Welcome to the Tyler’s place podcast a podcast by Freemasons four Freemasons brought to you by the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite Southern jurisdiction I’m Maynard Edwards 33rd degree coming to you from the house of the temple in Washington D.C on our last episode we talked to brother Michael Arce from the
Craftsman online podcast I really hope you checked out their show it’s great show a lot of fun to listen to each week so check that out there Linked In the description of this podcast but during that episode I mentioned that we were going to be connecting with a lot more
Masonic podcasters and on this episode this one is a podcast that’s really special to me brother Hank Griffin’s very good friend and he’s the creator of the you’ve been hanked podcast which is possibly my favorite name for any podcast ever you’ve been hanked and it’s entirely unique in the world of masonic
Podcasting he talks about Freemasonry and family and faith and it’s not done in just these discussion type formats like this podcast it’s done through these wonderfully told stories that are just so evocative that it will take you to a place in your mind that is very special it’s it’s a story
And and brother Hank really takes you on a journey he’s the grand chaplain of Maryland he’s become a great friend as I said and I want to play you an excerpt from one of his recent episodes just so you can experience what you’ve been hanked is like a Granddad Bob and Granny
Alice were married a long time decades a lifetime they loved each other they must have to stay together because they didn’t really seem to like each other very much don’t get me wrong they made it work and I really admire them for it frankly a whole lot of people could
Learn from their example it wasn’t easy for them during the day they occupied themselves with very different tasks sometimes they shared more in their midday meals though often they didn’t if company was over they usually took supper together when the day’s labor were finished she relaxed in
The bedroom to read or watch television he relaxed in the front room to do the same each had their own domains his was his shop where he welled it did other kinds of work and worked on hobbies that he enjoyed hers was the house particularly the kitchen and the yard
Where she liked to Garden the front room was Common Ground both loved horses and ride and so the barn was also Common Ground there wasn’t a lot of other Common Ground that’s an excerpt from the you’ve been hanked podcast created by Brother Hank Griffin he’s the grand chaplain of Maryland and
As you can hear his approach to Masonic podcasting is very personal very unique I sat down with Hank a few weeks ago at his home Lodge in pentelpha lodge number 194 in Germantown Maryland and we started talking about podcasting and family and Freemasonry and all those
Things and and a lot of his stories seem to take place in the little town of beautiful East Texas so I asked Hank what’s beautiful East Texas really like I’m from beautiful East Texas and sometimes people say Oh Hang where is beautiful and beautiful is about 80 miles east of Dallas but it’s
Not really name beautiful that’s sort of a region I thought well if I’m going to tell stories am I going to talk about this little town or this little Community or this no it’s it’s a region that I like to refer to as beautiful and some of my most beautiful memories are
Of that region and the people that live there and the time that I spent there which was the first half of my life all my first loves were there all the old people that I love are there my first really good extraordinary dog came from beautiful it’s a wonderful place it’s just it
It’s a place it’s a plane of existence a spiritual plane a state of excitement sometimes desire and the most wonderful memories yeah I’m from beautiful I’ve been here for about 20 years my dearest love is a native of this area when we met online it wasn’t really a thing back then
We realized that it was the real thing and that one of us was going to have to move and we flipped a coin and I lost I’m not complaining I want everything else but yeah there you go and and so you spent your life in Texas
Now what did you do for a living so growing up I I don’t want to ruin too many of your stories and and have you spill them all here because they’re you make me miss that that part of the country and I’m not even from there but
What what did you do for a living and throughout your life when I I began my professional life as a police officer I thought what am I going to do that I can make a difference in people’s lives hopefully help some people maybe even save a baby or two before it’s all said
And done and I realized that policing was probably the best way for me to go about that I was not a police officer for as long as I would like to have been things happened and I I was not able to keep up with with that kind of work and
I have done some writing and some editing and in fact I retired as an editor in the year 17 here in this area but what I do these days and what I really love doing is I’m involved with my family and my faith and my fraternity I’ve been a Mason for
By Texas record in 24 years by Maryland Reckoning 23 in Texas when you’re an Entered Apprentice you’re a mason in Maryland it’s different and that’s fine I I love Maryland masonry that’s that is an observation of the way things are but not a criticism and raising my family you know I have one
