Hello welcome back to the Masonic Round Table a weekly program where masons from around the world get together to talk about Masonic news and opinions in a friendly and social manner as a reminder the thoughts and opinion opinions expressed here are solely the opinions of the participants and do not represent
Any Grand law statements or positions make sure you keep your conversations open for the public and on the level to interact with us we love seeing you live every Thursday night in Facebook or YouTube land so hello and good evening and remember the chats are always fun
But your chats may show up in the show and as always if you can’t catch us live check the replay or check your favorite podcasting app you know me my name is John ruar and I am a past Master of the Patriot lodge number 1957 in Fairfax
Virginia next up for another pass match Master hooray Joe Martinez how’s it going Joe that’s me Joe Martinez past master of things and stuff um not a Texas Mason throwing that out there so nice hat thank you nice hat for you too yeah mine’s got some miles on it though
Yours is a mint mint in box it looks good looks crispy I like it you had it in one of those like New Era cases or whatever didn’t you cracked the plastic on it and got it out tonight yeah damn glad to be here let’s talk about some
Stuff stuff and things stuff and things also next up Robert Johnson how’s it going buddy hey it’s going pretty good uh you know I’m not in Texas I’m not a Texas Mason I’m not wearing the cool hat I wear my moth man hat today uh you know
So rep and Moth Man as usual uh past master walk Keegan LOD 78 current sitting secretary there in the sitting worshipful master at space Noom 1183 the premier of masonic education Lodge in the state of ill Illinois and um you know a bunch of other stuff
So a lot of other cool stuff awesome yeah well great to have you it’s awesome to be here Jason’s booting up because he didn’t know after 10 years what time TMR starts so he’ll be here he track of time sometimes man drugs do that just kidding just kidding just kidding geez can
Either confirm nor deny Let’s uh give a special shout out to the patrons who support the show you guys are awesome and rock my socks so if you want to support the show head over to patreon.com theem Masonic real table and um get access to Joe’s secret Family
Recipes that’s right and my uh my hair tips and um yeah my facial routine I also think you have a really good recipe for a crab boil right crab Ro crab roast that’s it roast crab crab roast 2024 we’re going there must be magical crab roasts in Texas
This weekend it’s it’s getting roasty toasty down there for sure I was gonna say something’s getting roasted all right um thanking the patrons next up let’s do tarot card of the week so you know what time it is it’s that time for tarot card of the week tarot card of
Joe with the jazz hands that is so wretched God all right cool so uh yeah I’ll do tarot card this week and uh we’re gonna do an oldie buty goodie we’re gonna do the DC Comics tarot card deck oh yes okay and uh yeah so for those who don’t
Know I’m super huge comic book nerd as opposed to spending lots of money I could yeah so yeah comps are good though my kids that’s your drugs it is it is but it keeps me home you know and you know not at weird places where glitter happens at
You know three o’clock in the morning I stay home on com have you been to Comic Con I have once once once I’ve been to San Diego um it just keeps getting better and better and well you you you used to go before it got super huge right
Yep yeah every everyone like almost every year between 2000 and 2010 yeah so I went post uh so for for all you non- nerds there’s a when I got to buy tickets you had to put in for a lottery and if your lottery fixed then you were allowed to purchase ticket to
Log in and purchase tickets um so out of 10 years that I tried I got to go one year so and uh yeah definitely big but yeah let’s get back to uh tarot card so shuffled them up and we got papow oh we got the Chariot The Flash The Flash is
The Chariot I like it very nice Chariot so Swing Low Sweet Chariot um it’s not what that means it does I like the Chariot because it’s definitely an action card right um it’s it’s related to the Aries sign I believe and which is a very active go
Get it kind of attitude forward momentum Victory Moving yeah moving in a positive direction I get conflict a lot of conflict going on in Mason this weekend yeah there is there’s GNA be forward momentum whether you like it or not something is moving and that’s and that’s like the positive and negative
Side right from for a lot of these cards right you have a positive but the positive can also be a fault right and so by being too aggressive like imagine if Joe were a tarot card he would be the charot cuz I’m coming through whether
You like it or not get out of my way sound like the Juggernaut or something nice Charles no got my head like a bulldog I’m the Juggernaut sorry definitely YouTube that yeah we’re nerding out hard good stuff you never watched the X-Men I’m the Juggernaut yeah yeah it’s been a while
Oh so good oh wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute hit it oh that is not the right one boom we gotta say happy birthday happy birthday and you can say hi to Alex too your podcast is cool I guess um happy
Day V famous podcaster wife yes and famous Tik tocker she’s big on this oh my gosh yes the talk of tick yes but we love you uh our significant others love you too and we wish you a very happy birthday happy 29 again right on Love It
Awesome good stuff and now now you’re officially famous yes more famous we we’ll write up a royalty contract awesome okay let’s uh get into tonight’s topic which is brotherly love but not just Brotherly Love Brotherly Love realized tonight we’re going to dive into um one of the tenants of our fraternity which uh
Really is a virtue that we should all be practicing and yet I wanted to bring this topic up because there are times where it’s really hard to love your brothers and so what do you do what do you do then if you disagree on fundamental level or if you’re having a
Conflict because hey we’re human beings human beings are going to have conflict we’re not always going to agree what do we do then if we’re supposed to be this United sacred Society of Friends and brothers and yet we don’t always get along so um let’s start at the top the
