...Either the postings are nonsensical and delusional and thereby defame the Craft or they betray our secrets. I will neither confirm nor deny which posts are which. ..
You have labelled many posts here delusional. Your real problem therefore seems only too obvious.
All Master Masons are given the authority, indeed the duty, to defend the good name of the Craft and to correct errors and irregularities among their fellows, wherever encountered.
You see here MM at a conceptual level I have a lot of sympathy for you here. In fact I would positively support you in this and respect you for it.
As for being patient with me. it is more a case of the staff here being incompetence.
And this is where you loose that respect. Character assassinations and rudeness are very dark work, and difficult to reconcile with what the tenets explicitly say - at least in UGLE. As an outsider I can only gauge you against your own published standards of how a True Freemason acts.
Remember there will be Freemasons who visit here who hold those tenets dearly and they will be judging you against what you are complaining about, and those memories will last a long time. And before you wrongly state that all posts have been respectful, the above one isn't and it hasn't been the only one, a few of the ones I have read nearly made me cry with sadness.
If you want visitors here to get the right impression of the Craft you must be beyond reproach yourself. Otherwise it is just another mason having a go at other masons because they see things differently and the masonic internet is full of such petty behaviour.
I really would have loved you to be at some of the meetings I was invited to a decade ago, now that would have been interesting.
A Simple Man, who tried and failed to reilluminate this planet.
Slogging Scotsman Ma’at Ankh Re
Who am I trying to kid for I can’t even resolve family darkness. Whoever is next to step up, please do.
The two guest posters (originally posting as Tamrin and Smithee) do wear out their welcome from time to time and go into periods of mass deletion as now. Lorr and I do not bother to read their posts but delete the lot - takes about 10 seconds.
These brethren do however provide some interesting material for new threads and politely stay clear of the more esoteric threads.
The tendency to polarise is evident and some may question the value of pursuing a binary existence - good/evil, Mason/nonMason, Truth/Untruth, belief/skepticism.
There are several threads here that invite posters to move beyond simple polarities and look for a third way - and even a fourth or fifth way - even perhaps to discover the joys of fuzzy logic en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic Fuzzy logic is valuable when complex systems are incompletely understood
"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." Alice in Wonderland.
-> All Master Masons are given the authority, indeed the duty, to defend the good name of the Craft and to correct errors and irregularities among their fellows, wherever encountered.
Maybe this statement is a clue to why we and our visitor do not see eye to eye on some things.
The assumption is made that THE Craft is THE United Grand Lodge of England and those orders which it formally recognises. And therefore their rule are THE rules. I do not belong to UGLE, I am a dastardly woman and they won't let me in I am a member of the International Order of Freemasonry for Men and Women, Le Droit Humain (Human Rights).
My Order encourages its members to steadily work towards perfecting themselves and to aid and encourage their Brothers and Sisters in whatever way they can.
The Order (LDH) is founded on the ancient teachings and traditions of Freemasonry, using Masonic ritual and symbolism as its tools in the search for truth. On the individual level, the Order aims "to promote the progress of individual worth, without the imposition of dogma, or exacting the abandonment of cultural or religious ideas". On a collective level it works "to unite men and women who agree on a humanist spirituality whilst respecting individual and cultural differences".
>There are many forms of Freemasonry over the globe ..
Masonry instructs its brethren in tolerance. Such tolerance starts with religion and extends to the faults of other brethren.
I imagine that in future times, tolerance may become contagious between Grand Lodges.
I sure hope so. The frequent "masonic discord" on many masonic forums that I have witnessed over the past decade and a half really is sad.
LorrB, you might be interested to know that in London there is a club called "London Lunchtimers". While this is run by very well travelled UGLE masons, and is held in a pub next to the HQ of UGLE, every month Freemasons from pretty much every Grand Lodge in England attend. It even welcomes people like me (was even given the club badge - ooowwwww that everyone gets). After an hour or so chatting in the pub there is a private and semi formal meal with toasts, raffles etc. Lots of interesting speakers from across the masonic specrum. Very friendly and harmonious. Freemasons working together for the common good. Existed for years. Admittedly I have only been the once but I am rarely in London and the cost of me going there specifically is unaffordable. But it is a shining example of how Freemasons from multiple jurisdictions can get along.
As you can imagine there is a broad range of masonic types there (as in social to esoteric) and Paul amd LorrB would I am confident not only be welcomed but also involved in mutually agreeable esoteric discussions with similar minded people. As would Tamrin and Smithee. It works.
The mind works in ways mysterious mgc, in this instance I am very happy to have the men go first. Actually I rarely think in terms of man-woman.. 'person' suits me fine.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting…trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home -Wordsworth