January 2008

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RW DGM' s MESSAGE FOR JANUARY 2008

LOVE AND THE LAW

Before I set out on my message for this first month of the New Year, I would like to send out my warm and fraternal greetings to all my Brethren, their families, and to any other visitor to this site for, a Very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous 2008 and beyond.

Recently our attention has been drawn to the Bill that has been introduced in our Parliament to protect parents from family abuse. It has been conveyed in various proverbs that the Law is meant for the lesser (evolved) human beings of Society while, for the Higher echelons, Ethical behaviour would be the rule and guide of their actions. One has serious reservations about enacted Laws being able to monitor and indeed decree acceptable norms of social behaviour. If that sort of legal framework is necessary, it would appear that society suffers from a serious devaluation in its ethical standards.

There are various causes for such errant behaviour towards elders, particularly of one’s own family. The principal ones are almost always the fault of the previous generation which has neglected to instill the appropriate values in their progeny – after all, interest of all kinds is what one receives in proportion to one’s investment / s, whether of time, money, or love. It has been my firm belief that there are no bad children, only bad parents. Dysfunctional children are made, not born that way.

Children observe and initiate their parents’ patterns of behaviour, which reflect in turn in their own behaviour as grown-ups. Therefore Love begets Love and the opposite perhaps also holds true.

There is no substitute for Love – throwing money at children to placate them, inevitably boomerangs as values get distorted and measured in purely material terms. The Law, in whatever form, cannot substitute for Love, which in turn must be an investment over the years in those that we have in our care, during their formative years, to be returned in like measure to us in our declining years which brings us naturally to the Masonic line and rule which should ever be a guide to all our actions. If Brotherly (and filial) Love, Relief and Truth were observed in practice there would be no need for laws to enforce these basic tenets. Let those tenets lead us into the New Year.