Height Magnifies Deviation: Responsibility Reveals What Already Exists

I was recently working on a Masonic meme built around the Plumb. The words were simple: “Outcome, Not Intention.” The image was equally simple—a plumb suspended beside a stone wall. Yet deciding exactly how that wall should appear raised a more interesting question than the one I had started with. Should the wall be obviously straight? Should it be visibly crooked? Or should it remain ambiguous enough that the viewer had to bring his own experience to the image and decide what the Plumb revealed?

That question stayed with me because of what happens when a wall is only slightly out of plumb. Near its foundation, the deviation may be almost impossible to see. Continue building upward along that same line, however, and the consequences of the original error become increasingly apparent. The deviation itself has not changed. If a wall rises at one degree from vertical, one degree remains one degree. At one foot of height, that error produces a horizontal displacement of only about one-fifth of an inch. At ten feet, it is a little more than two inches. At thirty feet, it exceeds six inches. Nothing happened to the original angle; the wall simply grew taller. Height magnifies deviation.

That is an operative lesson easily understood by a craftsman, but the speculative lesson interests me more. I began thinking about the progression of a Mason through the chairs of his Lodge and eventually toward the East. Each step brings additional responsibility, greater expectations, more complicated problems, and usually more people affected by his decisions. What if the increasing height of a wall provides a useful metaphor for that progression?

What if responsibility works upon character as height works upon a wall?

Greater responsibility does not necessarily create defects in character. It can reveal what was already there. A Mason may possess a measure of impatience when he begins his journey. He may be somewhat disorganized, dislike criticism, have difficulty delegating, desire recognition more than he realizes, or become stubborn when challenged. He may even have a tendency to confuse disagreement with disrespect. With little responsibility, those characteristics may have relatively little effect upon anyone beyond himself. They are small deviations close to the foundation, difficult to see and perhaps easily dismissed.

Then the wall begins to rise. A Mason accepts an assignment. Later he becomes responsible for a degree or committee. He occupies a chair. Other men begin depending upon him. Eventually he may become a Deacon, then a Warden, and perhaps one day Master of his Lodge. With each step, the work becomes more complicated. Decisions affect more people, communication becomes more important, and mistakes carry greater consequences. The character deviation did not necessarily become greater; the structure surrounding it did.

A man who is mildly disorganized may successfully manage a simple task involving two or three people. Give him responsibility for a complicated event involving twenty people, multiple deadlines, money, facilities, and outside organizations, and that same disorganization becomes far more visible. Impatience that once produced an unpleasant conversation may eventually affect an entire Lodge. An excessive need for control may remain largely invisible until a man finally possesses enough authority to exercise it. A sensitivity to criticism may seem inconsequential until leadership requires him to hear criticism regularly and respond to it constructively.

The same principle should also work in the other direction. Increasing responsibility can reveal patience, courage, humility, restraint, generosity, sound judgment, and an ability to bring men together that smaller tasks never demanded. Height magnifies alignment as surely as it magnifies deviation. The point is not that advancement makes men worse. The point is that increasing responsibility places more of the man where it can be seen.

This gives the progressive chairs of a Lodge a meaning beyond advancement toward the East. Each chair can be understood as another course of stone added to the wall and another opportunity for a Mason to discover whether his work remains upright. The Junior Deacon encounters responsibilities he did not have while sitting among the Brethren. The Senior Deacon encounters others. The Wardens confront questions of leadership, judgment, preparation, personalities, and responsibility that were not present earlier. Ideally, each position should reveal something about the man occupying it.

Advancement, then, should not merely prompt the question, “Am I ready for the next chair?” There is another question that may be more important: What has this chair revealed about me that I should correct before I build any higher? If the purpose of progression is partly personal development, advancement without reflection can become a missed opportunity. We can become very good at performing the duties of increasingly important positions without becoming equally skilled at examining what those positions are revealing about us.

This is where the Plumb becomes particularly important. The Plumb does not condemn the wall, nor does it know anything about the intentions of the craftsman who built it. It does not praise him when the work is upright or ridicule him when it is not. It simply establishes a reference independent of the craftsman’s opinion of his own work. He may sincerely believe the wall is straight. He may have worked extraordinarily hard upon it. He may have encountered difficult circumstances while building it. None of those things move the plumb line.

That may be one of the more difficult lessons contained within the symbol because we are remarkably capable of judging ourselves by our intentions. We know what we meant to accomplish. We know the pressures surrounding our decisions, the information available to us at the time, and the reasons we chose one course rather than another. Because we possess all that internal information, we can usually construct a convincing explanation for ourselves. The Plumb possesses none of it. It simply checks the work.

Yet speculative Masonry presents a difficulty that the operative craftsman does not face. We are simultaneously the craftsman and the material upon which we labor. We are attempting to examine character through the very character being examined. If my judgment is part of the problem, relying exclusively upon my judgment to identify the problem presents an obvious difficulty. An external reference therefore becomes essential.