Tenants of our fraternity not tenants because those are people who live in the building the rent paying rent to you but the tenets of the fraternity are Brotherly Love relief and truth and a tenant in that definition is supposed to be something that is kind of universally
True um a Doctrine or belief that we all hold common so that means that basically all Freemasons should agree that brotherly love relief and Truth are these doctrines we should all these standards we should all be holding ourselves to so if Brotherly Love is one of those things what do we
Do when we have conflict because it’s sometimes really hard to exemplify brotherly love Joe well I would say let’s let’s go to the ritual first right okay let’s it’s always a good place to start right to the ritual right what what do we learn or some people learn
Depend and everybody’s ritual is a little bit different here it’s written WR this part so um you know when we talk about exercising brotherly love you know the ritual says to regard the whole human species as being under one common parent right the high the low the rich
The poor um all descended from the same great Almighty parent right so that’s the focus and impetus of Brotherly Love but to to John’s point I think what John was alluding to is that doesn’t happen doesn’t happen very often at all yeah you know we are a uh
For good or for bad we are a a a slice of all of society right like as much as we would like to believe that we’re not Freemasonry and the people who make up Freemasonry are just a microcosm of of the whole right of all different kinds
Of people that bring their opinions and their prejudices and their vices uh into the fraternity with them so you know it’s a really it’s it’s not a rhetorical question to ask like how do I exercise that brotherly love when I have people in my fraternity who went through the
Same ritual that I did and sat through the same obligations and maybe mouthed them but fundamentally right disagree with me fundamentally dislike me as a human being whether it’s the color of your skin or who you choose to pray to or who you choose to love right there’s these big fundamental differences that
Are brought into Freemasonry so how the hell do you deal with that I’m seeing R.J head nodding it’s just very it’s very difficult it’s like when we we talk about this idea of Brotherly Love and it sounds great and romantic and I don’t mean romantic like AOS I mean like like
Um like like a painting you know what I mean like like a Rockwell it’s this overwhelming uh uh Lodge logs over simpkin store no like this romantic idea of of masonry and all of these these virtues that we make this really big assumption about people people and
Their intents and the way they think right but really this idea to me anyway it’s hard to make a case for this being very practical in the real world where things aren’t really up to par with the supposed or implied altruism of our brothers like this takes this stance
That we should have this brotherly love and affection toward our brothers but it’s assumed that these brothers have the best intents in in in whatever their case is whatever you could be at odds with in this way uh you might not agree with them and this also assumes that
Whatever your disagreement about is about or how this person acts or whatever is something that is at least acceptable in the social contract like in the Western World right like I never signed any contract yeah well I guess like what I mean is like everyone has issues
Yeah deorum at a minimum yeah so so this Quorum that you’re talking about right this is what I’m this is where I’m getting with this we generally fit into this social contract right which this is the agreed moral position of the society in which we live which here in America
The Western world is generally kind of ensuring that people are on the whole well taken care of you know what I mean like we’re trying to there there’s this you you can’t like get too specific on what that means but you have the right to pursue life liberty and happiness and we like
That here and we have we’ve agreed on common positions to enable us to move a society ahead and yet there are people who hold opinions and act ways which are in direct contradiction to that and we’re told that because they’re Brothers we should still respect them yeah let it
Slide he’s a bro that’s difficult it’s very very difficult well I feel like you were going to say something awesome but I’m interrupting you but no I I think I think from what I’ve seen and I’ve been I mean we’re coming on year 19 that I’m a mason so um
I I’m starting to feel like I’m definitely in that middle age starting to become into the older group of masonry like we used to be the young ones five years ago right and now we’re like we’re creeping into that older kogy phase of Our Lives which I look so look
Forward to but um no I I think that you you said something really important which is the social contract and we’re supposed to be espousing that and what I hear as an excuse over and over and over again is that you’ve got people that are living the social
Contract that was acceptable to them 20 30 40 50 years ago and because they’re are brother it’s okay to let them continue to live their lives like that because at one point in time it was the social Norm you know what I mean um
Going back to the 60s or the 40s or what have you you know there were social norms that these people have never grown out of or like this is exactly kind of where I’m getting to my my poster my mentor uh the guy who taught me my
Catechism you know uh and then also some amazing life stories guy named Curtis um he’s the reason why I named the podcast when came you you know like he’s a great guy and he told me like where he grew up moving into Illinois and being a farm worker and all
Of these things he told me his you know I know his whole life story and he told me that he was racist and he told me that he knows he is and those things are ingrained in his brain and he works to curb them and like when the voice says something he
Counteracts it and so like what you’re talking about Joe is men who can’t confront something that happened a few years ago some some people made a big deal about confronting everybody’s biases right everybody has biases people say they don’t but they do we’re talking about a 70 mid 70 year old man from
