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Freemasonry should hurt…

I would never consider myself a masonic blogger, like some of the guys out there. I’ve had a surprising amount of recent success blogging for my lodge’s site, and even had a post go viral, or at least as viral as you can get in online freemasonry.

I think I’ll keep it up and try to do a good, lengthy piece there once per week, along with any lodge announcements and stuff.

I feel like I don’t have more to say, but in reality I do. Little thoughts about this Craft pop into my head all the time and I’d like to put them here. I don’t need to promote them or post them to Reddit. I just need to get down the bones.

One of those thoughts is that freemasonry should hurt. Not all the time, obviously, but from time to time.

This Craft is intended to get under your skin. It is a way to channel emotion in a way that men can deal with, because we are not historically good at emotion. We aren’t good at grief, or sadness. We aren’t good at not breaking things when we’re angry. And we’re really not good at feeling pain.

This Craft teaches us, and gives us the opportunity, to confront the parts of ourselves that we ignore throughout the week. To meet the standards we fall short of. To feel bonds we normally shirk. To examine those pieces of ourselves where we fall short, standards which we cannot yet meet, and face it with our brothers, instead of alone even when surrounded by family and friends.

And it hurts. It hurts so much sometimes, but it’s like cleaning a wound with alcohol. The sting is how you know it’s working.

I think a lot of us in freemasonry aren’t really “in freemasonry.” Oh, they’re every bit a brother. No one should be comparing scars here, but most of us, or perhaps even all of us at most times, step into lodge complete unprepared to work, and leave later that night with their ashlar utterly untouched…because it hurts.

But sometimes it hurts.

Sometimes, it’s suppose to.

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