Where do we find that Plumb? Certainly, Masonic teachings provide standards against which conduct can be considered. Experience provides another. Sometimes failure becomes the Plumb because the consequences of our conduct become impossible to ignore. Sometimes the reactions of those around us tell us that something is no longer aligned. Sometimes another Brother becomes the Plumb by telling us something we would rather not hear. The difficulty is not merely finding the instrument. It is developing the willingness to use it when the deviation is still small enough to correct easily.

There is another problem as a Mason progresses toward the East. Advancement itself can begin to look like evidence of alignment. A man is appointed to a chair. He performs adequately and advances. He becomes a Warden. Eventually his Brethren elect him Master. Each successive step can understandably feel like confirmation that the wall must be straight. After all, if something were seriously wrong, why would he continue to advance?

But advancement measures advancement. It does not necessarily measure character.

In fact, increasing authority may make honest measurement more difficult. People often become increasingly reluctant to criticize those who occupy positions of authority. A Brother may recognize a developing problem but decide that confronting it is not worth the resulting conflict. Another may worry that criticism will be interpreted as personal hostility or disloyalty. Others may simply decide to wait because a Master’s year eventually ends. The irony is difficult to miss: at precisely the point where a man’s deviations can have their greatest consequences, the people around him may become least willing to point them out.

Then comes the East. The Master’s chair represents the greatest formal height a Mason reaches within his Lodge, but it also places his character under extraordinary strain. Authority, tradition, personalities, expectations, finances, ritual, disagreements, schedules, candidates, officers, and the ordinary unpredictability of human beings converge upon one position. Decisions that were once theoretical become immediate. Leadership qualities that could once be discussed abstractly must now be practiced in front of everyone.

The chair does not necessarily create arrogance, insecurity, impatience, stubbornness, resentment, or an excessive need for control. It gives those characteristics room to become visible. At the same time, it can reveal strengths that were equally difficult to see before. Patience becomes meaningful when patience is difficult. Humility matters differently when a man possesses authority. Restraint means more when he has the power to impose his preference. Leadership becomes something other than an idea when other men actually depend upon his judgment.

That may be one of the greatest opportunities presented by the East. A year as Master can teach a Mason things about himself that he could have learned nowhere else. If he takes those lessons seriously, the experience becomes much more than successful administration of a Lodge. The East becomes another working place upon the unfinished stone. The danger comes when the authority of the chair is interpreted as proof that the work upon the man occupying it has somehow been completed.

I have come to wonder, however, whether the greater test may come after the East. Becoming a Past Master presents a peculiar challenge. For a year, a man has occupied the highest chair in his Lodge. Men have risen when he entered. He has presided over meetings, made appointments, controlled agendas, rendered decisions, and carried both the authority and responsibility of the office. Custom and protocol have reinforced his position throughout that year.

Then his year ends, and another man sits in the East. The former Master must now learn a different kind of discipline. He must advise without governing. He must disagree without undermining. He must watch another Mason make decisions differently than he would have made them. He may even have to watch a new Master make mistakes he believes he could prevent. Most importantly, he must surrender authority he has become accustomed to exercising and accept the same customs and protocols that now restrain him from continuing to govern.

Perhaps that is where some of the smallest deviations become most visible. The impatient man may discover that he cannot wait for the new Master to learn. The controlling man may struggle to relinquish control. The man who became accustomed to recognition may discover that he misses it. The man who interpreted his year in the East as confirmation of superior judgment may find it difficult to accept that another Brother now possesses the same authority he once held. A characteristic that was barely visible near the foundation may now stand several inches away from the line.

This may also be where a failure to apply the Plumb earlier becomes particularly costly. If nobody ever challenged the deviation—or if the craftsman refused to look when they did—the journey through the chairs may actually reinforce it. Every advancement can be interpreted as validation. Every conflict can be remembered as evidence that someone else was unreasonable. Every criticism can be dismissed as disloyalty. Instead of using increasing responsibility to discover where correction was necessary, the Mason can use his advancement as evidence that no correction was ever needed.

He reached the top of the wall without discovering that it was out of plumb.

There is something particularly unfortunate about that outcome because the journey through the chairs offers so many opportunities for exactly the opposite result. Every new responsibility can reveal something that simpler work could not. Every difficult personality can test patience. Every disagreement can test restraint. Every mistake can test humility. Every success can test ego. Every increase in authority can test whether a man understands the difference between leadership and control. Properly approached, the progression toward the East is not evidence that the work upon ourselves is finished. It provides progressively more demanding work through which we can discover where that work remains.

The Past Master may therefore face one of the most revealing stages of all. He has reached the height, exercised the authority, and completed the formal progression. Now much of the external structure that guided and restrained him has changed. What remains is the man and whatever lessons he chose to take from the journey. If he learned to keep the Plumb beside his work, his experience can become a tremendous resource to those who follow him. If he did not, the very experience intended to develop him may instead have strengthened his certainty that everyone else should continue building according to his line.

The lesson is not that men should fear advancement or that responsibility inevitably exposes some hidden moral failure. Quite the opposite. Greater responsibility offers a remarkable opportunity for self-knowledge. It places our judgment, temperament, discipline, humility, and relationships under conditions that smaller responsibilities simply cannot reproduce. It allows us to see ourselves at greater scale.

