Building More Than Things
I’ve spent much of my working life as a designer and draftsman, and today I work in the pipe organ profession—taking ideas, measurements, and possibilities and turning them into drawings that craftsmen can actually build.
Somewhere along the way, I began to realize that Freemasonry asks much the same thing of us.
The lessons of the Craft give us a plan. But a plan sitting on the trestle board accomplishes very little until a man picks up his tools and begins the work.
That realization became the seed of The Everyday Mason.
I began asking a simple question: How do we take what Masonry teaches us in the lodge and actually live it on an ordinary Tuesday morning?
Not occasionally.
Not only when the lodge is open.
Every day.
Monty Thurman, P.M.
Author, The Everyday Mason
HOW IT BEGAN
From a Lodge Talk to a Daily Practice
The Everyday Mason didn’t begin as a book. It began as a simple lodge presentation built around a question I had been asking myself: What would happen if we took a few of the principles Masonry teaches us and intentionally practiced them every single day?
The answer became five simple practices—what I now call the Five Foundation Stones: Daily Prayer, an Act of Kindness or Charity, Checking In with a Brother, Learning Something New, and Reflecting on the Day.
What struck me as I developed them is that none of these were new ideas I was introducing to the Craft. Every one of them is already handed to us in the Entered Apprentice Degree—the very first degree every Mason receives. The Foundation Stones aren’t an addition to Masonry. They’re simply Masonry, distilled into something we can practice before we ever leave the house each morning.
They weren’t intended to replace ritual, education, lodge attendance, or any of the other important parts of the Craft. They were meant to help carry those lessons beyond the lodge room and into everyday life.
Then something happened that I hadn’t expected. Brothers began telling me they were actually using them.
One Brother and his wife began practicing them together. Another Brother told me how much the idea had helped him. Brothers asked for copies of the little card I had created. And one evening, a simple late-night message checking on a Brother reminded me that these weren’t merely five ideas for a presentation.
They worked when they were practiced.
That was when the presentation began becoming something more. Eventually, it became The Everyday Mason: Living the Craft, One Day at a Time.
The Mason Behind the Work
I have been fortunate over the years to serve the Craft in a number of ways—as a Past Master, ritual instructor, committee member, writer, and Brother.
Those experiences have given me opportunities I never imagined when I first entered a lodge. But they have also reinforced something much simpler: Masonry is not measured by what we wear, the titles we hold, or the offices we have occupied. It is measured by what kind of men we are becoming.
That is the Masonry that interests me most.
The Masonry that goes home with us.
The Work Continues
I’m still learning. Still building. Still trying to put the lessons of the Craft into practice one day at a time.
If something I’ve written or shared here encourages another Brother to do the same, then the work has been worthwhile.
From one builder to another — keep building.