The Tao of Masonry

So here we are at just about the time that we have depleted the motivational energy needed to keep up with our New Year’s resolutions. The parking lot at the human cardio treadmill gym down the street now shows a few empty spaces, extra donuts or pastries have started showing up in the lunch room at work, and I no longer see friends and coworkers patting their stomachs and complaining about their clothes not fitting; although on that last point, my own opinion is that most of them bought new clothes during the post-Xmas sales. Personally, I don’t normally make New Year’s resolutions, which means that I don’t have those guilty feelings about not keeping them up. Life is easier that way.

One of those things that I used to feel guilty about, though, was not attending lodge. For years I was one of those guys who you just knew would be down there, usually an hour early (although that changed as I began to put more hours in at work). But at some point over the last several years, I found myself attending lodge less frequently because I was busy working a different temple: instead of my spiritual temple, I was working on my corporal one. I had started working out.

For reasons not clear to me, Freemasons spend a lot of time and energy discussing our spiritual nature — often over vast quantities of food. Given that most of us are older, we’re doing so at a time in our lives when our metabolisms are slowing down and our bodies more easily turn that food into storage instead of fuel. We talk about “the house not made with hands,” but we never talk about the physical foundation of that temple, or about the body — the container — that carries around our minds.

When I hit my 50s, I discovered that I was out of shape. I mean, sure, my old pants didn’t fit, and I needed collar extenders all the time, but it didn’t really hit me until I was sitting in the doctor’s office discussing blood pressure and cholesterol medicine, and trying to figure out what all those numbers on the charts meant. From there, I put all the effort into studying fitness that I had previously put into studying Freemasonry.

And it’s interesting to note that, just like with Freemasonry, there is a lot of information, bad information, and misinformation about fitness. Which diets are better, what kinds of exercise are better, what times to work out, vitamins, supplements, heart rates, protein powder, ketogenic, paleo, primal… the names and words ran together after a while. But after a while I began to see the pattern, and I found my path.

The issue I had was that between work, family, and the various social events with which I’ve been involved, I often found myself skipping workouts. Eventually I understood that I needed to choose between consistency in my exercise routine, or something else. One of those “something else” was Monday night at lodge; and I felt guilty about this for quite some time. But as I became more fit, my sense of guilt subsided; after all, right from the beginning we are told that Freemasonry should not come before one’s family or other responsibilities.

I lost weight, but more importantly, I got myself off of the blood pressure medication, and managed to reduce the cholesterol meds to a marginal level (that I’m not even sure is necessary). And I gained weight back, but in the form of muscle. Between the road cycling that I do in the summer, and the weight lifting that I do at other times, I’m now arguably healthier than my doctor. But, just like with Freemasonry, it didn’t happen overnight.

The point to all this is that sometimes we neglect the temple that we already have: our body. And just like the temples of old need maintenance and upkeep, so do our own bodies. It’s easy to neglect them simply because we so rarely think about them as long as they keep moving us around from one place to another. But remember that in the long run, maintenance is usually less expensive than patches and repairs. Instead of waiting until New Year, or your birthday, or some other calendar date, take some time to take stock of your own temple, and start  your own maintenance program.

If nothing else, it might get you some nicer presents than just a few bigger pairs of pants.