The operative craftsman does not wait until the wall is complete before applying the Plumb. He checks as he builds because correction becomes increasingly difficult as additional courses are laid upon an existing deviation. Perhaps the speculative craftsman should approach his own development in much the same way. We should not wait until the consequences of a defect become so large that everyone can see them. We should continually compare our conduct against something more reliable than our own intentions and remain willing to hear when another person sees a deviation that we do not.

There is no shame in discovering that the work requires correction. That is why the working tools remain beside us. The greater danger is continuing to build because the first few courses looked close enough.

We should not fear building higher.

We should fear building higher without keeping the Plumb beside the work.

Heckling the Boys of Summer

It should have been just about a perfect night for baseball.

After weeks of Southern California heat, the temperature had dropped perhaps twelve or fourteen degrees. By the time the game settled in, it was somewhere in the high 70s, with just enough of a cooling breeze to remind you why summer evenings and baseball have always belonged together.

I was at a Single-A game between the Buzzards and the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, the Dodgers and Angels farm teams respectively. Calling it a rivalry might be overstating things. The Dodgers and Angels have the Freeway Series at the major-league level, but that's more geography and marketing than Giants-Dodgers blood feud. Still, these were two local organizations, there was a decent crowd—maybe 30 or 40 percent of the stadium—and the game itself turned out to be a good one.

My seat was four rows behind the visiting dugout.

Unfortunately, somebody else was sitting in it.

A woman was in my seat, with her husband and child beside her. I looked at my ticket. Then I looked at the section and row. Then I checked the ticket again, because my first assumption was that I had made the mistake.

I hadn't.

“I think you're in my seat,” I finally said.

Her husband explained that they had moved because there were plenty of empty seats. The game had already started, so I wasn't particularly interested in making an issue of it. I said I was going to get a hot dog anyway and would be back.

“Well, we'll move if you come back,” the woman said, rather indignantly.

If I come back?

I had apparently interrupted their enjoyment of my seat.

I went for my hot dog. When I returned, they moved. A little later they moved again because, unsurprisingly, the seats they moved into belonged to somebody else.

It wasn't a major incident. Nobody got into an argument. Nobody called security. It was simply weird, and it started an evening during which I increasingly found myself wondering what had happened to some of the little courtesies that once seemed to be understood at a baseball game.

People came and went throughout the game, which is normal. What wasn't normal—or at least shouldn't be—was stopping in the aisle and standing there having conversations while blocking the view of everyone behind them.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned about this. At the theater, you don't wander down the aisle in the middle of a musical number and then stand in front of the audience while deciding where you're going to sit. Baseball makes it even easier. Every half inning provides a natural break. That's when you get up. That's when you come back. Of course, sometimes an inning goes on forever, a kid has to use the restroom, or somebody needs another beer. Life happens.

Just don't stand in the aisle having a conversation while everyone behind you is trying to watch the game.

Speaking of beer, there was another offense against civilization.

No draft beer.

None.

Cans.

A baseball stadium without draft beer strikes me as fundamentally wrong. There are some traditions that do not require extensive analysis or historical research. Baseball stadiums ought to have draft beer. Period.

Still, the game was good.

It went back and forth and remained tied through much of the evening. There were home runs. There were good defensive plays. There were errors and missed opportunities. There were the little unexpected moments that make minor-league baseball particularly enjoyable. You are watching professionals, but you're also watching young players learning how to become better professionals. Sometimes they make a spectacular play. Sometimes they don't.

As the game went on and the crowd began thinning, however, individual voices became easier to hear.

That's when the heckling really started.

I understand heckling. It's baseball. I understand booing an umpire after a questionable call. I understand riding an opposing player a little. I understand cheering wildly when your team turns a double play and sitting quietly when the other team does it.

What I don't understand is booing good baseball simply because the other team played it.

The Quakes would make a genuinely good play—a crisp double play, for instance—and some fans would boo. Why? You don't have to applaud the opposing team, but a great play is a great play. A great catch is a great catch. If a pitcher is mowing everybody down, you may desperately want somebody to hit him, but you can still recognize that you're watching somebody pitch a hell of a game.

At some point I think being a baseball fan ought to include actually liking baseball.

Then an outfielder dropped a fly ball.

He probably should have caught it. He knew he should have caught it. Everybody in the stadium knew he should have caught it.

That's baseball.

But a couple of spectators decided that wasn't enough.

“My grandmother could have caught that!”

Then came variations on the same theme. Somebody could have caught it with his eyes closed. Somebody else could have made the play. None of it was particularly original or funny. It just kept coming.

And from four rows behind the dugout, I was close enough to see something you might not notice from farther away.

The players could hear them.

Several turned around and looked toward the stands. At one point one of the players near the railing appeared ready to pay a little more attention to the people yelling at them. Then a teammate's hand came into view and touched him on the back, redirecting him toward the field.

Don't.

Turn around.

Get back to baseball.

That moment stayed with me.

Afterward, I started looking into heckling because I wondered whether maybe I was the one who had it wrong. Maybe I had become too sensitive to something that has always been part of the game.

