I was a Mason with the enthusiastic encouragement of my wife because I wanted to become a Shriner and help with the hospitals. That was my main reason for joining. Yes, the organization has secrets but it is well known that they have officers. I was one and 3 years from reaching my local pinnacle.
It was then that my eyes were opened in the harshest way possible. After being a member for years, my wife and I attended an event for families with our newborn daughter. Multiple of my so-called brothers took me aside and asked me if my beloved wife was that ugliest of words, the N word.
She is of multiple races but nowhere in the literature or the works that we had done had I ever read anything remotely like what they were asking, otherwise I would have shunned the entire concept as something from a time that needs to be gone.
I am not a person prone to anger. Years of combat martial arts drove that out of me, well, that and my platoon drill instructor in the Army. Since we were alone as they had pulled me way to the side of the big building, I made sure that I had heard what they were asking correctly and they repeated it verbatim. I have asked forgiveness many times for what I told them because if a single one had stepped forward as I begged them to do, to my everlasting shame I would not have left a single one of them with anything like legs left to stand on.
We left the building and it took me years to tell her why I left. I resigned from the organization the next day and sent a copy of the letter to the grand lodge of Ohio and a couple of other places. They attempted to get me to return but the damage was done. Then, since I worked for one of them, I suddenly became useless at my job and I left it which led to a career that let me work for 4 decades when others with the same training unfortunately lost their jobs to outsourcing. I like to think that someone had forgiven me for my anger and was watching over me.
Since then, I have done some additional reading, learned a few rather surprising things and have never stepped through the doors of a lodge again. When I die, my ashes will be laid to rest with the military honors I supposedly earned by serving, though I was hurt in the US and not on a battlefield. This is one case where I have to defer to my wife because she says she will do it despite how I feel.
If you are a mason, I have no negative remarks to say to you. However, I will say this one thing. Always be on guard, my friend, because smiling faces are sometimes the ones you need to watch out for the most. I will leave it at that.
May God Bless and Keep you all
