Building Builders!: Random Building Thoughts

-------------- OBLIGATION REMINDER --------------

The same men
who Complain Bitterly about other Brothers
being fairly Compensated for their Works
and who Dismiss their Brother's Contribution
as Mercenary when Fees are Requested for Work
are likely to turn around
and Guiltlessly accept
the Benefits of these very same Brothers' Works
without Paying them fairly when no fee is Requested.

Some men Understand their Obligations;
Some don't.

...out of the value of ANYTHING...

How do you assure
that your Brothers efforts
are valued and fairly compensated?

-------------- BEING HUMAN --------------

Being Perfectly Human
Provides Countless Opportunities
to Understand and Accept
Perceived Imperfections.

-------------- MYTH --------------

"Mythology is the womb of mankind's initiation to life and death."
-- Joseph Campbell, The Flight of the Wild Gander

-------------- NO WHY, KNOW WHY --------------

I: Why did you become a Mason?

R: There is no "why".
I am one.
When I discovered I was one,
I joined the Freemasonic Society
soon thereafter.

-------------- PONDERING --------------

Can you ever not be yourself?
Are you who you are
until you aren't
or when you aren't
who you are,
is this merely revealing
who you truly are?
-- Coach John S Nagy

-------------- PONDERING TOO --------------

"In business, the rise of the welfare state froze the status quo,
perpetuating the power of the big corporations of the pre-income-tax era,
placing them beyond the competition of the tax-strangled newcomers.
A similar process took place in the welfare state of the intellect.
The results, in both fields, are the same."
--Ayn Rand | Philosophy: Who Needs It

-------------- HIS DOMINION --------------

"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets,

could only proceed from the counsel

and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being....

This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world,

but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion...."
-- Sir Isaac Newton

(Hat tip to Bro. SK H Glen!)

-------------- BE THE BUILDER! --------------

Initiation within the Society of Freemasons

makes you a Society Member.
To "Be" a Mason,

you must First & Foremost

"Be" a Builder.

-------------- WHERE? --------------

Where do you Invest most of your Efforts?

For Further Light:

freemasonry-masonry

-------------- SYMBOLISM & ALLEGORY --------------

FILED UNDER: More Uncommon Masonic Education

From History and Politics - Lilliput and Blefuscu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift]

The novel further describes an intra-Lilliputian quarrel over the practice of breaking eggs.

Traditionally, Lilliputians broke boiled eggs on the larger end; a few generations ago, an Emperor of Lilliput, the Present Emperor's great-grandfather, had decreed that all eggs be broken on the smaller end after he cut himself breaking the egg on the larger end. The differences between Big-Endians (those who broke their eggs at the larger end) and Little-Endians had given rise to "six rebellions... wherein one Emperor lost his life, and another his crown". The Lilliputian religion says an egg should be broken on the convenient end, which is now interpreted by the Lilliputians as the smaller end.

The Big-Endian/Little-Endian controversy reflects, in a much simplified form, British quarrels over religion. England had been, less than 200 years previously, a Catholic (Big-Endian) country; but a series of reforms beginning in the 1530s under King Henry VIII (ruled 1509-1547), Edward VI (1547–1553), and Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603) had converted most of the country to Protestantism (Little-Endianism), in the episcopalian form of the Church of England. At the same time, revolution and reform in Scotland (1560) had also converted that country to Presbyterian Protestantism, which led to fresh difficulties when England and Scotland were united under one ruler, James I (1603–1625).

Religiously inspired revolts and rebellions followed, in which, indeed, one king, Charles I (1625–1649) lost his life, and his son James II lost his crown and fled to France (1685–1688). Some of these conflicts were between Protestants and Catholics; others were between different branches of Protestantism. Swift does not clearly distinguish between these different kinds of religious strife.

Swift has his Lilliputian informant blame the "civil commotions" on the propaganda of the Emperor of Blefuscu, i.e. the King of France; this primarily reflects the encouragement given by King Louis XIV of France to James II in pursuit of his policies to advance the toleration of Catholicism in Great Britain. He adds that "when (the commotions) were quelled, the (Big-Endian) exiles always fled for refuge to that empire (Blefuscu/France)". This partially reflects the exile of King Charles II on the Continent (in France, Germany, the Spanish Netherlands, and the Dutch Republic) from 1651 to 1660, but more particularly the exile of the Catholic King James II from 1688-1701. James II was dead by the time Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels, but his heir James Francis Edward Stuart, also Catholic, maintained his pretensions to the British throne from a court in France (primarily at Saint-Germain-en-Laye) until 1717, and both Jameses were regarded as a serious threat to the stability of the British monarchy until the end of the reign of George II. The court of the Pretender attracted those Jacobites, and their Tory sympathizers, whose political activity precluded them staying safely in Great Britain; notable among them was Swift's friend, the Anglican Bishop of Rochester Francis Atterbury, who was exiled to France in 1722.

Swift's Lilliputian claims that the machinations of "Big-Endian exiles" at the court of the Emperor of Blefuscu have brought about a continuous war between Lilliput and Blefuscu for "six and thirty moons" (Lilliputians calculate time in 'moons', not years; their time-scale is apparently also one-twelfth the size of normal humans.) This is an allusion to the wars fought under King William III and Queen Anne against France under Louis XIV, the War of the Grand Alliance (1689–1697) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1713). In both cases, the claims of the exiled House of Stuart were marginal to other causes of war, but were an important propaganda point in Great Britain itself, as both James II and James Francis Edward were accused of allying with foreigners to force Catholicism on the British people.

[source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilliput_and_Blefuscu#History_and_politics]

-------------- HUMOR --------------

One of my Favorite Facetious Freemasonic Definitions:

FREEMASONS, n.

An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and fantastic costumes,
which, originating in the reign of Charles II,
among working artisans of London,
has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries
in unbroken retrogression until now
it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam
and is drumming up distinguished recruits
among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and Formless Void.
The order was founded at different times
by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious, Thothmes, and Buddha.
Its emblems and symbols have been found in the Catacombs of Paris and Rome,
on the stones of the Parthenon and the Chinese Great Wall,
among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra
and in the Egyptian Pyramids
-- always by a Freemason.

Source: http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/bierce_a/devils_dictionary.html

-------------- PLUG --------------

UNABASHED IN YOUR FACE BOOK PLUG:

IF you want to read something that...

1) tells it like it is,

2) is NOT about the fantasy of Freemasonry (its lore, fabricated history and such) and

3) is all about

a) the reality of the organization (how it truly works, how it really doesn't work and many of the illusions members buy into to make it function),

b) its true history (the reality vs. the conjectures) and

c) its true practices (what it says it does as opposed to what it really practices)...

THEN TCU is "THE" go to book to invest in.

You can get it here: http://www.coach.net/TCU.htm

BTW - I am a Business Coach and Technical Advisor. I used my nearly 40 years of experience and training to evaluate the organization, to research its origins and evaluate its practices, all this to write the book. It's not for the faint-hearted. It's a heck of a roller coaster ride for anyone who had deeply entrenched preconceived notions as to what Freemasonry is.

SPOILER ALERT: Freemasonry is far better than is reported and there's far more involved in its practice than any one usually imagines, and not for the reasons most people assume!

-------------- SURPRISE --------------