Post by corab on May 30, 2005 8:01:40 GMT
Why Freemasonry?
That’s the question my husband welcomed me back with, last Thursday, after my first telephone conversation with a real life Mason. I was all excited, wanted to tell him about the invitation to two possible lodges in Hexagon House, but all I got was “What are you looking for?”.
I didn’t understand; he’d been so supportive the past few weeks while I made my first cautious enquiries – why the sudden turn?
It wasn’t that, though – he just wanted me to think. I’m given to impulsive action, so he had me hold my pace for a moment and think; not to help him understand, but to help me understand.
And so I looked back.
I was raised a Dutch Reformed Protestant, and although my faith carried me through darker times than a child should ever have to go through, it never felt quite right. Whenever I went to church I saw the first rows being occupied by the same hypocrites that would attend church morning and afternoon each Sunday, professing to the way of Christ, yet they would rather burn than reach out a helping hand to those genuinely in need. I saw preachers elaborating on the virtues of the Christian life, and the goodness of God, but when asked about the loss of my many stillborn siblings, they would brush it off with nonsensical replies like “This is not God’s Will” (to which my father dutifully countered with a quote from Scripture, saying that not a hair on your head will be harmed without God’s consent). I saw the Church condemning faith-healers, yet I was the only one who could ease my parents’ pains – was I a Devil’s Child?
I didn’t think I was. I believed in Christ; I loved Him for His wilful suffering and for His acts of kindness. I knew God was out there, for He carried me through the often dark times of childhood and adolescence. Yet still I was gifted with the Sight, and the Healing Touch.
So from a very early age I looked outside the Reformed Box, and explored those grey areas explicitly forbidden by the Church. The same Church that I didn’t visit much, because of my parents’ inability to attend – they were struggling with their grief, and their anger with the Church’s attitude; and my mother, raised in true Biblebelt fashion, felt she had no right to receive the Sacrament, because only those who were free of sin were allowed to.
I think the last time I attended Church with my family was when I was about 6, maybe 7 years of age, followed by a 12 year gap in which we didn’t. Yet in those 12 years I developed a deeply personal bond with God – I didn’t need a minister, a Church; I could talk to God directly! And that belief never left me. When I was 17, something called me back, and I decided to take my catechism and be properly confirmed into the Church. Yet still I never became a truly regular church goer. I missed something in this Reformed Protestantism – there wasn’t any joy!
Joy arrived many years later, when I first encountered Catholicism, here in England. I was staying with a friend’s family – now my in-laws – and joined them at Mass, conscious of the fact that I wasn’t a Catholic, and so couldn’t go to Communion. However, I was told I could go up for a Blessing, and that I did – and the rest, as they say, is History. I felt an all-enveloping calm and peace descend upon me, and when I returned to my bench, I knelt and prayed as if I’d always been a Catholic.
About 2 years later my husband and I were married in the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Portsmouth, and for quite a while I attended Mass every Sunday, joined the Choir and genuinely enjoyed it. There is so much more joy in a Catholic Mass than in a Dutch Reformed service! People happily joining in; the beautiful rituals – I loved it.
Then, completely unexpected, I came across Paganism whilst doing some research for a story I was writing. Here I read about seeing Divinity in all that lives, and about taking responsibility for your own life, and I thought “Blimey, that’s what I’ve always believed!” and so I started reading up on it. The ideas of Paganism struck a deep chord in me, and before I knew it I was learning about Wicca and found all these Jungian thoughts to have a profound effect upon me.
“Know Thyself” – face your inner daemons and harness the energy spent on suppressing them; deal with your fears and sorrows and be a better person for it. I latched onto it heart and soul, and once I was initiated, the Change was there for everyone to see – no more wild, rash movements, no more uncontrolled anger – this was the new me: calm, collected and in control. Overnight my employer lost his grip on me, because he couldn’t keep up with the change – what normally would’ve caused me to break down in tears now had me sitting back calmly to consider it, and come back with a reasonably, irrefutably logical reply. They had no idea what to do with me!
But Initiation is but a stepping stone; a foundation for a Temple you yourself have to build, and it inevitably causes spiritual havoc some months after the event. Three months down the line I went through the deepest spiritual crisis of my life, suddenly doubting the genuine existence of Divinity. What if it was all just a projection of my Self; and extension of me? What if there was no such thing as a God or Goddess? I never felt lonelier in my entire life.
The realisation that all of religion rests upon man’s need to feel safe and watched over by something bigger than himself is one of the most heartbreaking moments in life, and it results in one of two responses: either to close your eyes and run back screaming into the embrace of your birth religion, or to face the Universe and seek to understand your place within it. I rendered the veil and chose for the latter. I went from complete and unquestioning acceptance of the Divine to a totally logical approach ruling out the concept of deity – Divinity is within; and the concept of an external deity is merely an extension of the Self, i.e. you’re making it up, you silly mare!
In the three years following that realisation, I came to recalibrate my beliefs, my morals, my Self. Gradually I distilled my own beliefs and my own code of conduct. I believe in the Universe, in Humanity and in the Inseparable Union of Life. I live by Honour, Love and Truthfulness.
Enter The Hiram Key. Here I found a scientist describing the religious feelings of a scientist in the words of Albert Einstein: “His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection”. And that hit the spot. Hang on, I can have faith without believing in God? Are you saying that my awe of the Universe is faith? What did you call him – The Great Architect of the Universe?
BANG – it all falls in place.
