What do Masons do, anyway?

One can obviously see how this question would be difficult to answer for non-Masons, but shouldn't the answer be trivial for Masons? Well, maybe, but within our Lodge - and perhaps within yours as well - this question has come up many times and no one has yet come up with an accurate, but succinct answer.

Think about it. I'm sure some of you are saying to yourselves: Well, Masons in the U.S. contribute well over a million dollars a day to charities ranging from the Shriners Hospitals for Crippled Children to the Scottish Rite Language Disorders Clinics to the various York Rite Bodies' medical research funds. Also, let us not forget programs such as the Student Assistance Program to help teachers recognize and deal with students at risk and the large number of substantial scholarships given to graduating high school seniors each year by the California Masonic Foundation, not to mention funds raised to benefit local schools and charitable organizations on the local level by our local Lodges. Even more important, almost all of this charity is dispensed without regard to Masonic affiliation.

Well, this is all well and good and something of which we can justifiably be proud, but I submit to you that these activities do not present a satisfactory answer to the question under discussion. Masons believe in philanthropy, but we do not consider ourselves to be a philanthropic organization per se.

Some of you may be thinking: "Well, we take care of our widows, orphans, and impoverished brethren by supporting the Masonic Homes and offering Masonic charity when called for". And, again, we should justifiably be proud of these efforts, but - strictly speaking - Freemasonry is not a benevolence or insurance society either.

Given the hour, some of you may be thinking "Masons sure do eat well when the talking stops". And while a love of food - in my case, perhaps, an addiction - seems to be a mark of a Mason, no one would consider the essence of Masonry to be a dining club.

"Aha", someone in the backrow might be thinking, "Masonry takes good men and makes them better". While this is, in principle, true, the phrase is cliché at best and jingoistic at worst and raises more questions (How? Where? When?) than it answers. However, the sentiment behind this statement does, indeed, provide the germ of an answer to the deceptively simple question just posed.

I want to submit to you this evening that the most succinct answer to the question "What do Masons do?" is simply that Masons Do! Whether we are talking about huge cooperative efforts like the East/West Shrine Game or local fund - raising efforts to benefit a local school, whether we are talking about visiting the sick, providing a voting precinct, putting on a degree, or just practicing for one - Even if we are just talking about breaking bread together: Masons continually prove that it is in fact possible - and most certainly desirable - for men with perhaps nothing in common in the traditional sense - men of different religions, ethnicity, economic, and education levels - to work together to build something greater than themselves or their own self-interests. In a world that is increasingly polarized by greed and the belief in some quarters in the absolute supremacy of one's own conception of Deity, Masons - even by their smallest actions - demonstrate that the concept of true brotherhood is not just an ephemeral concept from a sociology textbook and that building is not just a term that can be applied to contractors. This, brethren and friends, is, in my opinion, the essence of the fraternity and the thing of which all Masons should be the most proud.

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