Kentucky who dealt with all kinds of crazy things in his life uh was missing a finger so this was at a time when people thought like if you had like a deformity that you were you know had some sort of mental defect or something you know he was missing a finger and he
Was like a farm operator and like he had to work through all of that stuff and then still had like these kind of racial Tendencies to to you know not like people of color and all of this other things and yet today well in 2008 2009 there’s this old man sitting there
Telling me that he has these biases and how he’s trying to work through them so this is a thing that kind of goes to me like man I respected you now I don’t but wait a second that strength and resilience that you’re showing that you know you’ve done some real reflective
Work the work right and like now I can respect that man now I can see eye to eye with my brother and give my brother Brotherly Love regardless of his past because I know where he’s going in the future you know what I mean like there’s something to be said for this um
But I understand that’s not everybody’s Viewpoint so no that was so SP that was that was amazing uh number one thank you for sharing that and number two as you were talking about that I was thinking about all the people that I’ve met especially in masonry that don’t have that
Self-realization you know what I mean that live those lives you know I’m or I’m going to be a bigot or I’m going to do this because that’s how I was raised or this is the part of the country I grew up in and use that as an excuse to
Continue to live their lives without seeking Enlightenment essentially right and I know I know n mentioned it a little bit before um he said let me actually put it up here because I think it’s important that we disting this make this distinction our differences would not matter if we were all educated n
Says I kind of disagree with that a little bit um I don’t I don’t think it’s a matter of Education right I think it’s a matter of number one coming to the altar of Masonry for the right reasons and number two having that openness that Robert was talking
About to self-reflect like that you know you don’t need to you know you don’t need to have the Odyssey and The Iliad on your bookshelf to be an enlightened human being I think I think what he’s going with too there is um what you often hear about a lot of uh
Like diversity training and stuff that a lot of fear and racism and all that comes from the unknown I don’t know about it it’s different there therefore it’s a different tribe than what I’m used to so therefore um I’m scared of it and so then usually one way to get to
Get past that is to learn more about that culture about the the differences and and then you hopefully find some middle ground right and then masonry tries to do that in some way shape or form uh by basically just treating us all as the Brotherhood of men under the
Fatherhood of God right that’s that’s where we’re trying to level things out again some do it better than others I do want skip ahead and actually go to something that Robert just slipped on in there earlier and I think it’s it’s a topic worth worth mentioning because for
Me if I’m trying to exemplify or realize Brotherly Love probably should Define it because uh the the English language is terrible um at defining certain words specifically love because there’s lots of different types of love out there and I default to the Greeks uh that actually
Have quite a quite a good collection of words for love uh Robert threw out Aros earlier yeah so Aros right that’s John’s favorite five the passionate you know lustful sexual it’s not lustful it’s romantic love it’s romance sure the candles on February 14th right it’s I just give a Hershey bar and a
Single like pedal from a flower like all like that’s why you don’t have nine kids like John no toss a Hershey bar across the room candle so we’re not talking about that kind of love with your brothers so let’s let’s scratch that one off yep notos that’s a different Lodge then there’s
Agape Agape right which is definitely much more of your Universal unconditional non-transactional love that’s the way I like to think of it um we teach that part when we hear um Faith open charity so that’s my whole Soap Box about charity is the wrong translation
Um it is supposed to be faith hope and love and it is the love in the term of Agape meaning like the love of a Creator to its creation the love of a mother to a child right it is one way unconditional I don’t care what you do
I’m still going to love you I disagree with with uh the Agape I think Agape is is not is not what that refers to but I think it’s a different one I disagree with your disagreement but that’s cool we’ll agree to disagree which great brotherly love right look at
This we just did it what just did it I’m listening to your guys’s Greek scholarship erudition yeah I know we’re talking to the guy who’s literally can read Greek he’s sitting back like oh you guys idiots guys are way off you spelled it wrong however uh filia which is probably closest to the
Familial or or brotherly love I mean Philadelphia it’s the city City of Brotherly Love right it’s like sibling love um correct that’s what filia is oh so like a brother or a sister yes but Brotherly Love would be filia English sucks right it it does it does yeah okay so it’s definitely
Different than the previous two in that sense and so if I’m going to go literal that’s the I’m going to pick to choose as the tenant of a fraternity would be more of the filia type of love as opposed to some of these others I don’t
Agree say more well no you got to get to the last one well then you you go ahead and what’s what’s the next one you want to bring up the the fourth one there’s actually two more which are kind of lame but uh yeah the next one Robert had was
Stor sto is the way way I equate stor the type of Love Is people who have been through a common Bond or a common experience together I kind of when I think of Stargate I think of band brothers or guys that are in the military together you know that have
That that Bond having lived through life experiences like that and and that bond that you share with those people which Don’t Come From words but from experiential that and that’s that’s where I relate the uh the type of love and faith hope and love like I can’t I you know I guess I