And, as it turns out, heckling has a long history in baseball. Minor-league baseball may actually be one of its natural habitats. Smaller crowds and intimate stadiums put spectators close enough for players to hear them. Fans talk to players. Players occasionally answer back. There have even been minor-league hecklers who became recognized characters at their home ballparks.

So the problem wasn't heckling.

It was the kind of heckling.

Good heckling requires some wit. Give the opposing left fielder a ridiculous nickname. Remind him about something funny that happened three innings earlier. Get under his skin without becoming vicious about it. Better yet, get him to turn around despite himself and smile. That's interaction. That's entertainment. That's part of the peculiar intimacy that makes minor-league baseball different from sitting among 50,000 people in a major-league stadium.

“My grandmother could have caught that” isn't exactly Oscar Wilde.

More importantly, there is a difference between bringing yourself into the game and trying to diminish somebody who is playing it.

These are Single-A players. They're professional baseball players, certainly, and professional athletes don't require protection from criticism. But Single-A is developmental baseball. These are young men trying to get better at something extraordinarily difficult. Some will eventually walk onto the field at Dodger Stadium or Angel Stadium. Many won't. The error isn't an aberration from what we've paid to see. In some respects, development is what we've paid to see.

The dropped fly ball is part of why that player is there.

He doesn't need somebody four rows behind the dugout to tell him he missed it. He knows.

And perhaps that was why the heckling bothered me more than I expected.

The woman sitting in my seat. The people standing in the aisle blocking everyone's view. The fans booing a genuinely good play because the wrong uniform made it. The people screaming at a young outfielder because he dropped a baseball.

They're different things, certainly. None is particularly serious. But by the end of the evening they seemed connected by the same small assumption: that my enjoyment of the ballpark matters more than everybody else's.

A ticket gives you quite a bit.

It gives you a seat—assuming somebody else hasn't decided it's theirs.

It gives you the right to cheer. It gives you the right to boo. It probably even gives you the right to heckle.

It doesn't give you the ballpark.

Through all of this, there was still a baseball game going on, and it was a pretty good one. It went back and forth. For much of the evening, neither team could put the other away.

In a way, my evening went back and forth with it.

Good game. Bad experience.

Home run. Somebody blocking the aisle.

Good defensive play. Booing.

Warm summer evening turning pleasantly cool. No draft beer.

Good baseball. Mean-spirited heckling.

Back and forth.

Eventually the Quakes beat the Buzzards, 8–6.

I suppose my experience followed the same trajectory. There were enough good moments to keep it close. The baseball itself certainly did its part. The weather was terrific. There were home runs, double plays, errors, kids in the stands, hot dogs and all the familiar ingredients of a summer evening at the ballpark.

But in the end, the experience went into the loss column.

Maybe there's no great lesson in that. Maybe I'm simply getting older and less tolerant of people who don't understand that they're sharing a public space with everyone around them. But I don't think the answer is to turn baseball into church. Cheer loudly. Boo the umpire. Give the opposing left fielder a hard time if you've actually got something clever to say.

And when somebody makes a great play, even wearing the wrong uniform, recognize good baseball when you see it.

Most of all, if a twenty-something kid in Single-A drops a fly ball, remember one thing before you tell him your grandmother could have caught it.

He already knows he dropped it.

And for God's sake, somebody put draft beer back in the ballpark.

That last line works for me because it prevents the essay from ending self-righteously. It returns to the humor and gives the reader a little wink after what became a fairly serious observation about courtesy.

When Memories Become Museum Pieces

There is something strange about walking through a museum and suddenly realizing that one of the artifacts isn't really history to you. You remember when it was new.

Today I took my youngest grandson to the American Military Museum in South El Monte, California, better known as Tankland. The nickname is appropriate—there are certainly plenty of tanks—but it doesn't begin to describe the place. Spread across roughly seven acres are about 100 pieces of military equipment spanning more than 80 years. There are World War II Sherman tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, anti-aircraft weapons, trucks, ambulances and equipment extending into the early part of the 21st century. There are aircraft as well, including a Huey helicopter gunship from the Vietnam era.

It was already hot when we arrived around 10 in the morning, and there wasn't much of a breeze. Most of the collection is outdoors, so this probably wasn't the ideal August morning for wandering around seven acres of old military equipment with a three-year-old. Still, we made our way through it, stopping whenever something caught our attention, and with that much machinery around you, something always does.

Oddly enough, one of the things that stayed with me most wasn't a tank at all. It was a Higgins boat. We've all seen them in the old films, landing craft racing toward a beach, the front ramp eventually dropping and the men pouring out. Standing beside one is different because what strikes you is just how insubstantial it seems. It was, after all, largely a plywood boat.

Then you try to imagine being one of the Marines or soldiers hunkered down inside it as that little boat bobbed and pitched in the open water, racing toward an enemy-held shore. Machine-gun fire was coming from ahead, artillery shells were exploding around them, other landing craft were moving alongside them, and men were being wounded and killed. Everyone inside knew that eventually the ramp in front of them was going to fall and they would have to go forward. Between them and everything happening outside was a relatively thin piece of plywood.

