For everyone who feels inclined
Some post we undertake to find
Congenial with his frame of mind
and all shall equal be.

W S Gilbert

A brother was recently awarded a rather lowly grand rank. He was very pleased with the award. He would have been pleased with any award, but one of his friends expressed disappointment saying 'Oh, we should have done better for you than that'. It made me think about the whole complex business of rank, seniority, precedence and honours in the masonic system, and I have to tell you I am not sure I like what I see.
    We hear quite a lot about so-called senior chaps being there to encourage and motivate the more recently-joined brethren. But do they really? In individual cases I know that they do, and I have seen good instances of this. But sadly, all too often they do not. Take for example the custom in most lodges of segregating (yes, segregating) the Grand Officers from the rest by seating them on the right of the Master. There can only be one reason for this - to single them out so that they can bask in a blaze of glory. In truth, the blazing star, or glory in the centre of the lodge is (or should be) something quite different, as the fifth section of the first lecture tells us. But these dark blue brethren, occupying those privileged benches, are hardly in a position, at least geographically, to congregate with the more recently-joined members, either to impart their own knowledge and experience to them, or (arguably more important) to learn about their spiritual values and aspirations.
    We then compound the matter by saluting (or greeting) them in a terribly formal way. At the festive board afterwards, where they are still segregated, the Master takes wine with them and they are then toasted by the whole assembly. All of this, to my mind, sits uneasily with notions of equality and brotherhood and actually obscures what we ought to be doing. In concrete terms, does it not make it more difficult to mark out ground for the foundation of our building or even make the placing of the stones more difficult? The builder, we are told, raises his column by the level and perpendicular (equality and uprightness) to which this archaic practice surely cannot contribute.
    Actually, things are better than they used to be. I remember a time when rank was awarded almost on simple seniority, as long as the Secretary padded out the recommendation sufficiently. Of course, as I said in an earlier issue, it doesn't have to be like this, and often it isn't. There are plenty of awards made to truly super Freemasons who have really earned them. We can overcome the problem if we stop and think, and realise that an award is just that, an award made for good service, and not a rank which, in some obscure military way, places one brother above another.
    I am always rather impressed by the practice of Grand Masters in Germany who, by long-established custom, wear an Entered Apprentice's badge to show that they are no better than the most recently-initiated mason. Let's go back to the first lecture. The language is rather quaintly eighteenth century, but the point comes across, and while I am not recommending death as a preferred route, this passage makes a nice template for social and spiritual harmony :

...yet ought no eminence of situation make us forget that we are brothers; for he who is placed on the lowest spoke of fortune's wheel is equally entitled to our regard; as a time will come, and the wisest of us knows not how soon, when all distinctions, save those of goodness and virtue, shall cease...

I do know many brethren who push on through their masonic life with promotion as the ultimate goal, thereby missing, in my view, many great and varied blessings. But the effect this obsession with rank can have on the structure of Freemasonry as a whole is no less damaging. We are all pushing upwards good chaps who used to know how to be good masons becoming instead good administrators in their Provinces or in London. Call me an old-fashioned idealist, but there are, it seems to me, a lot of politics and power games being played in Provincial Grand Lodges and in the upper reaches of our management for the benefit of a few and to the detriment of the ideals of our Order. We have a structure which seems to know a lot about the perpendicular (hierarchy etc.) but has lost sight of the level, the bonds of brotherhood and the spiritual togetherness with which we should be better acquainted. It may be that the advent of a new Grand Secretary implies a whole new management team. You may think with me that this is an issue worthy of their attention.