Get behind the Agape sort of love in that statement John I think I agree with you there um when we talking about masonry though I I do lean more toward the element of store uh Scott Tu Ball grow a really awesome article about this quite a while
Back I think I don’t know if it was on midnight Freemasons or Illinois LOD of research but when I find it I’ll link youall but it was really good he really explained it in a way that was uh very it made me feel like he he did exactly
What Joe just talked about he made this relation between this intense experience like Boot Camp or something and you know the degrees Yeah the experience of a common initiatic experience and the degrees well as RJ beats his dog we’ll continue the conversation so I yeah may keep it down
Sh yes love may that’s my girl anyway um I was gonna kind of disagree a little bit I think I think what we teach on paper ah to Masons I think what what masonry tries to convey or the the the bulk of Masons try to convey is stor
Right that common experience okay but what I think the rituals really meant to teach us which I don’t think a lot of people people because it’s a really hard concept to grasp is the concept that we should be teaching the Agape type of love right that we should be 100% there
Yeah kind of default to storge right hey we all had this common experience it didn’t matter you got it in here I got it in Maryland you got it in Illinois you got it in Virginia John so we have that common Bond but what I think if you actually understand the ritual and
Understand the lessons that we teach we’re kind of leaning you more towards Agape right a universal love of that commonality that spark of div that we all have amongst right so yeah the Divine IM me is the Divine in you right right it’s so damn hard to yeah teach
That right you can’t teach that you can’t say okay this is the way you need to love right it’s it’s everybody brings their own experience to it and I think we default the storge which is okay but it’s not going to get to that true essence of Brotherly Love where you can
Actually look past the faults and the foibles yeah back back to RJ example there right what are these faults and foibles that I can look past well um that I’m allowed it’s like a moral upstanding individual somebody who is going five miles over the speed limit well you okay
Look man like I live my life you’re supposed to like live your life and you’re supposed to uh sort of be a good example uh you know for the public to see a a Mason uh living in the public sphere um to be a representative of the craft so does that mean that
Um I could look past it if a brother was a smoker yep what if that brother did some drugs probably why is he not sharing is my question what if he was a Libertarian he’s a Libertarian I can look past it H it’s hard what if
He’s uh but now like what if he’s a philanderer I don’t know if I could look past that keep the secrets keep the secrets I won’t keep that secret so if you’re a brother out there and you let it slip around me that you you cheat on
Your wife or your your husband or something I’m not the person to slip that in front of that’s not going to go over well with me so like these you know this is what I’m talking about there there there is a definite demarcation a line uh that that I think you can’t
Cross as a Mason you have to you’re supposed to live this code and and yet we’re called at some point to keep the secrets as inviable as my own well yeah but like I’m not about not about throwing throwing the sheet over something or or sweeping so under the rug well
You’re getting you’re getting to the point of application brother love realized versus like that because you can still because you may care for that person you’re going to say hey look that’s not right we need to change this I I can’t accept that those actions right and you would if like if
You didn’t care about you would not you know report them or or you know that kind of thing so in effect by taking action you actually are showing love for them because if you didn’t you would you know you wouldn’t care no I I I I think you just hit the
Nail on the head there is is we have this and maybe it’s our fault that we teach this incorrectly right but but the concept of Brotherly Love is not it doesn’t come from a place of emotion okay it’s not a feeling it’s not like that romantic love right it it’s
Not it’s not a feeling or emotion it’s meant to be a principle of action right so the concept of Brotherly Love I think what we should be espousing is that it it calls for us to see beyond the individual differences and again that Agape sense right recognizing the value
In each person right so that’s the place where you start from not where you end should you should start right so it’s it it doesn’t mean we have to agree with people it doesn’t mean we have to condone all their like Robert said but to approach that individual from a place of understanding
And compassion right which is damn near impossible to do in this world right because everybody’s so wound up and so angry and so tired you know this is interesting like this this thing that you just mentioned here because now I’m thinking you know when I have to deal with
Somebody uh potenti I’m not saying I have that has done something very egregious in life um is still a brother uh all of these kinds of things are you saying that if it’s an action actions that I take to course correct any element of a deficiency of yours this well
Deficiency of the individual ual whether that working with them or an organization or maybe even removing them from the organization is an act of Brotherly Love right I would I would argue that I would say so I mean I would say to that point is you’re not I think
If we’re using Brotherly Love in This sense you don’t want to be an echo chamber for that brother you want to put a mirror right in front of his face and be like this is what you look like right now you look like a sack of crap and
Here’s why and I’m saying this because I love you this is gonna hurt me more than it’s GNA hurt you well I don’t know about that haven’t heard that in 30 years thanks Dad yeah we’re all getting to the age where we’re gonna hear that pretty soon at the doctor’s office right