We tend to make the machinery of war enormous in our memories—battleships, bombers, tanks and artillery. Yet thousands of men went toward some of the most heavily defended beaches of World War II inside something that, standing beside it today, looks remarkably small and vulnerable. It was one of those moments when an old machine stops being an exhibit and you begin thinking about the people who were once inside it.

A little farther along, I found something else. Sitting among the tanks, artillery and military vehicles was an old LAPD truck: Rescue Vehicle No. 2. That one I didn't have to imagine. I remembered it.

The rather harmless words Rescue Vehicle painted on its side disguised what most people associated these vehicles with—the battering ram. I remember when they were introduced, and I even remember the newspaper coverage about them. More importantly, I remember seeing one work.

I remember watching that massive vehicle move up on a residential house with the long metal ram extended in front of it. I watched that ram drive through a door and rip the door away. There was nothing subtle about it. There was the tremendous crash of metal and wood giving way, the noise of the vehicle and officers moving in, shouting, "Police! Police!" It was noise, movement and adrenaline, and that is how the machine remains in my memory.

Rescue Vehicle No. 1 had the ram mounted on it the last time I saw it at the Los Angeles Police Museum, operated by the Los Angeles Police Historical Society in the old Northeast Station in Highland Park. I don't know whether it is still displayed there today. But here was Rescue Vehicle No. 2, parked among the tanks, quietly deteriorating in the hot Southern California sun.

That was the part that struck me. In my memory, the machine is moving toward a house. I can hear the crash when the ram hits. I can hear the officers shouting as they move inside. At Tankland, there are no officers, no doors being ripped from their frames, no urgency and no noise. There is just an old vehicle, its paint aging under the sun, parked among a collection of other machines whose working lives ended long ago.

A few minutes earlier, I had stood beside a Higgins boat and tried to imagine the Marines and soldiers hunkered down inside as that little plywood craft carried them toward an enemy shore. Now I was standing beside another silent machine, except this time I didn't have to imagine what it sounded like. The Higgins boat represented a history I could only try to understand. The rescue vehicle carried a memory I could still hear.

My three-year-old grandson, of course, understood none of that. To him, we were spending a hot morning with Grandpa looking at tanks, helicopters, trucks and other very large machines. Perhaps his presence made the experience a little more meaningful to me, though, because he was looking at old machines while I was beginning to think about the memories attached to them.

Somebody once rode in that Huey. Somebody once worked inside one of those tanks or drove one of those military ambulances. Frightened young men once hunkered down inside that plywood landing craft as it carried them toward a beach where other men were trying to kill them. Every one of those machines was once new, every one of them once made noise, and every one of them once had people around it who understood exactly what it was, what it did and why it mattered. Now they sit quietly in rows.

Maybe that's what eventually happens to all of our memories. The noise fades, the people disappear and the urgency is forgotten. What was once frightening, exciting, important—or simply part of an ordinary working day—eventually becomes a story, a photograph or an old machine slowly deteriorating in the sun. Another generation walks past it and wonders what it was used for, while someone from an earlier generation can still remember how it sounded.

Tankland is worth visiting simply for the collection. Admission is inexpensive—only a few dollars—and you can easily spend an hour or more wandering through it. You can't climb on the vehicles, for obvious reasons, but you can get close enough to appreciate their size, their construction and, in the case of that Higgins boat, their surprising vulnerability.

For me, though, the most interesting things weren't necessarily the biggest. One was a plywood boat that made me think about the extraordinary courage required to ride toward an enemy shore with almost nothing between you and the gunfire. The other was an old police vehicle that required no imagination at all. I remembered its noise and movement. I remembered when it was something new.

I went to Tankland to look at history. I hadn't expected to find one of my own memories slowly becoming part of it.

Baseball at the Big A

There are two very different ways to watch Major League Baseball in Southern California. One involves traffic, expensive parking, expensive tickets, 50,000 people, and enough noise to make every pitch feel important. The other involves thirty bucks for a club-level seat next to the broadcast booths, easy parking, a hot dog, a beer, an entire row mostly to yourself, and hecklers who know the players can actually hear them.

Welcome to Angel Stadium.

This was my second trip to the Big A this year, and once again I was reminded that if your primary objective is simply to watch a baseball game, Angel Stadium may be one of the great bargains in professional sports. My ticket was about $30. Club level, excellent view of the field, close to the broadcast booths, good sight lines, and just enough proximity to foul-ball territory to remind you to pay attention.

And the cheap seats can be had for around ten or twelve dollars. Think about that for a moment. For roughly the price of lunch, you can walk into a Major League Baseball stadium and spend an afternoon or evening watching big-league baseball. If you like baseball and don't need luxury, Angel Stadium is simply a good trip.

Of course, there is a reason the tickets are inexpensive. Angel Stadium wasn't exactly packed. I'd guess considerably less than 20 percent of the seats were occupied. That makes getting in and out remarkably easy, although Anaheim deserves some credit. This is a city designed to move large numbers of people around Disneyland, the convention center, Angel Stadium, the Honda Center and everything else without turning every event into a transportation crisis.

