Trestle Board

Brethren and Ladies;

“Good fences make good neighbors” said my favorite poet. Having resided in a variety of neighborhoods in states the length and breadth of this country, wiser counsel could not have been given. Yet in our society fence building has become more than a physical barrier separating property lines.

A principal tenant of Freemasonry is Brotherly Love. This tenant teaches that we are of one womb, and that we are to support all of humanity regardless of national, religious or economic boundaries. The expansion of intellectual boundaries is fundamental to even an attempt at embracing this ideal. In watching daily news events our leaders seem incapable of such intellectual exercises. Compromise between our representatives is lost between ideologically impassable fences. On the liberal side they have decided they are right, and right plus majority means no compromise is necessary; on the conservative side impasse is supported by boundaries based on moral grounds, and if it is not moral it shall not pass.

As a result our country and our way of life grind methodically to a halt. Our economy is in limbo. Our government institutions have become immovable bloated bureaucratic blobs of useless ineffectual goo. Our legal and prison systems have become devoid of logic, morality or reason.

The United States of America would not have come into being without inconceivable compromise on the part of those who created it. Well knew all who signed their names to the words, “All men are created equal,” that those who believed in the equality of man could not abide the institution of slavery; nor did those whose society depended on that evil institution believe the words literally. But they signed it, and so “America” exists eleven score and nine years hence.

Robert Frost lived a generation after the results of that first great moral compromise. That most heinous war of brother against brother for the sake of brothers. In all of recorded history no war set the moral compass of a nation, or humanity, on as square a path as the outcome of the “civil war” between the United States of America and the Confederate States of America. Nearly a million brothers were slain as that first great compromise.

Was it worth it?

Only God is qualified to answer that. Yet I must ask myself if it is so.

The Mason-Dixon Line proved to be a formidable fence indeed. It made good neighbors for four-score and seven years. I will submit the fact that without this compromise, the conflict and resultant moral victory, the world would not be as it is now. Europe and Asia would surely be wrapped in the embrace of tyrants. North and South America likely subjugated or controlled by feudal dictators beholden to foreign kings.

Fences serve the purpose of separating property. They are a line to mark separation of territory. They, like the Temple of Solomon, and every man, are temporary. What is within those boundaries is more important than the boundary itself.

Ideas and ideals are subjugated in a similar manner in my opinion. Fencing off right from wrong in the mind is a necessary task, if also an imperfect art. Flaws in thought and moral certainly are certain; and so compromise for the sake of preserving the higher, if grayer areas of ideology are mandatory.

Perhaps prosperity and greed have led to fences the creators of this nation could never have foreseen, perhaps not. We have traveled this road before. Perhaps the tree must be cut down so that it may sprout again. Perhaps the tender branch will not cease, and grow to shade both our own yard as well as that of our brothers, on the other side of those “good fences that make good neighbors.”

Sincerely and Fraternally,
Steve Laurvick, SW