Final great work left and it’s to raise my young son he’s 10 I have a daughter who’s 27 and three beautiful grand babies and a 10 year old boy and she would like to raise him to adulthood and see him get his starting life and
Along the way if I can do some good in the world and maybe Inspire some people to also want to do some good in the world then that’s craving that’s gravy on an otherwise beautiful chicken fried steak now you know why I love this guy uh the
The his his your entire manner of speaking it’s it’s a uh it is an art form unto itself that I I truly love that form I’m a huge fan and if folks who are watching who are listening um you have to know who Garrison Keeler
Is and and you remind me a little of the Masonic Harrison Kia your approach to things and and but I have to know what first brought you to that door those those three distinct Knox all Masons must make what brought you to that door was it’s a family with this run in your
Family or uh something else entirely I wish it did run in my family it does not when I was a kid every day I robust too back and forth to school I’d get on the bus at five o’clock in the morning I’d get off the
Bus at about 5 30 in the afternoon two hours 52 miles one way on the oil and dirt road to beautiful East Texas and just before I’d arrive at School each day I’d pass a pitiful little run down Shack of a building it couldn’t have been more than about
Oh if it was if it was 12 or 16 that might be bigger than it really was I’m pointing the distant pass it might have been painted yellow maybe and the only thing that was pretty on that building was on the side there was a black Square Encompass that they
Really did go to some effort to make they didn’t maintain anything else but they maintained that square encumber that was the local Masonic lodge and it was right on the edge of the school property the last thing that I saw before I got school every day was that Lodge and the
First thing that I saw every day as I was leaving school was that large now from the time I was seven until I was old enough not to have to ride the bus anymore that was a enduring part of my day and I remember passing out look at what
Is that what is and I didn’t know but I knew that emblem even though I didn’t know what it was I didn’t know what it was called I knew that it was important it was significant and when I got old enough to start paying attention I noticed that that
Emblem was on the rings of some men and without exception anytime I was able to recognize that that emblem was on somebody’s either their finger or maybe they had a special shirt or something on the back of their truck that was a good man those men were inevitably and without exception in my
Experience those were good men and that had my attention that had my budding uh attention of a of a young man who was trying to put things in life together and one day I recognized that my good friend Mr Blanton he was uh a World War
II veteran I talk a lot about my uncle Carl in my podcast and he was a contemporary of my Uncle Carl Mr Blanton lived down the road in a house that was built back in the 1850s and I remember one day he was working on his barbed wire fence
I was driving down the road I didn’t have anything else to do and I pulled over hello Mr Blanton he waved at me and I walked over can I help you with events and he sort of laughed at me but he let me and I asked him what is that ring
That’s that’s a masonic inlets called Square Encompass why are you asking he said I just like to know more about it and he talked to me a little bit about it and I said well how do you how do you become a Mason he said well if you want to be a Mason
You have to ask a Mason he said nobody’s ever going to invite you if you want to be one you need to ask one and I said in your one he said yes I said I’m asking he said what are you asking he had a sense of humor is it kind of wry
I said Mr Blaine I’m asking can I be a mason well I don’t know and we went back to work and he didn’t really talk about it anymore and I didn’t understand why and I was a little bit embarrassed and at the end I thought surely surely
He was going to say something more he didn’t say anything more and I thought what in the world well I shook his hand and I I got back my car we worked for some hours on that fence and that sucker never said anything more about it and I
Went on my way and I saw him again as a few weeks later and again I asked him about it he just sort of smiled and he nodded he didn’t say much this went on for nearly a year he was an old kind of Mason sure
One does nowadays they’d give you oh my god get the word out of your mouth no I was driving down the dirt road in front of his house one time and I was driving sort of slow when he was on his porch and he saw me and he
Waved hey and he called out like you do I pulled in he said I want to show you something and we walked around to his backyard now in beautiful East Texas I had never seen a pomegranate tree before I don’t know that at that point in my life I’d ever actually seen a
Pomegranate I didn’t know what that was and we started to go out to his pasture and I looked around I was a little nervous because when I was a kid I got in a tangle with this bull one time and I didn’t want to get in another one that
Amino Bull and we I realized we was about to cross that fence and I said I was Miss playing what have we done and he started laughing at me said don’t worry the Bull’s in the other package you’ll be fine and we crossed the pencil we started walking towards this tree and