Yeah yeah uh so today though we we kind of bridged into this I I think this just led to this Crescendo just right now when when Joe and and John you guys talked about action I hadn’t thought about it this way at all and so now it leads me to
Think like what does the practical application look like today when we have these active controversies that are happening within the craft very widely talked about things that are not let’s say in the mainstream news but everybody knows about them whether you’re uh in California or Texas or Jersey or wherever uh these
Things that are happening and like how do we navigate that with this idea of realizing brotherly love and did we do this in the past when we had elements like you know Grand Lodge issuing statements against other Grand lodges for their positions on moral statutes yeah I mean again and we’ve all
Talked about at nauseum um so so I’ll say it really briefly but I think when it comes to those big topics that you’re talking about Robert I always I always separate the two I separate the administration of masonry from the actual practice and philosophy of masonry right because they’re not the
Same damn thing I mean our Southern State Brothers can absolutely tell you this right like like kind of like you were talking about like really bigoted and awful statements that come out of grand jurisdictions don’t speak to the philosoph opy of Freemasonry it’s a bunch of old people who are putting out
A statement so that they don’t get in trouble or don’t get lawsuits slapped against them right and you know that’s nine times out of 10 that’s what that is or you know the the group of tightly controlling people that don’t let masonry change because they’re stuck to
Their Traditions from 30 40 50 years ago or they grew up like that that’s not espousing the philosophy of Freemasonry right so I can’t I can’t link the two together so to your point it’s like Brotherly Love isn’t going to fix that you know what I mean it’s not going to
Change the old coder’s IDE ideologies you know but again now Robert’s Epiphany is helping me with an epiphany as well right BEC I love how this conversation’s going because what if most of our moral instruction that comes in the fraternity is actually a call to action and here’s
What I mean by that right so if brotherly love does not mean you have to agree with every every brother but you have to um take the action to personally one do the best you can to um keep peace keep you keep Harmony as well as remind them of their errors
And help them correct them but also think of it think of it on the other side okay so go from the negative to the positive why do we extol virtues but what are virtues virtues are habits that are uh morally proper things that are attainable go or sometimes unattainable
Goals that we should be keeping track of every day that’s why Ben Benjamin Franklin wrote down a list of 13 virtues and every day checked off how many times he did those because not uh it was the concept of applying the action itself which made them a better person which
Made you a better man and this is I think before he was even a Mason right he had his had this uh list of Virtues like Temperance was one of them and all that so if we have if we telling Brothers as they go through you should be sticking to some really good
Aristotelian virtues try to act on them not just think oh that’s a good idea and then still do what you normally do in your daily life no we’re trying to improve ourselves in masonry through the course of action and so what if that that is the
That is the uh the punch line to all the moral instruction that we get is not so much to know about them but to actually app them yeah this this kind of reminds me as you started talking about action in the babag Gita uh no action is intrinsically right or wrong it’s the
Intent that makes its Soul Aha and and it doesn’t necessarily directly tie into what you’re saying but it makes me think about intent and the the call to action whether and there is no such thing as no action because zero action is in action is a choice
Exactly dang you guys come on y all blowing my mind tonight so how do we realize Brotherly Love well I think we do um I I think we I mean like I said we were talking about the real simple Common Sense stuff how do you apply it don’t be a
Bag regardless of how much people are throwing I didn’t see that in one of the virtues it’s it’s in it’s in the unwritten ritual yes 99th degree yes you know ended up on The Cutting Room floor with Rob Morris’s uh it’s a rectified right somewhere yeah it’s probably in Calvin C BT’s
Uh it’s in one of it’s in pritchard’s um so they ch they changed it they took that out don’t be a yeah um yes I totally lost my train of thought no just yeah don’t be a scuer with other people focus on the things that the the commonalities
That brought you all together right and there may be many and there maybe few but bringing that empathy towards others goes a long way to to to promoting that peace and Harmony and I was going to say this John when you were talking earlier I don’t know if brotherly love equates
To peace and Harmony like I don’t there are certain circumstances where you probably don’t want peace and Harmony you want to Rattle the cage and and you know for the sake of keeping things quiet not saying anything I think that’s that’s not a spous and brother oh thank
You that because I agree with your disagreement in the sense that um not saying something is not preserving Harmony and I’ve thought about this too when there’s been some like edgy things going on in the lodge um I think that you will see well we all have examples
Of where people Grumble and stuff off to the side but when they go into Lodge they vote because well I’m just going to go along with maybe what the master wants or I’m going to but that’s not brotherly love that’s not Harmony because you’re just plating at that
Point instead of oh you use the p word right you’re you’re just going along with it instead of actually trying new clothes right so yeah I’m I’m agreeing with you on that point that keeping quiet does not necessarily equate to Harmony no it doesn’t and I
Think I mean let’s I mean I mean Edmund Burke says it right it’s what does he say the only thing necessary for the Triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing right and I think that plays well into that you know so speaking of for most people listening to this
