THERE ONCE WAS AN OLD MAN PLAYING RECORDS ON HIS TURNTABLE

If you've ever watched a childs imaginative play, you know what I mean about watching an old man with his stack of records and a turntable, lost in thought. Joy.  Each is using the freedom of imagination to add meaning. More likely than not, they are aware of it. But it does have bearing on the way we go about exploring our place (in masonry).    No doubt cynics and skeptics are already drawing conclusions about the futility of observing and meaning. I have no interest in trying to convince someone to question when he already know answers to all.  Why would anyone want to expose a man to a broader sense of himself if he has no need or interest?  But for the fact masonry is rich in symbolic meaning, it tells us what we see, is not always as it seems. Lesser men repeat self defeating mantras so it's important in a way to know we are all lesser men when we start out.  When we respect the things we don't know, when we realize billions of people have their own ways of thinking, I would hope we are an influence that help us realize, one opinion may be  ethical and another fraught. If I hand you a violin, would we expect you can play? Of course not. So what is different with a new idea? We require time to reason through ideas to learn what they offer? Life in a lodge.  If life were only so simple that it could be lived according to a script, surely someone would have ordered us into lanes of bliss and contentment. Masonry may have tapped into the energy of antient thinking, to show us how to live while we ask questions, examine, learn, to find meaning and apply it.  Who at first glance would believe that? The profane world would think us a fool if we weren't at times skeptical.  Even the confidence built on thousands of years needed to be challenged. And that requires unique ability, curious about a lost journey.