It was probably about 14 feet tall and not a great big tree he said do you recognize that well yeah it’s a trees and don’t don’t be that way do you recognize what the tree is no sir I don’t know what it is and we got close
And I realized it had red Globes hanging on it and I thought I know that’s one I don’t know and he picked one of those pomegranates for me and he handed it to him and he picked one for him and handed it to him
And he showed me how to open it up and I thought oh that’s beautiful riff full of and we began to talk about um just life in general and and I’m wondering what are we doing here and finally he said a year ago you asked me about masonry you said you want to
Become a Mason he said do you still want to be a Mason I said yeah Mr man I want to be amazing man talk to you in about a while because I didn’t think that you really wanted me to and he said well I wasn’t sure and I need to be sure before
I recommend the fraternity that I love that I recommend somebody to join it because I don’t need somebody that I join in it somebody that I’ve recommended to join it to come in and make a spectrum of themselves and embarrass me or detract from my brotherhood and before that conversation was over he
Reached into his jacket pocket and he pulled out the most beautiful heavy Bond light blue folded up piece of paper he unfolded it and had a picture of the Grand Lodge of Texas on it that’s where my where I got my start the Grand Lodge of Texas and
Handed it to me and it was so beautiful I wish I still had it he said you need to get seven signatures and you need seven references and here is the list names of people that I think you may know that you you might want to ask about this I said I
Noticed you didn’t sign it he said you hadn’t asked he was an old school Mason he was an old school Mason but he was one of the best men that I’ve ever known and I wanted to be like him and that’s what brought me to Masonry
That style of of telling the story is what makes your podcast so unique and so special so what what made you decide you wanted to take all these wonderful tales that you have and and commit them to this New Media I think that this is a medium that does a few things one
As I record these things and I save them in an electronic format it will be a legacy for my children they will have the stories that I’m the only person on Earth that even knows these stories and a lot of the stories that I have
Are a legacy to me from my uncle Carl from my grandfathers from my grandmothers from my parents and they’re stories that nobody else knows or nobody else understands quite the way that I do and I want my children to have these things and have that perspective but not only that
It also gives me an opportunity to share with with good men and good women uh things that maybe they will never otherwise encounter in quite the same way I know that the way that I express myself which incidentally is sort of like falling in the ditch you just do it
It’s not special uh as I’m doing it any more than falling into ditches honestly I spend as much time trying to get out of that ditch as anything else but I I want I want to have an opportunity to affect the world for better Michael Carlo said Hank if if you want a
Neighbor you have to be a neighbor and I would amend that very slightly if you really want a good brother you have to be a good brother if you want your community to be the best it can be you need to be the best you can be in effect in it
And this is just one of the ways that I’m it’s a small way it’s a simple way but this is one of the ways that I’m able to do that or at least I hope so the unique thing about your podcast aside from the storytelling and the personal element is it’s it’s not
History of high degree masonry or anything of this sort it’s very simple blue Lodge type of lessons of how is this man living these lessons every single day and what where where do those lessons fit in in the grander scheme in in your life and I think that’s a lot
More unique than you give yourself credit for so it it was there in terms of Storytelling is there someone who influences you that you were doing that I mean this feels a lot like your journal and I love that element that’s not I hope that doesn’t sound like I’m I’m dismissing
What you’re doing is it feels so deeply personal that’s what made me love it instantly well there’s two things that I know for sure number one now I’m not talking in the macro in the macro but but in the cosmic schema I’m nobody and I’m nothing I there are
I have an opportunity to walk in a company of giants but but I’m a dwarf walking in the country of Giants and so for me to ever suppose that uh I should take it on myself to tell you how you should do something that that’s that doesn’t enter
My mind frankly if anything else I wouldn’t mind hearing some good counsel whispered in my own ear uh to help me get this this other thing that I maybe need some help with right as far as influences um there’s a few first and foremost I know that I mentioned my uncle Carl
Before he’s one of like my dad uh and my granddad Bob and and my mom he’s a a pillar upon which I’ve built the foundation of my manhood he his personal example in everything almost is worthy of emulation and I aspire to emulate it and he never said
The words I think I’m a Storyteller he just told stories and they were the most wonderful story he would talk about how uh he was originally from Oklahoma I’m a sixth or seventh generation Texan that was not the case for him they came from Oklahoma the Dust Bowl finally ran them