Like the very next day that we go live we we’ll actually have the Grand Lodge of Texas sessions and there’s going to be in case you haven’t heard there’s a lot of swirl going on about a myriad of issues many which we’re not going to cover here at all none of which we’re
Going to cover here at all so let me just go read through them what what they actually but what my point is is like what if we take brothers who are trying to exemplify Brotherly Love by taking action by disagreeing publicly by calling out other brothers for mistakes that have been
Made that is still brotherly love you could still disagree publicly you get to drop your RBG card ient a desent right you can still take the stand and do what you believe is morally right and disagree publicly with another brother’s actions and still promote the act of Brotherly
Love that’s the point I wanted to get to right it’s not it’s not like like some of the folks in the comments are saying um you can’t bifurcate the two right you have to put it all into one single stream right so to your point there you go bingo card hit it
Um a lot of the things and we’ll use Texas as an example just because it’s so prominent on social media is that you do have a group of brothers that firmly believe that they’re right in what they’re doing by bringing things to light that the majority of the masses
Know nothing about so are they espousing brotherly love I think so I think so from my limited point of view I I think they are right because otherwise change will not occur and you know we like to we as American Masons you know and the majority of American Masons love to
Espouse that hey America is a masonic Nation Mason started this country we were a force for social change what the hell happened to us yeah well you got this on you got this ban on politics and religion so you you can’t actually be a force for change anymore
Because you know just being a human is apparently political don’t get me started don’t even get me started you have DNA um how about uh Winston Churchill who wrote this in the in the oh I did yeah yeah it’s it’s a good question right so my question
Was if we’re supposed to take you know brother I think we’ve moved Beyond this but to take brotherly love to like the extreme if you can’t take something to the extreme does it stand does it stand its its uh its ground does it does it stand its
Ground in the realm of absolute truth all the time exactly you know and so like can Winston Churchill show brotherly love to Hitler I think the answer is no unequivocally I would go with no yeah so because Brotherly Love cannot stand the logical test it would have to mean that Brotherly
Love is essentially a either a founded on this sort of supposed altruistic intent of a brother or which is kind of a uh a a fallacy that we’re allowed to kind of leap over because we’re it’s a you know story to move something or it’s saying that it’s a completely you know
Primacia sort of argument which um you know something that is true not all the time it’s circumstantial no yeah I I don’t I don’t wow there’s a lot of disagreement today and but you know we still respect each other or we might after I make this comment um see I I
Don’t think I don’t think it’s it’s Prima fascia because even though that’s an extreme example the important part is is that you’ve got Church Hill and you’ve got Hitler here there’s got to be some sort of empathy between those two to start that that chain of Brotherly Love You
Know and start that chain of action right there’s no points of empathy I can’t think of a single point of empathy where a normal rational person and Hitler would start to walk down that empathetic Trail together I just can’t so Hitler gets a pass because nobody’s gonna give him brotherly love because
There’s no brotherly love coming out to start with you know yeah you can’t you can’t you can’t get what you don’t give off this is Karma conversation at that point well it’s karma but it’s also like uh philosophical physics you know essentially what you du due to the uh uh
The illusion of Duality or uh the illusion of Separation it’s the idea that you do whatever to whatever you do to others you’re doing to yourself whatever you do to yourself you’re doing to others which I like that you say that because now we’re getting to to the concept of
Brotherly Love being transactional oral yeah unlike like pure Agape right which is unconditional and we talked about this in the chat a little bit uh briefly you know over the last couple days and and when you brought this topic up to do on the show I had to think long
And hard about it because this is a like like I said I realized something tonight about action and this is a difficult topic for me because man uh I have a long good memory which means forgiveness is really hard so I think about this in a way that’s
Like uh Scott duball once he I don’t know what he was talking about but it always stuck out right it’s it’s it’s a quote from Jesus something you know along the lines of uh what you do for the least you do for me and I kind of thought about the needs
Of the many outweigh the needs of the few yeah thanks for putting that in tre speak for me um but you know you think about that and I think about like just like I said like the the philosophical physics if you will about uh uh raising everybody through the actions of good things
Toward yourself and others um you know way is is a realization of of Brotherly Love I mean and brotherly as in you know all humans I I I think for and we talk about this especially offline I think and it sounds it soundss pithy and it sounds um
What’s a good way to say this it sounds exclusionary but for us to really get this concept of that agape love you got to be looking for it right you got to be you got to be a Seeker right so and we talk about that you know
Masons who are Seekers versus Masons who just go for the green beans you know what I mean they’re really is a myriad of differences in the reasons why people come to the door of Freemasonry unfortunately right um you know it’s good for membership cards bad for our philosophy
You know because it kind of waters down the whole concept right of being a seeker and searching for that light so I think that again you got to have that innate similarity in that that understanding that I know that John you know as much