Parking at Angel Stadium is also roughly half what I normally expect at Dodger Stadium, and the tickets can be a fraction of the price. But there is a tradeoff. A baseball stadium with nearly 50,000 people reacting together is an experience. The cheers, groans and boos roll through Dodger Stadium in a way that 10,000 or 15,000 people scattered around the Big A simply cannot duplicate.

On the other hand, a mostly empty stadium produces something else: professional-grade heckling. When there isn't a wall of crowd noise, one determined fan can project remarkably well, and baseball stadiums are built to carry sound. Those players could hear these guys. I am certain of it.

The Great Beer Crisis

It was 96 degrees when I arrived. Naturally, after finding my seat, I went looking for the traditional necessities of baseball: hot dog, peanuts and a draft beer.

The hot dog and peanuts were easy. The beer became an adventure.

One club-level concession that normally served draft beer was closed. At another, I was informed that because of the heat on that level, the draft system was producing massive quantities of foam. Apparently the expression on my face communicated that this explanation, while scientifically fascinating, did not solve my immediate problem. I was also somewhat persistent.

Eventually a manager appeared, and what followed was perhaps the finest example of customer service I have encountered at a ballpark. The man brought out what appeared to be a five-gallon bucket and began draining foam so he could coax one actual beer out of the system for me.

It wasn't as ice cold as I would have preferred on a 96-degree afternoon, but after watching the effort required to obtain it, I wasn't about to complain. I had my beer. I had my hot dog. I had my peanuts. Baseball could begin.

Baseball Delivered to Your Seat

Angel Stadium has also entered the age of app-based eating. There are QR codes at the seats. Scan one and the menu comes up, and if you're already using MLB's Ballpark app with your tickets, the system knows where you're sitting. You confirm the seat, order your food, and an Angel Stadium employee delivers it.

Throughout the game I watched employees carrying orders directly to fans. I didn't use it. Part of going to a baseball game, at least for me, is getting up and wandering around the stadium a little.

I also checked out Brewery X on the club level. It was cooler inside than outside, although on a day that hot it wasn't cool enough to make me want to spend an hour sitting there instead of watching the field. And there was plenty of room everywhere.

Then I Solved the Mystery of “Day-O”

There was something I had noticed during my previous visit. Every once in a while, the stadium sound system would blast something that sounded very much like “Day-O!” And the crowd would answer: “Day-O!”

I immediately thought of Harry Belafonte and The Banana Boat Song. Daylight come and me wanna go home. But why were Angels fans suddenly doing Harry Belafonte between pitches? Nobody explained it, and this happened several times.

Then, somewhere around the sixth or seventh inning, the sound played again and I happened to look at one of Angel Stadium's enormous video boards. There was the word:

HALO.

Oh.

They're not saying Day-O. They're saying HALO. As in Angels. As in a halo.

Mystery solved.

It only took me two trips to Angel Stadium and six or seven innings of concentrated investigative work. Retirement has apparently not completely destroyed my observational skills.

And Then Comes the Rally Monkey

There is another Angel Stadium tradition that requires considerably less detective work: the Rally Monkey.

Late in the game, when the Angels have runners on base and there is the possibility that something might happen, the Rally Monkey appears on the giant video boards. In this game, the Angels had a couple of runners aboard late, I believe when the game was tied in the ninth, and suddenly there he was, running around on the screen while the stadium tried to will the Angels into bringing somebody home.

But the Rally Monkey isn't confined to the video board. Look around the stands when he appears and you'll see people screaming and waving monkeys over their heads like rally towels. The stadium sells the little monkeys dressed in Angels uniforms, but some fans have apparently decided the factory version isn't sufficient. You'll see all kinds of homemade, knitted, dressed-up and otherwise customized monkeys being swung over people's heads.

It's wonderfully ridiculous.

And it is completely Angel Stadium.

Every ballpark needs things that belong to that ballpark. The Rally Monkey is one of those traditions that would seem strange almost anywhere else but makes perfect sense at the Big A. When the Angels threaten to rally, out comes the monkey, up go the stuffed animals, and for a few minutes even a lightly attended stadium gets considerably louder.

The monkey didn't deliver the victory this time, but you can't blame him for trying.

There Is Still Such a Thing as Baseball Etiquette

I had an end seat and, for most of the game, essentially had the row to myself. Perfect. Until one of the best plays of the night developed and the people in front of me decided that this precise moment would be an excellent time to stand up and work their way into their seats.

I missed part of the play. Fortunately, Angel Stadium's giant screens gave me the replay, but I maintain that baseball needs something resembling opera rules. You enter between innings. You do not wander down the aisle with the bases loaded. You do not make six people stand up while the count is 3-and-2. And you absolutely do not decide that the middle of a developing play is the proper moment to locate Row C, Seats 7 and 8.

Perhaps I am the last man in America who believes in baseball etiquette. So be it.

Four Home Runs and Free Baseball

The game itself was worth the trip. There were four home runs, some excellent defensive plays, plenty of offense and, as the sun disappeared, the temperature finally fell from the mid-90s into the low 80s. A slight breeze arrived, and suddenly it was one of those nearly perfect Southern California summer evenings for baseball.

And nine innings weren't enough.

Cleveland eventually walked away with an 8–6 victory in the tenth, but I got an extra inning of baseball for my thirty dollars. Hard to complain about that.