Out in the and the Great Depression and uh one of the stories that I love and I do talk about this on my podcast in in the episode uh I think I call it escaping the dust bowl or something like that was how he came to Texas and he
Would tell this wonderful story about how the Dust Bowl was encroaching and his father would work their cotton Farm they Farm cotton and it was not a big farm they’d get two Bales a year and all the kids in him would work if they never hired anybody never had electricity never had any
Running water they had a spring that they had buried a barrel into the ground and neighbors would come from all over and they in this cold wonderful clean water and get this water and eventually the Dust Bowl just ran them out and they had to get out and his
Brother Jim died him it was just this awful in a way story but also the way that he told it you had much less sense of the tragedy of it and much more sense the beautiful evolution of our family’s history in a way that was In Living Color just by virtue of the
Way he told it and it wasn’t just that story all kinds of stories he was painfully shy he did not encourage anybody to come to his home except for my brothers and I and and my mother who who he sort of took under his wing when his
Uh she was married to his nephew and and he loved us boys and he sort of took her under her Wing uh as a as a way to uh be closer to us boys but he didn’t really encourage anybody because he was just so shy but these stories these
Wonderful that nobody knows and I don’t want these stories to be lost you mentioned Garrison Keeler I love the way that Garrison Keeler tells stories there’s things about Garrison Keeler that I don’t want to emulate but his manner of telling stories I’m pretty sure that I will never be
Able to uh to match that caliber of Storytelling and I’m okay with that because I’m not Garrison Keeler I’m Hank but I used to listen to the Prairie Home Companion anytime I could dial in uh the the College radio station that was not too far from my house anytime I
Could dial that in at midnight it’d come on at midnight or he’d come on at uh 10 o’clock in the morning on Saturday and I like to listen to the Prairie Home Companion I like to listen to Paul Harvey Paul Harvey and he would tell these wonderful stories and you know
What the news is now you’ll hear the rest of the story then he’d end it good day and oh my gosh everything in between that I don’t know who Cole Porter is before I heard Paul Harvey talk about Cole Porter but when I heard him talk
About I wanted to know who is Cole Porter and that’s true for so much else and one of the things that I loved about Paul Harper I’m a Latter-Day Saint and uh in those days in that part of the world we weren’t always real popular but Paul Harvey would occasionally talk about the
Latter-Day Saints and it was never in a uh in a negative way or a condescending way and I thought oh man this is one that would encourage me to listen to him more yeah you know there’s there’s several influences there when it comes to uh to storytelling but those maybe are
Three of the biggest ones well I want to talk a little bit about your Masonic career if we could because you’re the grand chaplain and I think you’re and this is no slight to any any men who’ve come before you but you’re you’re you do such a fantastic job in
That role uh and you’ve you’ve you’ve come to my rescue on more than one occasion um I I wonder what made you get in that line to become an officer in the Masonic class last year we record this in 2023 uh last year was that your first year in the east
Ah sir yes I served in 2020 I’m sorry 2022 that was my first year in the east and it was here and we’re in your home Lodge in telfa this has been to Apple lodge number 194 in beautiful Germantown Maryland and I’m going to tell you this
My favorite Lodge in all of God’s beautiful creation I love this life now there’s a there’s 103 wonderful lodges in Maryland I don’t detract from any of those but this one’s my favorite and and I there’s no questions about it it is I came
Um I think it was the year 17 or 18 I don’t remember for sure uh I’ve been in Mason since 99 and I joined the Scottish ride in Maryland in 2006. I moved here in 2004. I told you we flipped a coin to see who would who would move and I lost that’s
Not really what happened what really happened is my father-in-law my bride was going to move to Texas and she had agreed to do that and we elope to Texas and on the morning of our wedding he said listen Hank my dad’s 78. and you know I’m the youngest and I’m there
Looking after making sure he’s okay and I’m worried that if I move down here he’s going to be alone he’s not going to have anybody looking in on him and you know my mom passed away uh in 2000 I’m just I’m worried him she started crying
What do you do you know I mean if you love your wife you say okay we’re gonna we’re gonna do the right thing and that’s what you do pack my bags and oh it was hard but I packed my bags and I moved up here
And one of the ways she sold me on this it’s gonna sound terrible I don’t mean poor too she said he’s 78 he’s really only planning to live to about you know 83. he’s probably only going to live for another two or three years and then we’ll move back to Texas