As of a pain in the acid he is I know he has that Divine spark inside of him and I can connect with that and I love him for that yeah right you can’t do that with everybody because most of the people there are not seeking right they’re just consuming and consuming
Y’all seen that Meme that’s like a bunch of dudes it’s been making the rounds it’s a bunch of like dudes who are kind of like of different sort of walks of life walking through a book and coming out on the other side as like business guys with briefcases and it’s got a
Square Encompass on the book yes it was like obviously super imposed and my only comment on that was like where’s the Westgate just come on through guys just slap a square compass on you you’ll be good to go yeah yeah we don’t need three degrees anymore what’s just that two and a half
Let’s combine yeah the first two mus it all together somewhere above the you know Mason Dixon line so what do we do what do we do do about that what do we do like let’s say uh we’re not going to talk about issues that any particular organization might have but in the event
That an organization let’s say is uh is heading down a path or has done some things that are less than Masonic we’ll say um and there’s a small contingent of Brothers who I don’t know like want to do something about it and how how can we attempt to show you know brotherly love
And act as Masons and still sort of I don’t know turn the turn the boat in the bathtub you know what I mean I guess the answer is very carefully and it’s very nuanced but yeah Joe I said join the Oddfellows yeah that that’s it I’m gonna start a
New fraternity I’m gonna start a whole new fraternity it’ll be awesome yeah I think I’ll get something written in French yeah the the big takeaway here is right okay so um Brotherly Love can include action that may be there to correct you know a brother which means that uh also
That Harmony does not mean in action it does not mean being quiet it Harmony can mean still taking an action uh which which you believe is the right thing to do and so yeah I mean that’s what’s going to happen we’re going to have disagreements uh for those keeping track
Right in uh in 20 240 like the Grand Lodge systems that we have today are not sustainable and there’s going to be a lot more discussions disagreements about how do we go through that transition it is going to be a forced transition we’re going to have a lot of
Conversations about what we believe the future RAC is going to look like like combining all the degrees right or or grand lodges merging Grand lodges like that these these are just things that we’re not even ready for because we don’t know how to disagree correctly right so so someone put in the
Chat earlier like you know we can agree to disagree that is a solution it doesn’t mean that you are plating doesn’t mean that you are uh just saying just saying okay we’ll we’ll just stop the conversation walking away from it it’s just the agreement to sovereignty really I mean yeah which
Like is understandable a solution it’s in some circumstances it’s a solution I think sometimes people take it to the logical extreme on that right and just say well you know I’m Republican you’re Democrat so therefore we’re gonna agree to disagree on that one it’s like well no you could still
Yeah you there’s this thing called bipartisanship that’s been around for you know quite a while you know the big thing is is that we don’t know how to have dialogue anymore as a society right it’s we go straight to debate and when you most people when and most people
Nowadays they debate incorrectly like don’t watch Fox News or CNN for tips on how to debate right because that’s not where you learn how to debate okay debating doesn’t mean I’m gonna have my answer in my head before you’re finish speaking and I’m not hearing any words
From your mouth going into my ears okay that means actually listening to the dialogue and formulating responses from that we don’t do that anymore whether it’s politics or just how great would the Presidential debates be if shut up I like your shirt yeah I think honestly the the last
Decent political uh debate I saw between presidents was was probably back with like a Romney Obama debate man that was wild back then crazy times yeah all right we’re at the point the in the show where we need to go to the final question and this one is you know again
Thinking about a lot of turmoil that’s coming a lot of hard conversations need to be had I want you to kind of fast forward a little bit more what does an outcome look like when you are actually realizing brotherly love and you have conflict with your
Brothers what does a a good outcome look like like is it you know do you shake hands and walk away do you um agree to disagree what is that what would that be exemplified as because there’s there’s lots of ways this could go but you know
The I want this to be taken away in the sense of again you have a lot of tough tough days ahead for like the Grand Lodge of Texas and they’re they’re uh different issues that they need to to work through and so I my wish for the fraternity is to have brotherly love
Exemplified as they go through that transition so I want to see what would that look like I’m going to start with RJ for Joe’s sake damn you ah man I this is a very like sort of aetheric question John I ask hard questions for a living I I know but like what’s
The I gotta I gotta think about this a minute so you’re gonna need to go to Joe you man you can’t pass this is this is like isn’t go fish oh I got an answer I got two answers wow so you get double give one
To arj I will okay so and most people here will hate my answer okay it’s not going to be what you think so me being a Mason for almost two decades now I’ve learned a very sad but very actualized lesson in that there’s really two types of masons in our
Fraternity there are the people that so I’m thinking in my head what if I have these disagreements with those two different types of M and the first one is your typical Mason that people make fun of right the ones that come to meetings that eat the green beans that
Snore during the degrees that don’t actually do anything Masonic show up pay their dues go home you know they pay money so that I can play Mason and play dress up and do fun stuff and those people I honestly would not give a second thought to having a disagreement
