A caveat about mergers

If we meet less often, that'll help with membership.

If we shorten Introductions, that'll help with membership.

If we shorten Responses, that'll help with membership.

If we "lighten up" about the quality of our Ritualistic work, that'll help with membership.

If we rededicate ourselves to the quality of our Ritualistic work, that'll help with membership.

If we grant all dues-paying members voting credentials at the Grand Chapter session, that'll help with membership.

If we extend fraternal recognition to the Prince Hall Grand Chapter of Washington and Its Jurisdiction OES, that'll help with membership.

If we simplify the language in our Ritual, that'll help with membership.

If we relax our dress code, that'll help with membership.

If we support our youth groups, that'll help with membership.

If we build a big float and enter it into all of our community parades, that'll help with membership.

If we advertise on radio and with billboards, that'll help with membership.

If we put fraternal decals and license plates and frames on our cars, and wear fraternal pins and T-shirts, that'll help with membership.

If we do more "fun activities", that'll help with membership.

If we raise more funds for charity, that'll help with membership.

If we're visibly active in our local communities, that'll help with membership.

If we reach out to different ethnic and religious groups, that'll help with membership.

If we get rid of the meaningless "traditions" that are holding us back, and embrace change, that'll help with membership.

If we brew beer, or visit casinos, that'll help with membership.

If we lower our standards and make joining easier, that'll help with membership.

If we raise our standards and make joining more meaningful, that'll help with membership.

If we tell everyone we know how much we enjoy Eastern Star, that'll help with membership.

If we merge our diaspora of struggling Chapters into fewer, stronger Chapters, that'll help with membership.

Some of these are good ideas. Some are terrible ideas. All of them have been tried. Including, to varying degrees, mergers.

On the subject of membership, we're still tempted by the quick-fixes and cure-alls. We're plagued by an absence of logic and common sense. (Do any Chapters have prospectives beating down their doors with Petitions in hand if only Introductions could be three minutes shorter?)

On the subject of mergers, "membership" must not be the goal. Mergers and membership are almost oppositional. The reason mergers are still so taboo is that they require an acknowledgement that we cannot and will not increase membership enough or in time to save all our Chapters.

I don't believe anything in the above list has the slightest chance of increasing membership. I don't believe increasing membership is a realistic goal for the forseeable future. I don't believe this is entirely our fault, and I don't believe it is at all within our control. Not only that, but I think most of what we flail around with, in the name of membership, has been harmful to the members and the Chapters we already have. I still get tempted, but I'm learning to resist the siren song of membership.

The goal of mergers is not to grow the Order. It is to save the Order long enough to have any hope of growing some time in the future. It's important to acknowledge this, because it will shape our approach to mergers, and our approach is critical. We must conduct our mergers thoughtfully, because a bad merger can be even more destructive than none at all.

A brief history of mergers

First, some background. Our Worthy Grand Matron this year, a wonderful person who has honored me with a (minor) statewide appointment, is opposed to Chapter mergers and often makes this a theme of her public remarks. This has prompted me to examine my feelings about mergers, both for Chapters and Lodges, and it has sparked some discussion on the subject among my friends and traveling partners.

Since I've posted a few times already about too many buildings, it isn't a surprise that I favor mergers as one means of addressing our membership and participation crisis. But my thoughts on this subject are also evolving, in ways I'll discuss in this and future posts.

I watched one of our own neighbor Chapters struggle for years and suffer two failed merger attempts. Stubborn inactive members showed up to vote "no" and then disappeared. Stubborn active members allowed themselves to be churned through the line again and again instead of walking away. The Chapter continued on life support until last year, when they couldn't regularly get a quorum of seven. Their Charter was suspended mid-year and permanently seized at Grand Chapter. Those who sacrificed themselves all those years were rewarded with Demits. Now they're bitter and disillusioned enough that they're in no hurry to come back to Eastern Star, and although I think their ire is misdirected, it's hardly surprising.

This is my Alamo. I invoke our late, scarcely-lamented Chapter and its self-sacrificing Sisters as evidence of where our collective opposition to mergers gets us.

Our current WGM says it had always been her intent to refuse to grant any mergers during her year in the Grand East. She goes on to report, sadly, that three mergers were already under way when she was installed which she feels she has no choice but to allow, though she doesn't approve of them. Another one of the WGM's appointees this year has expressed a wish that an in-progress merger in my county might fall through. "Wouldn't that be great?"

Count me as one who is extremely grateful that our kindly WGM isn't pigheaded enough to obstruct the mergers she's inherited. Remember the Alamo! I don't know whether she's suppressing new mergers, as it's rumored was done by some of her predecessors, but she's certainly making a point of announcing at every Chapter this year that she "hopes" there won't be any more. And it's bad enough that she's disparaging the difficult and painful choices being made by our own Sisters and Brothers in their decision to merge. It's not as though they take it lightly.

My statewide appointment affords me the opportunity (indeed, the obligation) to visit other Chapters regularly, something I haven't done since I was Associate Matron, several years ago. I have to say I'm shocked by what I find. Chapters that seemed healthy 4-5 years ago are now struggling. Chapters that were struggling now have the pall of death over them.