Yeah okay that sounds reasonable that’s soccer live for 12 more years 12 more years man I’ve ever known he uh I I’m going to talk about him in my podcast one day Jerry saw one third of this nation’s history with his own eyes that man shook not one but two hands of
Living Civil War veterans when he was five years old he saw World War II from his time in the Southeast I’m sorry in the South Pacific Theater and on the front lines in Italy fighting the Nazis in the fascists wow Jerry is an extraordinary human being and so for me
To say that secondly for 12 more thank goodness he did sure but obviously but I was not planning for something no no glad it went way it did yes so God’s plan is better but God’s plan is better and of course it really is because in
That 12 years we had a lot of time to invest ourselves here and you can’t just get up and move once you’ve done that you’ve got to let your crops come to fruition and we’re still waiting on that time so we may be here forever who knows
Who knows in the end it’s been very good I joined Scottish writing masonry in Baltimore in the year six but I didn’t do anything else and then one day I woke up and I realized what are you doing you need commute I’m a church Community that’s a good thing but you need more
Than that foreign and that’s here at pent Alpha and I came and I knocked on the door and there was uh two gentlemen John uh John Austin and uh Chris Brown dear friend John yes two good men and both of whom had become my very dear friends I love these men like
Well like my own brothers and they are my own Brothers but they’re my personal friends in addition to that and I would come to the uh the vendors and the fellowship opportunities and get to know them and as a as a part of that but naturally because we’re in Pentacle
Lodge I’m meeting a lot of the Brethren from here I fell in with these guys and I realized I like this community and affiliated and I served as the um look at me Point like I served as the senior deacon then I served as the junior Warden and uh
At the time our worshipful master James Kinnear who was serving his third term not consecutive but his third term he came to me and said listen brother hang we don’t need somebody to serve in the where in the East next year who isn’t me
And do you think it could be you and I thought I don’t I don’t know and this was um the end of March in 19 and he said you’re a little bit behind already he said if you don’t have something in May uh in the way of of
Having certified you’re going to be in in trouble and we should say for folks listening and watching that in Maryland the worshipful master has to pass an exemplification test of all three degrees and it’s pretty hefty you’ve got to do all the degree work and the entire lecture first second and third from
Memory no books none of that stuff and you have to do that in a large setting so you have to prove you can get six guys who’ll go in with you to do the degree work and and and that you can you know hurt all those cats and do all that
Memory work so it’s it’s a significant task to exemplify it really is and I was so fortunate two of my brothers here brother Carl and brother Ken started meeting with me every Thursday off Thursday we meet on Thursdays every off Thursday and we’re so helpful to me and then I met John
Breck who’s Master over at um Silver Spring and we started working together and built a real friendship just on on this experience of trying to certify for the East and and together we memorize 30 000 words and we certified we did it in seven months and I’m not boasting that’s just that’s the
Way that it happened and I was able to serve and then in the course of 2022 we were really active extremely active and and I don’t I’m not again I hope you don’t think I’m boasting but we won the grand Masters award and I’m so proud of having won the grand Masters award
Grandmaster Mills was very kind in in presenting that it was so meaningful to me to have that happen and then uh then Deputy Grandmaster Spicer very kindly reached out to me a day or two after his election I was driving down there actually promise was driving to my my
Ride’s name as promised she was driving and I was riding with her and I got a call from Brother Spicer and he said would you be willing to serve as my Grand chaplain and I uh yes sir and thank you very much I would I would like that and then I got
Off the phone I looked at promise and I thought I I don’t know that I’m the right man for this and I’m pretty sure that I’m not qualified for this but my uncle Carl told me many times and my dad reiterated many times that when somebody asked you to provide service
You provide that service and you do the best that you can and if I’m succeeding good and and if I’m failing then that’s further uh Spicer’s fault for choosing poorly well I don’t think he chose poorly at all and I’m glad you sort of beat me to
My next question which is that you are obviously a man of deep Faith you mentioned that your Latter-Day Saints and you know you and I I say this as a compliment not as a criticism you wear your faith on your sleeve and I that is
To your credit and I can see that and and so many things that you do and you definitely have brought that to the the office of the grand chaplain and so you sort of beat me to the punch how you ended up being Grand chaplain but
What does that role mean to you what what does that mantle mean to you because you are doing it a little differently than a lot of other folks that have that have done that in recent memory and that’s not again not a criticism of them but it’s a it’s a
