By Brother Mark Stumacher, MPS

We have witnessed, even in our own time, a de-evolution of the creative gifts and intellectual truths that our divine natures are meant to receive and to express.

The unity of these gifts given to us by the Grand Architect have become fractured and diluted. Poetry has lost its rhyme, meter, and emotional content, as has music. Art that was once a combination of history, beauty, and grand composition, and which spoke to the several receptive elements of man’s nature, has been relegated to smattering paint on canvasses. People hope to find meaning in prices that reflect wealth and status.

Humanity’s ability to receive divine inspiration and fashion it by increasingly purified soul forces has not changed; the realization of our potential gifts and how to obtain them has. We have in our society those who can potentially produce music as a Mozart, art as a Rembrandt, and poetry as a Burns. This goes for any discipline that has ever been

crafted by the Great Architect for man to express his own particular designs. To inspire these divine gifts, to shape them and give them more unified expression is the natural inheritance of all; it is the mission of Masonry to preserve this knowledge in perpetuity.

We can rise to the unity of the pyramid’s peak, or fracture our divine gifts until they are unrecognizable, and distorted with a morality that is base, cruel, and unsatisfying. Many particularly the youth of today, suffer from a lack of meaning in their lives and don’t know how to transform their lives. They take their suffering as a normal course of life, and lack models of morality to guide them. As a consequence, they lack a vehicle to attain the assets they might have that would fulfill them in this life and, potentially, in the next. As Thoreau said, “The mass of men lead lives of a quiet desperation.”

Society has lost its way. The poles representing the standards of morality are set so far apart that they can no longer be seen. Anything goes now, and the law of accident reigns supreme. Mankind is not in any position, in its present state, to receive its wages, and to correct itself. It is true that individuals must be brought to feel the pain of their shortcomings, and be directed to the right path. If enough individuals come to this realization at the same time, then society may change. Until then, we, as Masons, as we work for ourselves and our brothers, must continue to be the standard bearers opposing the ignorance of society, as it is ignorance of the truth that blinds people to their deficiencies as they seek meaning in empty pursuits.

From Connecticut Freemasons, May 2010