My Father is My Brother

I sat in lodge yesterday for my good friend’s installation as Master of his lodge. I have been to more than one installation, and although I normally enjoy the process for what it is, I had no idea, walking into the lodge room that day, that I would be reminded at a deep and spiritual level of the profundity of Masonry in a man’s life.

The installation had gone well. No hiccups as is the standard it seems. It was following nicely, moving along at a nice clip and I was looking forward to the fellowship at the formal dinner that would follow.

My Brother took the podium in the East and began to speak. His voice quickly choked as he began to tell his story about how he came to Masonry. A little background here will prove necessary for the uninformed. My Brother was adopted at as an infant. He found his biological father in 2003 and this is where his story begins.

He sat across from a man in a small café, far from his home in Colorado, yet he felt altogether at peace and at awe as he stared into familiar eyes. The glow that emits from my friends eyes is unique. It has a glimmer of love, passion, fire, and determination each separately but all at once.

To hear my friend tell it, he will say that the gaze of the man he looked at felt familiar. He could feel a tie that years of separation could not break. As a man who knows them both, I can describe that look and I knew, probably better than my friend what he meant, because I had just seen that same flame flickering behind the eyes of his father when I had just been introduced to him.

The conversation with his already familiar, but newly discovered, father in that little café turned to Masonry of all things.

My friend’s father had missed a lifetime of experiences with his dear son. First words, first steps, first loves were all a distant memories for my friend and they would never be known by this man who was his father. There was of course a desire to express, to share, to understand one another. I believe there was love, a synergistic connection, that was immediately understood and this is why this desire for shared experience was fostered.

So, the father, this man, this person who wanted to impart not just those things that occur genetically, but he wanted to imbibe those values, morals, and truths that he held dear. How should he accomplish these ideas, these principles in such a way as to say, “Long lost son, these are the things I value.” He told his son that he was Freemason and his son, my friend, shortly followed suit.

So there he stood in the East having made two journeys that have changed him forever. One to the rough and rugged lands of Montana to stare back at his own eyes and meet a man that would be his father, the other from darkness to light to arrive as Master of a Lodge.

His voice chocked, his eyes glassed with tears he said, “I want to say thank you.” There upon the steps of his lodge, he beheld his friend, his father, and his Brother and he continued, “..for many things, mostly for Freemasonry.”

It appears that a father and son both understood the message. They had found one another and both had received some light.