RELEVANCE IN A MATERIAL WORLD

What could possibly be more important that what's on your mind at the moment? Why then does it seem so baseless to bow to the g-ds of materialism in a world with so much deprivation? If you've wondered this, you're not alone. Being a man of conscience places before us dilemma after dilemma until it dawns on us, some problems are bigger than one person and some questions don't have answers at all.  Some things bring on our sense of compassion, others trigger conspicuousness.  I can load car with thousands of dollars worth of equipment to get away and commune with nature, to get in touch, only to return to the start line again and again asking the same questions but at different times in life.  What is important today? Let me ask you in a decade and then a decade on and then on the last day of your life.  In my mind each time you answer will reveal your progress until the last when unincumbered you reveal to yourself, what is the important. Compassion, as science has shown, generates a mindset that is beneficial to longevity and quality of life. It eases the mind.  A smile and sense of humour hastens healing. Does it really matter how that happens or that it happens?  In our 'masonic'revery to infuse joy and goodwill with thoughts of lodge is the long game. Our introduction to ideas makes it possible.  It is how we become comfortable with self-discipline within that same lodge- where we have learners not yet accomplished in their work, who stumble, before ingratiating themselves.  We accept in that form, the reverence of ritual as it defines and challenges. While it will be dissected for meaning the answer is not the end of pilgrimage, but the start. What makes it work is you; what bearing, what presence of mind, the relevance you make of it. Here we share time to influence one and the other rubbing shoulders with inspired people, sure to inspire us.