Angel Stadium also does home runs well. When the Angels put one out, the giant video boards come alive and fireworks go off beyond the outfield. Between the fireworks, the Halo chant, the Rally Monkey and those enormous screens, the Big A has developed its own collection of traditions. They're different from what happens across town, and that's probably exactly as it should be.

Dodger Stadium still wins the atmosphere contest for me. The organist, the music between pitches, and especially the sound of a nearly full stadium reacting together create something the Big A simply cannot duplicate when most of its seats are empty.

But Angel Stadium wins some categories rather decisively. It's easier and cheaper. Parking is simpler, getting out afterward is painless, the sight lines are excellent, and thirty dollars can buy a genuinely terrific seat. And if you don't care where you sit, ten or twelve dollars can simply get you into a Major League Baseball game.

That's what I keep coming back to about Angel Stadium. It's just a good baseball trip. You don't have to make a major financial or logistical commitment out of it. Buy an inexpensive ticket, park without taking out a second mortgage, get yourself a hot dog and a beer—even if somebody has to sacrifice a five-gallon bucket to produce it—and watch some baseball.

So I'll take both Southern California experiences. Give me 50,000 people roaring at Dodger Stadium when I want the spectacle. Give me the Big A when I just want a beautiful summer evening, a good seat, a hot dog, some peanuts, a hard-earned draft beer, professional hecklers, four home runs, a Rally Monkey flying over somebody's head, and ten innings of baseball.

Sometimes that's all a baseball trip needs to be.

Herod Couldn't Stop Listening

Author's Note: This essay is an effort to think through a difficult human and leadership dynamic by examining an ancient story. I am not comparing myself to John the Baptist. I possess neither his righteousness nor his calling, and I certainly make no claim to being a messenger of God. Nor should anyone recognize another person in these pages and conclude that I am describing him as wicked, corrupt, or evil. I do not believe that. What interests me is something much narrower and more human: the psychology of a relationship in which one person is repeatedly drawn to a voice that challenges, frustrates, and sometimes condemns his choices. That dynamic strikes me as remarkably familiar. So, with all appropriate humility about the comparison, I want to explore a fascinating question: Why couldn't Herod stop listening?

There is something about the story of Herod Antipas and John the Baptist that I have always found more interesting than its gruesome ending. It is easy to remember the banquet, the dance, the rash promise, and John's head arriving on a platter. Those images are so dramatic that they can obscure a much quieter and, for me, much more fascinating detail.

Herod listened to John. More than that, he apparently kept listening to him.

This was not a comfortable relationship. John had publicly condemned Herod's marriage to Herodias, telling him plainly that it was unlawful for him to have his brother's wife. Herod responded by imprisoning John. Yet Mark tells us something remarkable about what happened afterward. Herod feared John, recognized him as righteous and holy, protected him, and continued hearing him. Depending upon the translation, Herod was perplexed or disturbed by what John said, and yet he still listened gladly.[1]

That contradiction fascinates me.

Herod had solved the practical problem. John was behind bars. The troublesome preacher no longer had the freedom he once possessed. Herod had political authority, guards, wealth, status, and the power of the state. John had a prison cell. Yet apparently Herod kept going back to hear what the prisoner had to say.

Why?

Perhaps the answer tells us something important about leadership, truth, and the peculiar relationship that sometimes develops between a leader and the person willing to tell him what he does not want to hear.

Power has always had a problem with honest counsel. The higher someone rises in an organization, the easier it becomes to become insulated from uncomfortable information. People surrounding leaders have interests of their own. Employees want careers. Political allies want influence. Friends want relationships preserved. Volunteers want appointments. Subordinates want advancement. Even good people learn which subjects produce irritation and which opinions receive approval. Without anyone deliberately designing it, a leader can gradually find himself surrounded by increasingly agreeable information.

John wanted nothing from Herod. That may have been part of his power.

John was not looking for an appointment. He was not seeking promotion. He was not asking Herod to invite him to dinner. He did not need access to the palace, and he certainly wasn't tailoring his message to preserve it. There was very little Herod could offer John that would cause John to change what he believed was true. That makes a person extraordinarily difficult to control. It may also make him extraordinarily compelling.

Perhaps Herod kept listening because John possessed something that becomes increasingly rare around powerful people: independence. Here was a man who apparently did not care whether Herod liked what he said. John knew where he stood. He had drawn his moral line and wasn't moving it merely because the person standing on the other side happened to be the ruler of Galilee.

Herod could reject John's conclusion, but he could not easily dismiss the man who delivered it.

There is a leadership lesson buried there. Sometimes the person who frustrates us most is also the person whose opinion we continue seeking. We may disagree with him. We may resist his recommendations. We may become irritated when he points out something we would rather leave alone. We may even create distance between ourselves and him. Then, strangely, we find ourselves asking again what he thinks.

Why would anyone do that? Perhaps because somewhere beneath resistance there is recognition. We recognize that this particular person is not calibrating his answer according to what will please us. We may not believe he is always right. He almost certainly isn't. But we believe we are going to receive what he actually thinks.

That has value.

