TBL Staff

It's not often we will cross post a members post to a news article but we felt, given the questions about this topic, this post would be the exception. The following is a quick accounting of what transpired between Halcyon and the Grand Lodge of Ohio. This was taken from Richard Graeter's "Reform Freemasonry" essay. It's worth a read.

---------- A Radical Idea -------------------

Imagine, for a moment, a Grand Master armed with both the vision to dream an unbounded future for Freemasonry and the courage to pursue the dream. Looking around, he sees the glaring disconnect between the mindless repetition of today’s rote “tradition” and the core purpose and core values that Freemasonry used to represent. Seeking to recapture that which was lost, he creates a new haven for experimentation—an at-large Grand Master’s district. The purpose for this special district is to create a home for new lodges to creatively explore new and innovative ways to practice the timeless core of Freemasonry in a manner relevant to today. Freed (by special dispensation) from the weight of rules,
regulations, and district deputy grand masters, these lodges answer only to the Grand Master himself, who in turn, wisely, benevolently, gives them the freedom to create, be fruitful, bountiful, and multiply!

Alas, we all know that the above scenario is all but impossible in the oppressive climate that governs grand lodges. So, if grand lodges will not suffer creativity, will not suffer successful lodges to orbit their Grand Hairball, then perhaps the time has come for those lodges that dare to accelerate to escape velocity and, following the challenge of Dr. Harari, start with a new dream, a bold vision with audacious goals.

The challenge, according to MacKenzie, is to orbit the Giant Hairball, which means to actively engage in the opportunities that an organization presents without being sucked into the Hairball of the organization.

Orbiting is responsible creativity: vigorously exploring and operating beyond the Hairball of the corporate mind set, beyond “accepted models, patterns, or standards”—all the while remaining connected to the spirit of the corporate mission. To find Orbit around a corporate Hairball is to find a place of balance where you benefit from the physical, intellectual and philosophical resources of the organization without becoming entombed in the bureaucracy of the institution.

The challenge to the Hairball is to allow people to achieve orbit. But the more massive the Hairball grows, the greater gravitational pull it exerts, sucking everything into the “nothingness of corporate normalcy made stagnant by a compulsion to cling to past successes.”16 In such cases, orbiting may not be possible (nor tolerated by the Hairball), leaving one with the stark choice of remaining to be suffocated by the soul-crushing rule of what worked in the past or flying out into deep space, liberated, but alone.

A very recent occurrence provides an example of what can happen to lodges that dare try to orbit the Grand Hairball. A few years ago, a group of young men dedicated themselves to reinvigorating their local lodge in Cleveland, Ohio. The newly renamed Halcyon Lodge, #498 F & AM, beholden to the Grand Lodge of Ohio, has a rich history going back to 1877. They occupied a magnificent temple, which sadly, in a refrain all too familiar to most masons, was deteriorating due to lack of attention and money. The building was home to a number of nonproductive masonic tenants and little else.

The young men of Halcyon Lodge decided that it was time to take aggressive action. First, they raised their outdated and grossly insufficient annual lodge dues to $150. This caused a mass defection of “veteran” masons who apparently did not think that their masonic experience was worth 42 cents a day. Had any who were truly in distress asked for remission, it certainly would have been granted.

None did.

Next, the men of Halcyon Lodge took on their non-productive masonic cotenants. They asked them to pay their arrearages and begin contributing to the restoration of the Temple building. Their masonic brethren answered this call by abandoning the temple to find cheap space in some other crumbling masonic edifice. Ultimately, the men of Halcyon were left in sole possession of a tenantless building that needed work. So they rolled up their sleeves and set to work!

They restored the grandeur of their lodge room, the elegance of their dining hall, and added amenities like wireless Internet, HDTV, and workout equipment. But they did not stop there. Seeing the opportunity in their underutilized asset, they endeavored to build out rooms to serve the non-masonic community as well.

After meeting with their local youth boxing association (a 501(c)(3) charity), they built a boxing ring! Their aim was to reimagine their heretofore mostly empty temple into a vibrant community center that could once again teem with life.

Then, this lodge full of enthusiastic young men did the unthinkable: they gave their shining temple away! One of the largest budget items for any lodge that owns a temple building is real estate taxes. In Ohio, fraternal groups are not exempt from real estate taxes; but charities are. So, in an inspired maneuver, the young men of Halcyon Lodge formed a charity for the community and gave their building and a substantial sum of money to this new charity that was created to serve not just masons, but the community at-large. Now they could not only claim an exemption from the heavy burden of real estate taxes, but they could grant deductions from Federal income taxes for donations made to the entity. And as their mission had expanded to serving the community as a whole, they could now solicit support from that community.

Along the way these young men also embraced the Traditional Observance Lodge movement, adopting TO practices like use of a Chamber of Reflection and an intensive candidate education program. They created an impressive web site that quickly became recognized as being one of the best lodge-hosted web sites on the Internet.

So, these enthusiastic, dedicated young men: revived their lodge, attracting new young candidates to Freemasonry that had previously not found anything there to interest them; restored their magnificent temple building; invited the community into their newly restored building, turning a once mysterious
building into a hub of community activity (and exposing many people to Freemasonry for the first time in the process); and solved the intractable real estate tax problem by transferring their building to a 501(c)(3) charity. Any one of these feats would be impressive, but the young men of Halcyon Lodge did them all in less than three years!

And what was the Grand Lodge of Ohio’s response to their inspired success? Was their success acknowledged? Were they asked to share their model as a template for other lodges to follow? Were they even given an “atta-boy” from any grand lodge officer? No. They were investigated, intimidated, castigated, probated, and threatened. Why? Power and control, as always. In Ohio, the grand lodge tightly regulates temple companies that own masonic buildings. In the eyes of the grand lodge officers, the real estate transaction must have seemed like a plot to free Halcyon Lodge from the power and control of the grand lodge, and that they could not suffer.

Apparently, they did not care that the Halcyon Model made good sense or even that it was wildly successful; all that mattered was their power and control. Ultimately, on November 12, 2007, the brothers of Halcyon Lodge returned their charter to the Grand Lodge of Ohio following a visit by a delegation of grand lodge officers sent to threaten them into submission.17 Apparently, the Grand Lodge of Ohio will suffer no orbiting satellites, no matter how successful they may be.

Perhaps in the end, the need for grand lodges is more illusion than reality. Like the Wizard of Oz, grand lodges attempt to project an image of being great and powerful, but if you follow Toto and look behind the curtain, all too often you find petty men, frantically turning knobs and pulling levers in a vain attempt to appear more important than they really are. In order to encourage and organize the creation of new lodges, eliminate the artificial divisions of state boundaries, and liberate lodges from the whims of petty men vested with a little brief authority, perhaps it’s about time we begin exploring a new organizational structure for the 21st Century that is independent of the antiquated grand lodge system. Exploring this new organizational structure is the topic in the next and concluding section, Freemasonry 3.0.

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