The
Lodge is the center of activities for masons. Masonry teaches that each person
has a responsibility to make things better in the world. Most individuals will
not be the ones to find a cure for cancer, or eliminate poverty, or help create
world peace, but every man and woman and child can do something to help others
and to make things a little better. Masonry is deeply involved with helping
people -- it spends more than $1.4 million dollars every day in the United
States, just to make life a little easier and the great majority of that help
goes to people who are not Masons. Some of these charities are vast projects,
like the Crippled Children’ s Hospitals and Burns Institutes built by the
Shriner’ s. Also, Scottish Rite Masons maintain a nationwide network of over
100 Childhood Language Disorders Clinics, Centers, and Programs. Each helps
children afflicted by such conditions as aphasia, dyslexia, stuttering, and
related learning or speech disorders.
Some
services are less noticeable, like helping a widow pay her electric bill or
buying coats and shoes for disadvantaged children. And there is just about
anything you can think of in-between, but with projects large or small, the
Masons of a lodge try to help make the world a better place. The lodge gives
them a way to combine with others to do even more good.
Masonry
does things "inside" the individual Mason. "Grow or die" is
a great law of all nature. Most people feel a need for continued growth as
individuals. They feel they are not as honest or as charitable or as
compassionate or as loving or as trusting or as well-informed as they ought to
be. Masonry reminds its members over and over again of the importance of these
qualities and education. It lets men associate with other men of honor and
integrity who believe that things like honesty, compassion, love, trust, and
knowledge are important. In some ways, Masonry is a support group for men who
are trying to make the right decisions. It is easier to practice these virtues
when you know that those around you think they are important, too, and will not
laugh at you. That is a major reason that Masons enjoy being together.