Theme: From theory to Practice

GOING FROM LIBERTY TO EQUALITY AND FRATERNITY.

Synthesis from the LL\ of the G.L.F.B. – V.G.L.B.-(Women’s Grand Lodge of Belgium) of the thoughts-subject suggested by C.L.I.P.S.A.S. for 2006;

Theory : is an organized system of ideas, concepts that are sometimes abstract.

Practice: is coming from the thought, the speech to the action that aims to have concrete results.

For practice, theory is a reference.

Our Masonic commitment opens ourselves to our citizen role. It questions our role in society.

This commitment involves us in bringing to light our own personal way to be a conscious and active link of this same society.

Are the values we’re standing for utopian and universal? Are they still current, addressing current events, do they evolve or are they engines of progress?

Freemasonry reflects the society in which it evolves and we must be careful to put back the facts and comments into their cultural and historical environment.

In operational Freemasonry, the levelling helps to “justify and level” the stones.  In speculative Freemasonry, the levelling keeps its figurative sense in order to build and bring equality in the Lodge, but also in the profaner’s life. This equality can be considered as an opportunity to meet Brothers and Sisters that we would never have met in the profane life and to have with them an exchange in the respect of the liberty of conscience of everyone. This idea, born in the 18^th century corresponds to a cosmopolitan intention from conscious minds of that period of time that is how Freemasonry evolved in Europe and in colonies where you find these words on official buildings: “Freedom, Equality, Fraternity”.

Freemasons consider as their duty to work towards the progress of humanity, and therefore toward freedom, equality and fraternity. Thus we must always think ourselves over, because equality has a variable geometry. For example, the role of women in the profane world. Many progresses must still be made, because women don’t have to be considered as a minority that needs protection: they are half of the humanity. Hence political parity imposes itself because until now the fight of the masses was preferred to the fight of the sexes.

In the profane world, the notion of equality brings up an endless and democratic debate, endless such as the building of our temple. Freemasonry can contribute to it by resisting to the injustice and by thinking. It is the reason why inside and outside the temple, power is only acceptable if it helps the harmonious functioning of the group. Anyhow in theory, inside the temple, everyone respects the Masonic ritual. The work on ourselves, our travelling and our opening towards others enhances us in the quest for equality for all. The Lodge is this structure which enables us to evolve equally in the respect of our capacities, our abilities and our rhythm. Working enriches us of our differences.

Freemasonry is not an answer to our troubles, it is our workshop. A workshop where all of us must work in equality and according to our capacities.               

In our daily life, we modestly become conscious that practising these principles of equality represents “a long and laborious effort and that the time has not yet come”.

The plurality of believes is essential in order to satisfy the variety of mental dispositions of humanity. Whatever the religious tradition or the philosophy taken up, fraternity, love and compassion are common to religions and freemasonry. Fraternity is a practice. It is an embrace that envelops us with all human beings, it is empathy for the whole in its individualities, and we go beyond human egocentrism until limits never dreamed of by ego and, even less, looked for ego.

Like religions, Freemasonry must understand, learn and practice. We have tools to carve our stones, but let’s not forget that each stone must be part of the same building of harmony and mutual assistance.

In order to countervail some centreboards of religious institutions, the goal of “secularism” is neutrality and the building of a fair, progressivism and fraternal society in which impartial public institutions are the warrant of the respect of the individual and his human rights. These institutions ensure to everyone freedom of thought, of expression and of legal equality without distinction of sex, origins, culture or religious belief.

The most beautiful gift someone can make is not loving you, but teaching you how to love yourself.

The initiate’s godmother weaves one of the first brotherly link, this link must be built, maintained, according to each person’s will.  All the sisters’ responsibility is excessively important and essential in the lodge workshop in order to establish this brotherly link.

The sense of responsibility perfectly concurs with the respect of the taken commitments. Before acting, it is necessary to analyze the situation and to know your own limits.

Each time a profane knocks on the Temple door, the Masonic Masters must detect the vital qualities for the initiation: honesty, tolerance, respect, generosity and candour.

We will transmit to each new link of the chain, the tools, the methods and the symbols used in Freemasonry. It is up to him/her to use them with adequacy.

But do we learn how to be fraternal? Can one become fraternal? Can we transmit fraternity as we transmit ideas?

The profane who enters into Freemasonry will little by little feel this fraternity and will confidently develop this feeling that, sometimes, is hidden in the unconscious. Shyly at the beginning, then more and more actively, the Freemason apprentice is going to demonstrate that this quality, at first spotted by the mistresses, is an asset that will allow her to become a real link in the Freemasonry chain.

Let’s not mistake the step. To make dynamic your inner energy, your own light, is not being selfish.

Rather ready to give, by the nature of her radiance, the self-confident initiate is considered as a strange individual from elsewhere: a foreigner.  Will the action of “giving-receiving” be enough or would we be able to recognize the true value of a gift (talent) from someone else?

Who takes all the credit for the “quasi generosity”?  Who said “theory”?

Willing to do good, concentrated and in respect of the ritual rule that is useful to the harmony of the group, the Sister Master Mason transmits a way of working on yourself by the gesture, by words and inevitably by examples.

She talks and acts symbolically while her silent Apprentice Sister captures and tries to perceive what, in herself, will be the useful ferment to develop her own assets. The Apprentice Sister discovers her qualities and her weaknesses, but also the others’ qualities and weaknesses. The actions of becoming aware are the common engines.

The exchange seems difficult when one another have to keep silent. Nevertheless their tenacity will bring one another to look for the best way of communicating. Meditation and going back to the inner source will lead each of them to voluntarily adopt an active attitude and, in opposition to the prejudices, silence will become as productive as a speech.

The Sister Master Mason knows the wisdom of silence. The Apprentice Sister learns how to talk “wisdom”.

They become “Fellow Crafts” and, on their common path, the depth of a constructive reflection sets in.

Theory written in a text can be a reducer when it isn’t metamorphosed by the experience of practice. Each one of them can use it in her way to adapt her “present time” it is useful to the wealth of the exchange and the evolution.

The wealth of the exchange between initiated could reside in this true fraternal generosity. A generosity made concrete by the deep personal work that leads each Freemason to nourish a placid and bright inner attitude that will encourage the other to look and to find her own existing dimension, beyond outside generosities fed by the right feelings of the good demagogic consciousness.