Credit to you and and your approach just being unique to Hank remember what I said about the way that I talk is sort of like falling into a ditch and it’s just sort of the way things are that I I don’t have any subtlety I don’t have
A lot of nuance I’m just who I am and if I could just take a moment and um credit some good men who have served before me uh brother Dave Sandy is my media he’s so kind into me and so good oh I I mentioned uh earlier on Facebook I I
Expressed that I wanted to take my son to do some more fishing we’ve done a little fish but I want to do some more and he immediately offered to to take me and be a guide in certain places that man is a good man brother uh brother Omer who preceded me
Blesses our rest of Soul arrest in peace any time that somebody comes to me and they talk about uh men who were uh some of the most able men that that our Grand Lodge has seen serving in this role his name is right at the the tip of
Their tongue and on and on their lips those two are not not the only two but they are two that I want to be sure that that we remember and of course I’m surrounded by some of the best assistants you could ever actually there’s a rabbi Randy shock and brother
Earl Benson and Brother Andy Crowley I’m so fortunate to have a um an infrastructure of experience and willingness to serve and as for me in the way that I take this role I don’t I don’t know how much you or your listeners know about Latter-Day Saints but um
One of the things that people I think associate with us is a desire to proselytize masonry is not that place we are a a wonderfully pluralistic society of friends and brothers and I do not ever want that to change I like it just like it is and merely having the opportunity
To serve in this Vineyard from the Prospect and standpoint of how can I bless you just as you are and work with you to make this world that we live in better means the world to me when people are in a little bit of a fix I think sometimes
Our default is what I don’t remember you in my prayers and that’s important and I and I do want to remember people in in my prayers but I also would like to be able to sit with you and laugh with you and cry with you and bless you and be blessed by you
And can I bring you a meal and can we share a meal and and can I invest my time in you in a way that blesses you without overstepping I desperately wanted to serve a mission when I was 18. my uncle Carl who I keep falling back to develop Alzheimer’s
He didn’t have kids he wasn’t married there wasn’t anybody else to take care of me and he asked me he knew what was happening he asked me would I look after him and take care of him I had sold all my worldly possessions to fund a mission
I’d gone down and interviewed with my bishop and my State president the go-ahead was in place I was waiting on a mission call and I realized that I could not go if he wasn’t going to be okay like kind of like promising her dad
And so I didn’t go and I have not ever regretted that service to Uncle Carl but I have regretted that lack of service to my faith community and this gives me an opportunity maybe not an exact opportunity but an opportunity to serve the Greater Community in a way
That I in a significant way similar to that that I would have done had I served that mission and I’m getting a wonderful support from my faith and in fact there’s an a process that we’ve almost ended they’re about to provide an ecclesiastical endorsement for me to um
To be set apart as a Chaplain in the church and also as a missionary in the church specifically to serve Maryland Masons not to proselytize not to convert to serve and bless Marilyn Masons and that is in the first sentence of the uh the memorandum that they sent to the
Bishop and State president uh when they when they asked them to do those interviews and I couldn’t be more pleased this opportunity has been a gift and a blessing to me and if I don’t do the best that I can to to live it accordingly then I’m failing
Everybody and so I’m just doing my best well and speaking of that one of the things one of the ways that brother hankin we were brothers for a long time because we were both Masons but we we didn’t know each other until this year I
Think I was I was a member of the grand line when you became master of this Lodge so I was here for that but we you know those things there’s 300 people in the room and you know you you’d be lucky if you get to say hi to your own mom and
One of those things and but we were at a quieter meeting earlier in the year of this year and I was having a rough time and I went to the Grand chaplain who I didn’t know well at all really and uh asked him for a few
Prayers and he was kind enough to uh to to bless me in that moment and we had a good chat and we’ve since become friends do you get a lot of that do you get a lot of guys come to you to get is it it must get a little bit challenging people
Like me weigh in their burdens on you and saying you know brother oh brother here you know having a tough time with this I mean does that get heavy on your heart no no uh I welcome these opportunities if if a chaplain cannot provide spiritual support to uh to those
Who fall in the stewardship that that that is well then you don’t need to be chaplain and so I I welcome those opportunities no it’s not a burden or anything like it in fact I have people who come to me and regularly ask me uh brother Hank I’m