And walking away from them I honestly wouldn’t but then I look at the other type of Mason the ones that you click with and you resonate with and you know came to the altar Freemasonry for the right reasons I’m looking at the both of you and if Jason was here I would add
Him to the bunch too whereas if I got into a genuine disagreement with any of you guys I would do my damnest to try and turn that around you know to see your point of view to empathize with you to be sympathetic and empathetic with what you’re saying to me at the same
Time and try to bury the haget as quickly as possible because it would break my heart to be disconnected from any of you in any sort of way so I know it’s a it’s a crappy answer um you know it’s not it’s not the perfect answer but
Yeah I mean I I I keep masons in two different buckets and there’s some that you know if I never talk to again it wouldn’t impact my life in any way shape or form and then there’s the ones that I would actively go out of my way to try
To make amends with you know so that’s that’s yeah your words on that actually help me out a lot Joe I I to RJ I’ve seen like a lot of writings you know over the years uh you know I’ve read like 10,000 papers probably and in
A lot of those Masonic papers um or even just like papers on friendships and uh you know personal growth and things of those ilk I guess there is a lot of thought about conflict resolution um people love to talk about choosing family uh I’ve seen guys talk about you
Know I’ve I was almost brought up on charges Masonic charges for saying that there are little brothers little little like you you know uh non- Capital brothers and lower case b lower capital B brothers and I think maybe that kind of aligns with what Joe is saying is that U the
Lowercase b Brothers being those kind of ones that the everyday guys who show up don’t do much um but I’m glad they enjoy masonry sure um I think John you had something from from Fort Newton about those guys something about a bib or something but I’ll let you hit that um those those
Sorts of guys yeah I guess I just don’t I’ve often thought about this is this a mental defect on me am I just a sociopath and the reason I asked that question is generally speaking if I leave a job when I left school college all of those things I think you probably told
People like keep in touch but I literally had no intention of it ever I just don’t care and I’m not really sure like there had to be a very intense bond that I would have had to have had with somebody in order to stay in contact with them perhaps there are only
Three people I think I know off the top of my head that I have worked with went to school with that are not not brothers that I actively go out of my way to text talk to and see regardless um and those Brothers honestly one of them we are so misaligned
Politically like holy cow I can’t stand it but you know what brings us together is the fact that I value his friendship and I hope that through action and spending time with that person and through understanding and bonding over other things that in time we might become more I guess
Bipartisan on something that we might not see eye to eye on and I guess maybe that’s the action and I think I would take that same approach in masonry although as Joe said it’s much more difficult to just walk away from a masonic friendship I would ascribe it to any number of you
Know fraternal bonds that and all the things that we go through together um but yeah awesome yeah so now you guys might think wow Robert just doesn’t care about people that’s not true get don’t get on his bad side just saying like contribute or I don’t care oh wow very
Transactional plus one here you got you gotta you got to give something before you get something from Robert okay let me take a note on that one you start off with 100% I’m with you always it’s I can see I can see RJ as a bad Tipper he’s
Like you’re going to start at 10% you either go up or down depending on how well the service you ever seen those guys they put like a $10 bill out and the second like they miss a drink order they take a dollar away what are you
Doing I bet you we go in that office he’s got a chart with us on his door he’s got a scale y he’s got a pivot table with us on it I’m sure book books and blankets little cars that he just peels up there there’s a pivot table
Somewhere I know Joe dun effed up again there’s a gold star coming down all right so yeah that the quote that I was talking to earlier I was listening to a a short talk bulletin that was actually published literally a 100 years ago um December of uh
1923 from Joseph for Newton I made a line in there that said something like the the fork and knife Masons uh who only use their aprons as a bib I thought o that is a stab right there that is a a very harsh critique of those purely exoteric Masons who are only
There for the the Pomp and Circumstance and not for the meaning of masonry but what I’m taking away from this this conversation is Brotherly Love realized is about relationship building right that we actually have to work on relationships whether it’s at home with our family with our boss with our
Co-workers at lodge we are people of different backgrounds who have to come together on the level and yet we still have to work on building that relationship I’ve heard people use terms like I love them as a brother but I don’t have to like them right there are
There are people that may or may not you know get on your last nerves but yet we are in a fraternity together trying to work on finding the commonalities and the good things between each other and and try to unite men instead of divide them um an even worse theology kind of
Is like the love the sin or hate the sin I’m not a big big fan of that I see pros and cons to that phrase however the takeaway is that regardless of the differences right um try to be less transactional try to be more caring more empathetic right and realize that
We’re here to be one sacred Society uh of friends and brothers who are trying to um do the best we can and uh focus on what unites us and so sometimes it’s going to be messy sometimes it’s going to be easy uh let’s chase not just the easy moments but those that actually
Help us progress our moral calls forward so with that I want to thank you all very much for watching and keep searching for more light have a good Night go Texas wow Texas when you did your
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