What I've Learned Writing Daily Masonic Progress

Freemasonry charges all Masons to “Make Daily Progress in the Acquisition of Masonic Knowledge”. I know in my own experience, that if I wasn’t specifically learning a charge or work for an upcoming degree, I wasn’t upholding that charge.

But that’s the problem. Most Brethren unfortunately misunderstand what it actually means to “make daily progress…”, just like I did.

We think that it’s about learning & memorising the ritual. It’s not. It’s a common misconception.

I started writing a daily newsletter that not only helps me, but helps other Brethren make daily progress in the acquisition and application of Masonic knowledge. It’s also written in a way that Non-Freemasons can learn from as well.

My goal was to produce something that could be read in 5 minutes, easily understood by everyone, relative to our lives at home, at work, at lodge and in our social circles. It also had to be practical. Did I mention that it should only take 5 minutes.

Here is what I have learned, as well as the mistakes & misconceptions we make.

We think it’s too time consuming

Learning a charge or degree work takes time. It takes consistent effort. It's not something that can be done daily in less than 5 minutes. After all, there are the life constraints we need to manage as well. We all don’t have time because

• I’m busy

• Family commitments

• Work commitments

• Anything else that’s not as hard

I wanted to make sure that daily progress could be made in the same amount of time as scrolling through social media, reading an article online or playing a game on our smartphone while we restore our personal comforts. Practicality was key.

Recently, I noticed that my fitness was slipping. It had already fallen from where it was prior to Covid. But, I didn’t have time to go to the gym after work. Well, in reality, I did, but I didn’t prioritise it, so I wouldn’t make time for it.

This led me to a discovery that would change how I treated my fitness. I got up earlier in the morning to do it. I now take care of my fitness first thing each day. Getting up at 5am is tough, but it taught me a valuable lesson. If I wanted to achieve something and make progress in my fitness, I needed to front-load it and get it done first thing.

I took this same approach to Daily Masonic Progress. This meant it had to be something that I could read (or do) first thing in the morning. It had to be quick & easy. Thus, a 5 minute email newsletter was brought to light.

Except this lead me to the next problem. While it was all well and good to read (or in my case write) - how do I actually Make Daily Progress?

We don’t understand the words in our ceremonies

Early on in my Masonic journey I had this realisation. We try to explain what Freemasonry is when asked or when sharing with others. All too often it’s easy to fall into the usual palliatives:

• It’s different for everyone,

• It’s Charity

• Insert any other common explanation

The realisation was, we use these palliatives because telling someone Freemasonry is “a peculiar system of morality…” is just met with blank and confused looks. No one today, understands what that means. So, I googled it. But I didn’t just google the phrase, I googled each word. This is the 2023 version of looking each word up in the dictionary.

Google: Define Peculiar Answer*: Different to what is normal or expected. Particular, special. Unique to*

Repeat this for every word.

What I came up with is that Freemasonry is: “A unique system of moral education taught through plays & symbols”.

I then took this approach when learning a charge or ritual work. I wanted to know what I was saying. This helped me not only memorise the work, but it meant that I formed an understanding of it. That I could not only say in a charge “curb the aspirations of unbridled ambition” but then explain after that this meant “control or limit the excessive desire for power or success”. That’s such a deep lesson to take from a simple line in a charge isn’t it.

Freemasonry is Deep

I knew Freemasonry was deep, that’s the “veiled in allegory” part. That tells us, there are deeper meanings that are not obvious. This extends beyond the use of simply understanding the meaning of the words of old language being used, but that’s for another topic.

This lead me to look at the obvious, like a clue to a secret or mystery that was staring you right in the face, if only you just realised what it was. Every word in our ceremonies teaches us something, they’re on the page, spoken in lodge and staring us in the face every time.

With a few brethren from my lodge, we held a discussion on unpacking a few sentences from our ceremonies. Even just re-wording some of the phrases in simple language we leaps and bounds in their progression of acquiring masonic knowledge. It wasn’t until we then asked questions about those phrases did, we then take giant leaps with tiny steps.

Asking questions about what it means to have excessive desires for power or success - what normally happens to someone who is so hungry for power & success? well they normally cut corners, break the law, step on other people and become toxic human beings. They let it go to their head. What typically happens to them? They usually get destroyed. Some are fortunate enough to rebuild the right way after learning their lesson.

But, asking those kinds of questions teaches us, yes, we can desire success but to control or limit it so it doesn’t consume us. So we learn a powerful moral lesson from this phrase.

These lessons are not just for those phrases or paragraphs in our ritual, individual words or a combination of words have the same deep & powerful lessons:

• “Properly Prepared”

• “Humbly Soliciting”

• “To See”

• “Due Form”

In order to explore these and find the lesson, I had to ask the right questions.

The quality of your questions determines the quality of your answers

How can we get a deep, powerful and most importantly practical lesson out of a phrase, few words or even one word? We ask the right questions.

I found that asking the right questions always leads to the right answers. But what were the questions? These fortunately came a lot easier because the simple questions are often the best:

1. What does this mean in the context of Freemasonry? Is really asking about what is physically happening at the time when the words appear, or what action comes to mind. “To See” - The Inner Guard physically looking at the Outer Guard.

   1. “Why are they doing this, why is this action, what happens after” are what help me understand the context of the scenario and what the words mean in the context

2. “What is the etymology of the word” which is asking about the origin and it’s definition as this often leads us down the right path of discovery for the lesson.

3. “How would this apply at home, at work, in social settings at lodge”

4. “What are the negative consequences if you don’t apply the meaning”

5. “What are some practical steps to apply the lesson:”

All of this, then get’s distilled and condensed into a daily newsletter that’s approximately a 5 minute read.