If I say to a child "boat" and point to a picture of a boat, for her or him the picture itself becomes the boat. The child will not automatically call the real object "boat" because the picture now owns the name. I haven't yet imparted the essence of that object. We, and our children, find ourselves unable to relate to things that are nameless. Umberto Eco, interviewed on television some years ago about his novel The Name of the Rose opined that naming things destroys them. I call this flower "rose" and you, who are not looking at the same flower, have a peconceived notion of what is "rose" which does not do justice to the particular delicateness of the velvet on the petals, the subtlety of the scent, the strange and beautiful colour of this rose, which itself has a nameless colour which is somewhere between them all. If I try to name it, I lose it.
    A recent Guardian article explored the fact that children who grow up bilingual or trilingual tend to be expressive, original and especially good at divergent thinking. Knowing two or more languages frees the child from thinking the name is the object or the object the name. As an example, a child who is bilingual English/Welsh has the word "school" and its Welsh counterpart "ysgoll". But because "ysgoll" in Welsh also means "ladder", the child has the chance to see school metaphorically, in a way that an English child does not.
    And so it is also, I submit, with the language of spirituality, and hence the language of Masonry. Some time ago in our lodge, when we worked that section of the Emulation lectures which has to do with Jacob's ladder, a Hebrew legend, my Hindu brother was astounded to find resonances in it with his own religious practice. It made me want to go and read that part of his holy book which deals with the legend. But then, it wasn't the words that were similar; it was the imagery, the nameless but powerful truth.
    I have not yet met a freemason who could adequately define the essence of what he gains from his craft. There are plenty of vague definitions around, and doubtless Eco would urge us not to persist in our search to refine the vagueness lest we destroy. As an allegory, it always puzzled me how a butterfly fancier could possibly value the object of his desire once it was, literally, pinned down and therefore dead. We do not need to pin down the butterfly but to let him continue his flight, to be multilingual about our craft, to experience whatever truths we can from all available angles, and to listen - perhaps the most valid activity of them all - as long as we can do it with more than just our ears.
    The birth, life, death and perfection of man, represented allegorically in a way that words cannot, must surely be one of the most precious gifts freemasons have. We start with the symbolically helpless state in which we are initiated, deprived of worldly goods and accoutrements, lacking even the light necessary to orient ourselves. As one ritual puts it : "Man emerges into his temporal existence ignorant, innocent and weak". In this helpless state, he discovers that his heart and mind may unfold the beauties of true godliness without his eyes or ears discovering it, thus laying the first or foundation stone of his own building.
    The squares, levels and perpendiculars which he uses in this building are not, as some suppose, attitudes of quasi-military correctness in our behaviour in lodge, but rather they are the regulators of our art, and as such are meant to enable us to contemplate, inter alia, on equality, rightness and higher aspirations. They teach us that we are sprung from the same stock, partakers of the same nature and the same hope. We are distinguished by nothing if not by truth, and death ensures that we all attain the same level. In our journey, we symbolically work at the unevenness in our character, and work to perfect our own personal perfect ashlar. The work is begun in the name of God, executed to His glory and finally, if all goes well, becomes a part of our own nature. This journey is symbolised by perambulations about the cosmos (the lodge), which, starting with moral truth and virtue, proceed through the wonders of the natural law and of science, up to death itself and through death to perfection.
    The account of the rise and development of the five noble orders of architecture is a powerful emblematic tracery of our own possible rise and development, following this schema:

UNADORNED SIMPLICITY, COMBINED WITH STRENGTH RISE TO ELEGANCE AND INGENUITY, WHICH IN TURN LEAD TO STATELY AND SUPERB STRUCTURES, CULMINATING IN STRENGTH, ELEGANCE, BEAUTY AND LIGHT.

Another tracery, without the use of architectural metaphors, might go as follows:

IN HELPLESS INDIGENCE WE ENTER INTO MORTAL EXISTENCE, FROM WHICH WE ATTAIN TO NATURAL EQUALITY AND MUTUAL DEPENDENCE, WHEREFROM WE RISE TO UNIVERSAL BENEFICENCE AND CHARITY: RELIEF AND CONSOLATION TO FELLOW CREATURES, RISING BY DEDICATION OF THE HEART AND MIND TO GOD, TO THE PROPER EMPLOYMENT OF THE INTELLECTUAL FACULTY, THROUGH WHICH WE UNFOLD THE INTRICACIES OF THE NATURAL LAW, AND RISE TO KNOWLEDGE OF SELF, THROUGH WHICH WE BEGIN TO ATTAIN WISDOM AND TRUTH, REALISING THAT IN OUR PERISHABLE FORM THERE YET RESIDE VITAL AND IMMORTAL PRINCIPLES, WHICH ENABLE US TO REALISE OUR OWN GODLIKE POTENTIAL, SO RISING TO THAT PERFECTION WHOSE SEED WE CARRIED AT OUR BIRTH.

Yes, we use words to render all this as well as we can. But the words themselves do not enshrine the essence of our craft. They are inadequate by far. But worry not. You still retain your abstract definition within the richness of the images of your mind - wherein lies the truest touchstone. Trust it.