Outside the Mind of Adele Caelia
I've been tagged by a young lady who appears to have wandered away from the local renaissance festival and become lost in the blog-o-sphere. Her name is Adele Caelia. I don't really know who she is. Apparently young Adele loves MMO computer games and she figured out that I am working on one that she is hoping to play some day. I'm pretty sure Adele thought this was going to be my development diary about the product. I'm pretty sure of this because when she asked, in a comment section, "What is a Freemason?" I knew that she knew that she wasn't in Kansas anymore.
Dear Adele, I have sad news for you. I have a long standing tradition of not discussing my work on the Internet for a number of reasons. First, because work is what I do for a living, to earn a paycheck, and this blog is devoted more to 'who I am', or at least 'who I want to become'. I try not to let my job define me or my life in general.
I've told this story before, and I am certain I will tell it again. I seem to recall a scene from a movie that really hit home. I can't remember the movie anymore, but this scene always stuck with me. A young man goes into his mothers office because they are going out to lunch together. The son looks around at her desk and doesn't see any photographs of himself or the rest of the family. He begins to feel a little bit hurt and sheepishly asks his mother why she doesn't keep a picture of him on her desk? His mother turns to him and says, 'Son. Never confuse where you work with where you live.'
I distinctly remember going into work the next Monday and packing up everything from my office that did not belong to my employer and taking it home. Don't get me wrong either. I love my job, and I work hard at it. I can be quite passionate about my work and spend many long hours just for the fun of pursuing a problem I want to solve. However, this blog has never been about that.
I started this blog when a dear friend of mine, Suz Dodd, passed away some years ago. If you go to the archives and go back to blog post #1 you can read that entire story. Suz had moved away but she still tried to keep her blog current. This was long before 'blogger' and at a time when most people called them 'online journals' if they had one at all. Nevertheless, I still felt like I was connected to Suz by reading about the little things going on in her life. Even if I never picked up the phone and called, I still felt connected to her.
So, I started this blog in her memory; to fill it with the trivia of my personal life, replete with lots of photographs to share with friends and family. A little over two years ago after I had joined the Freemasons I started commenting about Freemason themes on my blog since that was, at the time, what was interesting me intellectually and at a personal level. I was fairly surprised once this blog started getting identified as a 'Freemason' blog when it was really just supposed to be my personal dumping ground for family photo's and personal anecdotes.
Today it doesn't seem quite so strange. My social life is so wrapped up in Freemason activities that this blog and Masonic themes intersect on a near daily basis. This evening I'm doing a movie showing for the Rainbow Girls and tomorrow I will spend the day and evening at the Scottish Rite Cathedral with DeMolay.
Of course, from time to time, I do want to talk about computer programming so that is why I set up a completely separate blog for that topic. However, even there, you still won't hear me talk about my job.
My newly found Internet friendess, Adele, may be disappointed to learn that I won't be sharing any of the latest concept art, screenshots, videos, or game design behind my employers project. However, she may enjoy looking at the pretty pictures I post here from time to time, just as much as I enjoyed looking at the photograph of young Adele at the top of this entry.
Adele chose to 'tag' me today. A high compliment I suppose. Tagging is a form of blog chain mail and, while I will comply with her lovely request, I won't let this vain virus spread past my own blog borders.
Adele asks, "What are the top five reasons that you blog?"
My answers, in brief, are as follows:
(1) So that I can share a little bit of my day to day life with my extended friends and family across the country.
(2) As a form of 'akashic record' of my own life. A living, breathing, diary replete with photographs to augment a flawed, frayed, and decaying memory.
(3) As a vehicle to express myself in the written form without all of the restrictions of actually having to pass muster of an editor or wait three months for it to be published.
(4) I enjoy explaining things in fairly plain language. I like to educate and elucidate on topics that are often shrouded in mystery or confused by confabulated commentary. When I refer to the Freemasons (accurately) as an 'Amature Theatre Group' I feel like I am spreading some light.
(5) I enjoy the give and take of the dialectic struggle in this medium. As conversations and themes flow from blog to blog this form of expression seems much more enlightened and producing a greater impact than just one more lost message in an obscure message forum on the Internet.
Comments
I must admit I was very disappointed when I found that your blog was not about your job:) Although now I am quite glad, as it is nice to see a dev not acting like a superstar and flaunting themselves all over the net with their blue tights and red developer cape flying in the wind.
