Dear journal,
Today would have been my grandpa Chuck’s birthday. He died in 2019, and with his death the material evidence of our relationship narrowed quickly. What remains is not much by conventional measure: a Fourteenth Degree Masonic ring that once belonged to his uncle Paul, and a small forget-me-not pin that I keep on one of my hats. Yet these objects persist with a density of meaning that far exceeds their size. They are not mementos in the sentimental sense. They are tools. They are symbols that continue to work upon me.
My grandpa was a Freemason. His uncle was before him. None of Chuck's children are Freemasons and I am the only member of my generation to have entered the Craft, and when I was raised to the degree of Master Mason in 2014, it became one of the few experiences that belonged exclusively to him and me. It was not something we discussed openly or often. Freemasonry does not require constant articulation. It works differently. It operates through silence, repetition, and the slow internalization of symbol. When my grandpa later gave me the ring, he did not explain it. He did not need to. As one Masonic writer observed, “The initiate is not told what to think, but shown how to think.”
That distinction matters. Freemasonry does not function as a belief system in the conventional sense. It does not offer propositions to be accepted or rejected. Instead, it constructs a mental architecture. It constructs a framework within which reflection becomes habitual. In this way, the Craft builds the mind much as operative masonry builds a structure: by establishing proportion, alignment, and restraint before ornamentation is ever considered.
My relationship with my grandfather was complicated. He was capable of great loyalty and affection, but also of cruelty, particularly toward those closest to him. Love and severity were not opposites in his character; they coexisted. I do not seek to resolve that tension in memory. Freemasonry has taught me that not all contradictions require closure. Some require bearing.
The working tools of a Freemason provide a language for that bearing. They are not decorative symbols. They are instruments of moral cognition. They are ways of organizing thought, attention, and judgment.
The first of these tools is the common gavel. Its work is subtractive. It removes excrescences and superfluities, preparing the rough material for refinement. In daily life, the gavel appears as restraint. It shows up when I choose not to respond defensively, not to assert authority reflexively, not to confuse volume with leadership. As Albert Mackey wrote, “The gavel is the symbol of conscience, awakening the sleeping thoughts of the soul.” That awakening is rarely gentle.
My grandfather did not always use this tool carefully. He could strike too hard, mistaking force for clarity. The gavel he left me, then, is both inheritance and caution. It reminds me that self-correction requires patience as much as resolve.
The twenty-four-inch gauge introduces the discipline of measure. Its divisions remind the Mason that time is finite and therefore morally charged. How one spends time is how one reveals value. Reflection, within this framework, is not indulgence. It is stewardship. To pause and examine one’s conduct is not to retreat from action, but to prepare it. As the ritual language suggests, Masonry teaches the “proper division of time,” a phrase that quietly insists that misuse of time is not merely inefficient, but unethical.
Here, Freemasonry begins to show its pedagogical power. It does not teach through argument alone, but through repetition of symbol until the symbol becomes habit of mind. Over time, one begins to measure instinctively.
The tools of the Fellow Craft deepen this interior construction. The plumb demands uprightness. Not public righteousness, but internal alignment. It asks whether belief and behavior correspond. The level introduces one of Masonry’s most radical ethical commitments: equality of moral worth. In the lodge, distinctions of wealth, profession, and status are intentionally erased. As the old charge reminds us, “Masonry regards no man for his worldly wealth or honors.”
This principle has profoundly shaped my understanding of leadership. Authority, within the Masonic framework, is functional rather than ontological. One holds office, not superiority. My grandfather lived in tension with this idea. He commanded loyalty, but did not always temper power with humility. Carrying his ring, I still feel the weight of that unfinished lesson daily.
The square governs conduct in relation to others. To act on the square is to submit one’s behavior to standards beyond convenience or self-interest. It demands fairness, honesty, and proportion. This is where Freemasonry’s moral architecture becomes most demanding. It is easy to admire virtue symbolically. It is harder to practice it when doing so costs something. Yet, as Aristotle noted long before Masonry gave the idea a tool, virtue exists only in action.
The Master Mason’s tools extend the work outward. The trowel reframes virtue as communal. It spreads the cement that binds individuals into something larger than themselves. William Preston described this as the “bond of sincere affection,” a phrase that resists sentimentality by emphasizing durability rather than feeling. Leadership, seen through this lens, is not domination but cohesion. Leadership is creating conditions under which others may stand upright as well.
The compasses, perhaps the most psychologically demanding of the tools, insist upon restraint. They teach that freedom without bounds dissolves into chaos, and discipline without compassion hardens into cruelty. The compasses draw limits not to diminish possibility, but to give it shape. In this sense, Freemasonry aligns with the classical insight that form enables meaning.
The forget-me-not pin operates on a quieter register. Emerging from a history marked by erasure and violence, it signifies memory, fidelity, and moral persistence. It does not announce itself. It simply remains. That quality mirrors how Freemasonry has shaped my life. Not as a public identity, but as a persistent internal structure. Not as doctrine, but as disciplined reflection.
I am aware that I now carry this tradition forward largely alone within my generation. That reality gives the ring a particular gravity. It is not a relic to be preserved untouched, nor a badge to be displayed. It is a working object, meant to accompany someone engaged in the ongoing labor of becoming. As Claudy observed, Masonry “takes good men and helps them become better.” It does this not through instruction alone, but through the slow work of self-examination.
On my grandfather’s birthday, I do not attempt to reconcile the contradictions of our relationship. Instead, I acknowledge them through the work itself: by measuring carefully, by removing what does not serve the work of building, by standing upright even when it would be easier to lean, and by remembering, deliberately and without sentimentality, what has been placed in my care.
Always,
Dave