Struggling with this I’m struggling with that will you pray for me certainly certainly I’ll pray for you but but how is it that you would like for me to pray for you what can specifically is it that and that opens conversations that opens opportunities for relationship building
Which is every bit as important you certainly you want to intervene uh with with the Almighty uh or not intervene but but supplicate on behalf of what the Almighty I believe that when you’re in the service of your fellow being you’re only in the service of your God and so
Faith is action I’m not trying to get into a discussion about this but this is the place for it but but faith in my view of things includes action and when these opportunities come I immediately want to know how I can bless you in tangible ways I’m not talking
About getting my checkbook out necessarily and writing a check but how can I bless you in tangible’s in addition to those prayers and there’s no better venue for that than to make it clear in our meetings in my writings in our conversations that I want to do that
I’m trying to do that I’m trying to make it clear that if I may be of service to you I’d like to be of service to you and as a consequence of that I have good men like you who are coming to me saying yeah I’m struggling with something
And then we get to talk about what it is and then we get to become friends like you and I have our Brotherhood is sharpened and deepened and broadened our respective ex and and mutual experiences as Masons is brought into sharper Focus and it is as much a blessing to me
Perhaps more than it is to you because I get so much back out of it and I don’t mean necessarily tangible things for me I’m not talking about favors I’m talking about blessings no it’s not a burden at all and I don’t feel weighed down I I I’m so grateful
For this opportunity to serve you know some people think well I want to do this and I want to do that and I don’t have any aspirations necessarily other than I want to be a good neighbor I want to be a good brother and I’ve never found a better place a
Better venue to be a good neighbor or a good brother than I have in Masonry and specifically as being a chaplain I if if anybody out there listening is thinking of themselves where is the opportunity for me to do as much good in the world as I can possibly do
Sitting in that chaplain’s chair and doing more than just offering that that uh beautiful set of of rope prayers taking it further as far as you can take it there may be no other place uh even in certain ways than the East because in the East you have so many
Heavy burden you don’t have that as Chaplin it’s Chaplin you just have an opportunity good in the world is there a lesson from masonry that you carry with you that you reflect back on I mean I think they all get us at some point in time I think all of them hit us
Variously but is there one that really that you connect with more than the others yeah yeah there’s there’s two and I’ll tell you one and I’ll allude to the other the first one is masonry takes men of every understanding of every origin and Circumstance and socioeconomic background
Men of every Faith but you must have some degree of faith and they bring them into this Lodge and lodges just like it all over the world and they and it introduces them and over a period of time and initial experience it makes them brothers and we’re not just friends we’re not
Just neighbors certainly we are those things and those are important but we are brother you’re no longer Mr your brother and it makes friends of men who would otherwise never have met the likelihood of you and I meeting is so remote as to be highly unlikely the further likelihood that we would
Meet and then become friends the way that we have astronomically low and that’s true for all my brothers in Masonry some of my very best friends in all the world are men that I have served with in in these settings yeah that lesson is first and foremost
For me in this in the second one um is very simply the importance of of going and visiting those who are struggling brother Hank Griffin he said and just a wonderful wonderful guy and when you talk about the real deal the guy who walks the Walk of Freemasonry
You’re talking about Hank Griffin 100 he is the creator of the you’ve been hanked podcast and the grand chaplain of Maryland you can find that you’ve been hanked podcast on Apple podcasts I’ve got it linked in the description of this episode of the Tyler’s place I really
Really hope you will subscribe to you’ve been hanked because I know you’re going to enjoy taking that Journey with Hank and taking that trip to beautiful East Texas to learn how Hank is incorporating those Masonic lessons into his everyday life it’s it’s really different and it’s
Really special and I hope that you will subscribe meanwhile that’s going to wrap things up for this episode I thank you so much for joining us here I’m Maynard Edwards 33rd degree coming to you from the house of the temple in Washington D.C Tyler’s place podcast is brought to
You by the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite Southern jurisdiction if you’ve got questions comment answer ideas you can always email us at podcast scottishrite.org and we’d be happy to answer your questions don’t forget to check out our other podcast the Scottish Rite Journal podcast and please do check
Out the YouTube channel and I hope you will subscribe that will wrap it up and I will catch you next time right here on the Tyler’s place foreign
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