Dear God is that what I sound like!??

Man, I am not certain what I have just gotten myself into. Greg Stewart has recently started up a Podcast at a new site he set up called 'Masonic Central'. This is an absolutely fantastic resource for the community and pretty darned entertaining too. It looks like Greg plans to sort of walk down a laundry list of the various Masonic bloggers on the Internet and give the audience a chance to learn and hear a little bit more about each. This sounds like great fun to me.

I am scheduled to be interviewed this Sunday and the next one is my friend Tom Accuosti over at the Tao of Masonry.

I just listened to the first two podcasts and I thought they were excellent. That said, I also found it a little bit frustrating to listen to them as well. Over and over again the speakers would make generalized comments about Freemasonry that had little to no correlation with my own personal experience. There were also some opinions expressed that I just plain disagreed with.

It was frustrating only in the sense that I couldn't respond but, now, in my own podcast I guess I will have that opportunity.

I plan to make this observation on the podcast but I'll say it here as well. We all need to remember that there is really no such thing as 'Freemasonry' in some sort of unified collective sense.

Freemasonry isn't the same today as it was in the 1950's, the 1850's, the 1750's, and before that. More important today is the fact that every single state has its own Grand Lodge with completely different rules, rituals, ceremonies and experiences. And, even then, within a single state the experience of a 'country' Freemason is radically different than that of a 'city' Freemason and so on.

I have some experience visiting different lodges in this country as well as in Paris and I learned this first hand. The lodge experience was almost unrecognizable to me in some places. In each I saw things I liked and things I felt were not done nearly as well as the way my lodge does it.

The *only* common factor I found across all of them was how I was treated as a 'brother' once I walked in the door. That was a universal experience for me, though you wouldn't know that from listening to the podcasts on Masonic Central. The podcasts featured anecdotes of visiting brothers and potential candidates left waiting and ignored upon visiting a lodge!??? I cannot even fathom such an experience. When we have a visitor arrive you would think it was the prodigal son returned and we stumble over ourselves trying to greet and welcome a potential candidate.

So, yeah, I am looking forward to the podcast and I hope it will be an entertaining experience. The Masonic Central podcast isn't the one that concerns me. The one that makes me nervous is over at a website called 'Truth, Love, Freedom'. I want to be kind to my host and not say anything impolite but, suffice it to say, this website seems to cater to the views of those who are just a bit more 'conspiracy minded'.

If you haven't figured out yet from reading my blog lately, I'm a pretty skeptical guy. There may be a hard clash of world-views with this interview.

The reason I got invited to speak on this show is because my friend Brother Greg Stewart has been interviewed there twice. The first time he was interviewed I got a little frustrated listening to it because I felt like Brother Stewart didn't make a concerted enough effort to dissuade the interviewer of some of his more out-there points of view. I left a comment to that effect at the site and offered to be interviewed to present the non-esoteric viewpoint of the vast majority of ordinary fraternity type Masons in the country.

A specific issue I had came out right at the beginning when the podcast was advertised as being with a '32nd degree Freemason' as if this somehow meant something. Why didn't Brother Stewart explain that being a '32nd degree Mason' doesn't mean a damned thing other than you watched some of your friends put on a few plays one Saturday?

Oh well, at least I said it. And that is the sort of thing I intend to say on the podcast. I feel like I need to be very careful with how I approach this or I could have any little thing I say twisted around.

I am also concerned if during the talk there is any bit of confusion between my entirely personal interests (UFOs, comparative religion, etc.) and whatever Freemasonry teaches itself.

Well, the interview is still a couple of weeks away so I have time to prepare myself.

I would just like to remind all of the readers, bloggers, and fellow travelers who post on the Internet or podcast, that their words and views are amplified out of all proportion and perspective. While there are still millions of Freemasons in the world it is only a very small few dozen of us who are active blogging on the Internet on these topics. We are not necessarily a fair and representative sample and, as always, our views are our own, not those of any official organization.

---- I want to add a little post-script to this message.

I just finished listening to the entire interview with Greg Stewart on the truth-love-freedom website. I have also chatted with the host a bit via email. The guy who runs this show, 'Soul-Real', is extremely articulate and very well read. He has an excellent interviewing style and takes a very light and good humored approach to things.

After listening to the interview I understand now that his biggest 'beef' with Freemasonry is that it smacks of elitism. I think that is a fairly valid point and a topic I am looking forward to expanding upon.

And, its not that Greg said anything wrong in his interview. In fact, he did a great job and expressed his point of view really well. It is just that I would have a lot more to say or have a different take on a lot of the questions that were posed. Many of my responses are already embodied in posts buried on this blog in the past but I look forward to bringing them up in the context of this interview. I'm not nervous at all any more, now I'm looking forward to it!