**Due to text limits Part Two will be posted in a separate thread**
That’s the question my husband welcomed me back with, last Thursday, after my first telephone conversation with a real life Mason. I was all excited, wanted to tell him about the invitation to two possible lodges in Hexagon House, but all I got was “What are you looking for?”.
I didn’t understand; he’d been so supportive the past few weeks while I made my first cautious enquiries – why the sudden turn?
It wasn’t that, though – he just wanted me to think. I’m given to impulsive action, so he had me hold my pace for a moment and think; not to help him understand, but to help me understand.
And so I looked back.
I was raised a Dutch Reformed Protestant, and although my faith carried me through darker times than a child should ever have to go through, it never felt quite right. Whenever I went to church I saw the first rows being occupied by the same hypocrites that would attend church morning and afternoon each Sunday, professing to the way of Christ, yet they would rather burn than reach out a helping hand to those genuinely in need. I saw preachers elaborating on the virtues of the Christian life, and the goodness of God, but when asked about the loss of my many stillborn siblings, they would brush it off with nonsensical replies like “This is not God’s Will” (to which my father dutifully countered with a quote from Scripture, saying that not a hair on your head will be harmed without God’s consent). I saw the Church condemning faith-healers, yet I was the only one who could ease my parents’ pains – was I a Devil’s Child?
I didn’t think I was. I believed in Christ; I loved Him for His wilful suffering and for His acts of kindness. I knew God was out there, for He carried me through the often dark times of childhood and adolescence. Yet still I was gifted with the Sight, and the Healing Touch.
So from a very early age I looked outside the Reformed Box, and explored those grey areas explicitly forbidden by the Church. The same Church that I didn’t visit much, because of my parents’ inability to attend – they were struggling with their grief, and their anger with the Church’s attitude; and my mother, raised in true Biblebelt fashion, felt she had no right to receive the Sacrament, because only those who were free of sin were allowed to.
I think the last time I attended Church with my family was when I was about 6, maybe 7 years of age, followed by a 12 year gap in which we didn’t. Yet in those 12 years I developed a deeply personal bond with God – I didn’t need a minister, a Church; I could talk to God directly! And that belief never left me. When I was 17, something called me back, and I decided to take my catechism and be properly confirmed into the Church. Yet still I never became a truly regular church goer. I missed something in this Reformed Protestantism – there wasn’t any joy!
Joy arrived many years later, when I first encountered Catholicism, here in England. I was staying with a friend’s family – now my in-laws – and joined them at Mass, conscious of the fact that I wasn’t a Catholic, and so couldn’t go to Communion. However, I was told I could go up for a Blessing, and that I did – and the rest, as they say, is History. I felt an all-enveloping calm and peace descend upon me, and when I returned to my bench, I knelt and prayed as if I’d always been a Catholic.
About 2 years later my husband and I were married in the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Portsmouth, and for quite a while I attended Mass every Sunday, joined the Choir and genuinely enjoyed it. There is so much more joy in a Catholic Mass than in a Dutch Reformed service! People happily joining in; the beautiful rituals – I loved it.
Then, completely unexpected, I came across Paganism whilst doing some research for a story I was writing. Here I read about seeing Divinity in all that lives, and about taking responsibility for your own life, and I thought “Blimey, that’s what I’ve always believed!” and so I started reading up on it. The ideas of Paganism struck a deep chord in me, and before I knew it I was learning about Wicca and found all these Jungian thoughts to have a profound effect upon me.
“Know Thyself” – face your inner daemons and harness the energy spent on suppressing them; deal with your fears and sorrows and be a better person for it. I latched onto it heart and soul, and once I was initiated, the Change was there for everyone to see – no more wild, rash movements, no more uncontrolled anger – this was the new me: calm, collected and in control. Overnight my employer lost his grip on me, because he couldn’t keep up with the change – what normally would’ve caused me to break down in tears now had me sitting back calmly to consider it, and come back with a reasonably, irrefutably logical reply. They had no idea what to do with me!
But Initiation is but a stepping stone; a foundation for a Temple you yourself have to build, and it inevitably causes spiritual havoc some months after the event. Three months down the line I went through the deepest spiritual crisis of my life, suddenly doubting the genuine existence of Divinity. What if it was all just a projection of my Self; and extension of me? What if there was no such thing as a God or Goddess? I never felt lonelier in my entire life.
The realisation that all of religion rests upon man’s need to feel safe and watched over by something bigger than himself is one of the most heartbreaking moments in life, and it results in one of two responses: either to close your eyes and run back screaming into the embrace of your birth religion, or to face the Universe and seek to understand your place within it. I rendered the veil and chose for the latter. I went from complete and unquestioning acceptance of the Divine to a totally logical approach ruling out the concept of deity – Divinity is within; and the concept of an external deity is merely an extension of the Self, i.e. you’re making it up, you silly mare!
In the three years following that realisation, I came to recalibrate my beliefs, my morals, my Self. Gradually I distilled my own beliefs and my own code of conduct. I believe in the Universe, in Humanity and in the Inseparable Union of Life. I live by Honour, Love and Truthfulness.
Enter The Hiram Key. Here I found a scientist describing the religious feelings of a scientist in the words of Albert Einstein: “His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection”. And that hit the spot. Hang on, I can have faith without believing in God? Are you saying that my awe of the Universe is faith? What did you call him – The Great Architect of the Universe?
BANG – it all falls in place.
**Due to text limits Part Two will be posted in a separate thread**