Our Worshipful Master has posed a question to the Craft: What came you here to do?  There are many answers at many levels.  Some came here to find friends. Some came to find something missing in their life. Some came simply to get out of the house. Others came for reasons only they can know.

Anyway, I was brooding on this question and I realized that it is also a question of personal responsibility. The question is, after all, “What came YOU here to do?”

In the Lodge room, a rough-cut stone block sits in the northeast corner of the Lodge. Not far away is its smooth counterpart.  The two ashlars, rough and perfect, are among the moveable jewels of the Lodge in this jurisdiction. I understand that is not the case in other parts of the world, where the ashlars are considered immovable.  I find wisdom in that.  A Brother could hurt himself seriously trying to prove either ashlar was moveable, you know?

        Consider the rough ashlar.

        Here is a stone, as yet unfit for the hands of the Master Builder.  Much work must be done to chip away the imperfections before it is fit for that house not built by human hands. What I had not considered before, however, is the fact that much has already been done for the rough ashlar to achieve even its imperfect condition.  Before it was hewn from the quarry, it was just part of a mass of stone—not unlike any one of us before we accept the responsibility for our own actions, when we were just part of the mob.

        Now, many people, I believe, will go through their entire lives without a single original thought.  They move with the crowd, dress in the right clothes, drive the right cars, eat at the right places and never think one new thought.  Are they responsible for their actions?  Or is it the crowd, the mob.  Before its removal from the quarry, the rough ashlar was just part of the crowd. 

        Now, even in its rough form, it stands alone, by itself, ready to accept responsibility for its actions. 

        When we first knocked at the door of our Craft, we separated ourselves from the crowd, to stand upon the first step of a Mason in the place of the rough ashlar.  We have far to go to achieve any thing close to perfection, of course, but we have taken the first step.

        As rough and unpolished as I am, I am responsible for my actions. As Masons, we are responsible for what we do. 

        This is a favorite soapbox of mine, as many of you know. Somewhere, somehow, during the last few decades, this concept of personal responsibility has faded.  Students abdicate their own responsibility for learning and blame teachers. Politicians duck responsibility and hide in the faceless crowd of their political party. Corporate executives hide in a trackless maze of financial mumbo-jumbo. Singer Joan Baez once sang about how “we need leaders and we get gamblers, instead.”  How well put and how true.  I have a poster in my office. It shows an eagle in full flight about the Rocky Mountains. The caption reads: “Leaders are like eagles. We don’t have either here.” 

If civilization and nations fail, I believe it will not ultimately be the great issues of the time that will do it. It will simply be the final admission that no one is responsible for anything anymore.  I also believe that is why it is important that Freemasonry survive, an anchor in dark times for the souls of men, a perfect ashlar in the midst of imperfection.

        What came I here to do?

        I came here to try hard to chip away those imperfections in the company of other men seeking to do the same thing.  I do not expect to be successful. Perfection is a journey, not a real destination for us all, I think.

        I came to study a philosophy that is so sublime that entire nations have been built upon it, that is so all-encompassing that some mistake it for a religion. I came to try to understand the minds of other men and cultures, to become more tolerant in my thinking, to become a better man, father, husband, friend and brother.

        The answer to your question, Worshipful Brother Jack, is simple:  I came here to be better than I am.

William H. Skip Boyer (Rip)