We've gone from losing our sideliners, to losing our line officers, to losing our installed appointed officers, to losing our "permanent pro-tems", and now we've reached the point where most Chapters, including mine, can't even be certain they'll have enough temporary pro-tems to fill their chairs for Opening.

Now I'm seeing the spread from stated meetings to even our "special" events. Turnout at Official Visits has dropped off sharply. Turnout at Receptions is half of what it used to be. Our 61 Grand Representatives, whose only duty is visitation, are lucky to see ten of their number in the same room this year. Even our own Grand Officers barely manage appearances at events outside of their local areas.

Here's a photo from our Grand Chapter Installation this year. Look at the sidelines!!!! I had more people at my Chapter Installation than are in this picture!

This is not new. I'm beginning to understand what my Chapter's 50-year members are so upset about.

Based on what I'm seeing, which is a disaster, and what I'm hearing, which is the same old desperate denial, I'm officially making the switch from "supporting mergers" to encouraging downsizing in many forms, including mergers.

I'll continue these thoughts in upcoming posts.

Competing with consumption

Chris Jordan, local photographer, discusses our consumption-based culture in the Seattle Weekly:

It is always amazing for me to step outside our culture and visit a country like Brazil, where the priority is not money but joy. The people of Brazil are far less wealthy than we are, but they are visibly happier. You can see it in their faces and gestures, and hear it in their music, and see it in the way they spend their time. Coming back here can be depressing. America has lots [sic] its joy; we have become a nation consumed by greed, and our predominant national emotions are fear, hatred, and rage. It didn't used to be this way; even in my own lifetime I remember when people worked less, took more vacations, spent more time with their families, and were satisfied with fewer cars, smaller houses, and less stuff. Just a few years ago, our stoves and countertops didn't matter; now a $30,000 remodeled chef's kitchen with granite countertops is standard in most middle-class homes even if no one in the house cooks. Today's Honda Civic is far more luxurious than the best Mercedes of a couple of decades ago, yet everyone thinks they need more than a Honda Civic. We're driving insane cars, buying insane amounts of stuff, and working insane hours to pay for it all. In the last few decades, the economy and the gaining of material wealth have subverted everything else that we value. We are trying to fill the spiritual void with iPods and plasma TV's and so on, which at bottom is fundamentally empty and unfulfilling, so the cycle continues. [emphases added]

My OES Chapter has a 93-year-old member who scolded me once for complaining about being "too busy" for a statewide OES appointment. She told me that fifty years ago, she served in the same appointment when there were three times as many Chapters and events she was required to attend, while working full-time and raising four young sons. Especially in OES, our younger members jump to conclusions about 1950s stay-at-home wives having had lots more leisure time to spend on our Order. It just ain't so. Their generation was way, way more active and committed than we are today.

And yet we feel more drained by our everyday lives and burdened by the expectations of our Orders. The socioeconomic hamster wheel described above might shed a little light on why this is so, and why our contemporaries say they have "no time" for membership in our organizations (or, indeed, any organizations). Doubly so, considering that our organizations do nothing to feed our greed. No wonder it's so hard to get even our own members to show up to work in service to others. No wonder we seem irrelevant.

Dare I even mention that Freemasonry is expanding rapidly in Brazil?

How not to save the Order

I am concerned that two of the most destructive phrases in our collective vocabularies right now are:

"We need to do whatever we can to increase membership,"

and,

"We need to stop all these mergers."

Unfortunately, both of these phrases are popular and hardly anyone seems to understand why they are wrong.

I think they're wrong, and I think we'll hasten our demise if that's the best we can do.

But I don't know how to get that message out there, and I have no idea how to start a conversation about how we can change course when I can't convince most people that our course needs changing.

Too many buildings

It's been suggested in recent years that Freemasons don't have too few members, just too many buildings.

Subordinate OES Chapter numbers are sequential. Here in the Grand Chapter of Washington we have ~106 active Chapters, but our highest active number is #257. It boggles my mind that anyone in this jurisdiction ever thought we needed, or could possibly support, 257+ Chapters. Doesn't seem much different from Boston Market or Krispy Kreme, who over-expanded and then had to withdraw from markets, consolidate, and lay off.

And, it turns out, we are not the only struggling social organizations to be thinking in this direction. The Seattle Times op-ed page today describes a proposal for mainline Protestant churches in the University District to consolidate their properties and share a single facility. Too few churchgoers, too many buildings, too much maintenance, too much property value tied up in empty caverns. Don't know if it'll fly, yet, but it shows that other "Bowling Alone" groups are beginning to think outside the big brick box.

Welcome to the Empty Labyrinth

I'm kicking off this new blog for ruminations on the future of Eastern Star, Freemasonry, and related organizations.

Candidates for membership in OES walk a labyrinth as part of their initiation ceremony, but our pathways lie empty most of the time. Literally, in that our buildings are disused. Literally, in that we initiate so few new members. Literally, in that our new members so rarely become active. Literally, in that attendance and participation are declining. And figuratively, in that we've given up on so many of the ideals we purport to teach there.

I'll be writing occasionally on the things I think we get wrong, the things we do right, and new ideas I think we might try.

If you have a Blogger account and are interested in becoming a contributor to this blog, post a comment to let me know.