Children are not combatants. Every child has a right to life, to love, to a future which allows them to choose their path.
    Seeing the images of the traumatised children and parents of Beslan desperately escaping from that wrecked school gymnasium brought tears to my eyes. In a daily diet of media revelations exposing the pitiless inhumanity of humanity this reached yet another level of horror. Sadly, we have seen it all before: in the Balkans, Rwanda, the indiscriminate horrors of Northern Ireland, Israel, Iraq, and who knows what is happening in southern Sudan?
    Why should this happen? Well, lets just mention politics and religion…
    The true field of politics concerns social harmony and shared values; that of religion is the journey to the Divine, one informed by the heart and the head in equal measures. It does not take much insight into world affairs to see that both fields have long been invaded by men and women desperate to satisfy their own cravings for power, control, status and even more perverse pleasures which run like a mad snake through the minds of those given over to greed without end.
    And what of those at the sharp end? The warriors? We need to be clear about this: to be a warrior is to join an ancient and noble profession where valour and bravery and intelligence are rightly lauded; but also restraint and compassion.
    A warrior who kills children has abdicated that role; he or she has become a murderer. And no weasel words claiming injustice, no pathetic excuses of following orders, no terminological distancing of ‘collateral damage,’ can wipe away the stain which will remain to be judged in another place. It matters little whether the killing is by a machete, a block of semtex or a ‘smart’ missile - once a warrior, afterwards, something else, something shameful.
    When does it become time to say ‘enough’? When, in a world where beauty, harmony and morality are so possible, are available for the asking, can they, at last, be acknowledged as sufficient aspiration for the ambitious?
    Every Freemason is asked to stand beyond the divisions caused by politics and religion. Freemasons are enjoined to believe in the One, the Divine Creator, the Great Architect; the type of worship given to the One is acknowledged - and encouraged - as being down to each man and woman’s own conscience. There are many trails to the top of the mountain. Who is to say which is the best?
    There have been questions raised over the future of Freemasonry, over whether it will inevitably dissolve into an exclusive dining club or a businessmen’s association. Despite these fears, we can be certain that so long as Freemasonry remains true to its heart, and Freemasons true to their hearts, to a perspective on life marked by our great masonic symbols of the Square, the Level and the Plumb Rule, then Freemasonry has an important role to play. Our organisation is world-wide; we exist to promulgate a life free of discord, one in which action comes from the deep spirit within and reveals itself in morality, equality, justness and the uprightness of life and actions.
    And, above all, in all our pursuits (as our ritual puts it), ‘to have eternity in view’.

O O O O O O O O

You will read in this issue of the successful trip I and forty Freemasonry Today readers took in Egypt during the spring. We are now planning a trip for next year and following discussions with those on the last trip we have decided to vary the itinerary: we leave for Cairo on
    2 April 2005 and spend two days looking at the Pyramids and Sphinx then fly to Abu Simbel to see the temples of Ramses II and Nefertari. We cruise Lake Nasser for several days seeing many of the temples about its edge. Then from Aswan we drive to Luxor to experience the great temples and the Valley of the Kings. Following this we fly to Sinai to visit the monastery of St Catherine and, for those who have the energy, climb Mt Sinai for sunset. As an optional trip we are also offering four days visiting Amman, Petra and the Crusader castle of Kerak in Jordan before returning to London.
    If you are interested then please contact Tracey Strand at HPB Travel, for a brochure: telephone 01638 674 744. But please book as soon as you are able because there is a strict limit on places and on our last trip we had ten or more prospective travellers who could not be accommodated. Michael Baigent MA – Editor