Never in my life would I have imagined someone in the industry as a freemason, or selling candy outside of Wal-Mart for the Lion's club. You seem to be a very good hearted man who spends a lot of his free time (which I know when making games isn't much) doing things for others in a selfless manner. Even outside of the game world that is a rare gem to find and I applaud you on it!
And I am most certainly not in Kansas anymore, but perhaps Wentzville is pretty close, and you will without a doubt find me at the renaissance faire this year:P
I do feel much more informed on events I knew nothing about before reading your blog, and if half of the generosity, and selflessness that goes on in your personal life make it into the game design I know it will be grand!
I will continue to read your blog, this and the other (even though the other often sounds like a bunch of gnomish gibbersh), with that slim chance that you might reveal a small tidbit about the journey ahead.
If ever you and your colleges feel the need for tacos on a friday night you are very much invited to join us at El Maguey for our weekly taco extravaganza!
Here's to many more informative blogs on freemasonary!
P.S. If you ever find yourself at work and they annouce that there will be a take a journalist to work day, and you without a journalsit, I do hereby offer myself to rescue you in your time of need, and make the perilous journey to St. Charles!
Adele, this might be a good opportunity for you to examine your own beliefs and, dare I say, prejudices.
When I joined Friendship Lodge, I was amazed at how many fairly young guys (mid 50s) were members, and that most of them seemed to be engineers of some stripe. I soon learned that our fraternity included accountants, cooks and chefs, military officers, clerks, construction workers, lawyers, machinists, carpenters, salesmen, HR managers, and pretty much any other occupation that you cold name, including quite a few in the IT services.
At the moment, most of the officers in my lodge are men in their mid to late 20s, at least half of whom work in the IT field. We've got some serious gamers who routinely bring in equipment to set up networked and online gaming nights for the DeMolay chapter (boys from 12 to 20).
It's not your grandfather's Masonry anymore!
Sure, and many people who don't belong to one particular Christian sect consider other Christians members of a cult. It's simply an uninformed opinion based on a lack of knowledge.
"Forbidding members from having anything to do with belonging to the group."
I see, so now which group is it that is the 'cult'? The essence of a cult is a form of mind control over an individual. Since these Christian sects you refer to feel qualified to control their membership as to what organizations they can or cannot join or, even worse, what kinds of free thoughts they can harbor, it seems to indicate cult like behavior to me.
Freemasonry came about through the enlightenment. It's principles center around freedom, equality, charity, and morality. It should raise suspicion if any particular Church would try to bar its members from this organization.
Do you honestly want to belong to a church that refuses to allow the congregation to exercise freedom, liberty, equality, charity and strong moral principles?
If you read the original Papal Bull against Freemasonry the main objections the Pope had was that Freemasons dare preach these principles in modern society.
When a Church survives by governing the belief systems of their congregation then any organization which inspires free thought and equality can be viewed as threat to their bottom line.
"How do you guys feel about that, as I think it puts your group in a negative light."
Personally, I think it puts certain Christian Sects in a negative light. If they have the audacity to tell their congregation what they can or cannot think, who they can or cannot vote for, who they can or cannot associate with or even who they can or cannot treat as equals, I think this puts them in a very bad light indeed.
Remember that Freemasonry and Enlightenment principles formed the foundation of American society in the American Revolution. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and many other prominent men of the time not only belonged to the organization but extolled its principles in their speech, documents, and laws.
"I know considering myself a christian I find masonites along the same lines of scientologists."
This merely shows your lack of knowledge about our institution.
Scientology is a cult as it contains all of the requisite techniques of mind control and it was started by a single charismatic leader (a science fiction author).
On the other hand, Freemasonry is many centuries old. It has had as members some of the greatest minds and free thinkers in history. It contains no dogma. It is open to men of all religious faiths.
It is a men’s fraternity that is bound by basic principles of morality that are independent of any particular religion of the world.
The fact of the matter is that organized religion has looked upon with fear any attempts by the average citizen to think for themselves and use the powers of science, logic, reason, rhetoric, and geometry to better understand the Universe and their place within it.
Today we have a large swath of the American population professing a belief that the universe is only 6,000 years old and that the 'rapture' is going to happen any day now.
Meanwhile, members of Freemasonry are often scientists and engineers and have included some of the greatest scientific minds in history; Benjamin Franklin not being the least of them.
So, if you want to start throwing around terms like 'cult' I would suggest the folks who are told what they can believe and who they can speak to are in a bit deeper water than the Freemasons who meet upon the level, are tolerant to all men from all religions, and practice quiet and humble charity while acting upon the square and traveling upon the level of time.
That's just my opinion.