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aedifico42| “A Virtuous Education”

Posted at: 10:32 pm

The first degree lecture tells us how to become the Perfect Ashlar (PA) from our starting point of the Rough Ashlar (RA). There are three ingredients required. I present them to you in reverse order (I also drive in reverse).

“The blessings of God”, our lecture tells us, is one thing we need to become the PA. Since there is nothing that anybody can do about that one, I will move on to the next.

“Our own endeavors” is number two. Well, it’s kind of silly to assume that you can get towards anything without trying. This one simply means that you will try. That’s it. You gotta try. Well, most of us would like a little more guideance than, “Hey…give it a shot man…” as our directive. Imagine a football coach telling his team to try harder, and telling them nothing else. Although it is silly, it is necessary…we’ll just take that one at face value.

So we get to the only one of the three things that we can actually discuss with any intelligence…[insert blog title here].

It is no suprise that our ancient guides (my loving label for the ritual authors) gave us this little tip. But what is actually involved in that “virtuous education” anyway? Is it anything that we can discern easily? No. But that’s the idea.

An Education sought-after for material gain is probably not virtuous, but an education driven by the virtues and attributes found in our ritual may be more on point. An example, “Truth is a divine attribute and the foundation of every virtue.” This tells us that truth must be ever-present in our Masonic Education.

So what? (by the way…that’s one of my favorite questions of all time…) The ’so what’ here is clear, we must get smarter. That’s it. To become the PA we must learn, or better stated, we must engage ourselves in virtuous education. There are a hundred ways to do it, but if you are not reading, you are probably on the wrong path. If you are not having deep conversations and listening carefully to your brothers, you are probably still wandering. If you are learning most of what you know from Masonic sources, you are probably being WAY too narrow and missing-out on incredible resources.

Read, talk, listen, learn, teach and grow. These are but a few elements of a virtuous education, the path to the PA we all must strive to become. Ignorance is simply the result of laziness and cowardice. If you don’t know where to start, ask. But if you still think that ritual is not just a guide, but the actual end to masonic education, then I have no time to pitty you.

If you don’t care about this stuff…then, in my opinion, you are not a Mason.

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