about myself, but choose not to share another 10, am I lying?  Have I been untruthful?  I don’t think so.  To be considered a lie by omission, one has to deliberately be selective in what one says, in an effort to deceive.  It’s the intent that makes it untruthful, not the fact that you left something out.  To be a good and true man, you should never selectively share truth in an effort to deceive.  That’s not truth, that’s deception – honesty and integrity need to work hand in hand to make sure that we are all both truthful with each other, and that we can sincerely honor each other and our fellow people.

We are all children of the same Great Parent, and while sibling rivalries will inevitably arise, it’s important that we try to keep that in mind in all of our dealings, not just with each other as Masons, but with everyone with whom we interact in our lives.  Empathy isn’t just important in leadership (although many studies have found that to be true) it’s an essential component to what makes human society a society at all.  Without it, we have no reason to love our brother, no reason to offer relief to others, and no reason to be truthful.

Stay tuned next month for my final good bye article!