There is also an important distinction between hearing counsel and following it. Leaders sometimes repeatedly consult people whose advice they seldom take. From the adviser's perspective, this can become maddening. If you keep asking what I think, why do you keep doing something else? But perhaps that misunderstands what the leader is seeking.

Sometimes an adviser is not being used as an instruction manual. He is functioning as a reference point. The leader wants to know where the boundary is, even if he ultimately decides to cross it. He wants the dissenting opinion in the room. He wants to know what someone without the same incentives sees when looking at the problem.

Perhaps that was part of what John represented to Herod. There is no indication in Mark that John's message became more accommodating because Herod kept listening. John apparently continued being John, and Herod continued being Herod. One possessed political authority; the other possessed moral independence. Their relationship existed inside the tension between those two forms of power.

Then other people entered the equation.

Herodias did not share Herod's fascination with John. Mark tells us that she held a grudge against him and wanted him dead. For a time she could not accomplish that because Herod protected him. Then came Herod's birthday banquet, Herodias's daughter, the dance, and Herod's spectacularly foolish promise to give her whatever she requested. After consulting her mother, she returned asking for John's head.[2]

This is where the story becomes an extraordinary study in leadership. Herod did not want to do it. Mark says he was "exceeding sorry." But he had made his promise publicly, surrounded by important guests. His nobles were there. His military commanders were there. The leading men of Galilee were there. To refuse the request would require Herod to retreat publicly from his own words.[3]

Nobody physically forced Herod to order John's death. That distinction matters. Herodias created the pressure. The daughter delivered the demand. The assembled guests created the social environment. Herod's own rash promise created the trap.

But Herod gave the order.

That is one of the harder lessons of leadership: other people can maneuver us toward a decision without relieving us of responsibility for making it. Leaders create—or at least tolerate—the environments surrounding them. They choose whose voices receive access. They decide which behaviors are rewarded. They establish whether disagreement is safe or costly. Eventually, that environment begins exerting pressure back upon the leader.

At first, a leader may tolerate the person who says uncomfortable things. He may even value him. But over time, others may find that person troublesome. Perhaps they resent his influence. Perhaps they dislike his criticism. Perhaps his presence complicates decisions they would prefer to make without resistance. The cost of continuing to listen begins to rise.

That is when leadership becomes difficult. It is easy to value honest counsel when the counsel costs us nothing. The real test comes when listening threatens a relationship, an alliance, our popularity, our convenience, our pride, or something we have already publicly committed ourselves to doing.

Herod could listen to John while John was merely troublesome. At the banquet, John became expensive.

Herod chose the room.

That doesn't necessarily make Herod incomprehensible. Quite the opposite. It makes him painfully human. Most of us know the pressure of having said something we wish we could take back. Most of us understand the embarrassment of reversing ourselves publicly. Most leaders eventually discover that doing the right thing can require disappointing people whose approval matters to them. Herod faced precisely that moment and failed it. The consequences were irreversible.

There is another side to this story, however, and it concerns the person giving the unwelcome counsel. The truth-teller can make a mistake of his own. He can begin believing that because someone repeatedly asks for his opinion, he has become responsible for the other person's decisions. He can continue explaining, warning, persuading, arguing, and returning to the same subject because surely, eventually, the other person will understand.

But counsel does not transfer responsibility. The adviser owns the advice. The leader owns the decision.

There comes a point when the person who has spoken must relinquish the outcome. He can explain what he sees. He can warn about consequences. He can refuse to flatter. He can even say the same uncomfortable thing more than once when asked. But he cannot live another person's life or exercise another leader's judgment.

Perhaps that is one of the most difficult boundaries for experienced leaders to accept when they become advisers to other leaders. Experience allows us to recognize patterns. Sometimes we can see the collision coming because we have already survived one ourselves. We naturally want to reach for the steering wheel.

But it isn't ours anymore.

There is a final detail in Mark's account that gives the story an almost haunting conclusion. After John's death, reports about Jesus began reaching Herod. People offered different explanations for who Jesus might be. Herod had his own answer: "It is John, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the dead."[4]

Think about that. Herod had finally silenced John. The prisoner was gone. The troublesome voice could no longer challenge him. There would be no more uncomfortable conversations and no more inconvenient moral judgments from the cell. Yet when another powerful voice appeared, Herod heard John again.

That may be the most profound part of the story. Removing the messenger does not necessarily remove the message. We sometimes imagine that discomfort originates in the person who causes us to confront something we would rather avoid. Remove the person, and perhaps the discomfort will disappear. Stop asking his opinion. Exclude him from the conversation. Reduce his influence. Surround ourselves instead with voices that are easier to hear.

But if the uncomfortable voice touched something we already suspected might be true, silence does not solve the problem. The voice becomes internal.

Perhaps that is why Herod couldn't stop listening in the first place. Somewhere beneath the irritation and perplexity, he recognized something in John that he could neither comfortably accept nor completely dismiss.

That is why every leader needs at least one person who can say no, who can say, "I think you're wrong," or ask, "Have you considered what this will cost?" Every leader needs someone who does not need the leader's approval badly enough to alter the answer. Such people are rarely comfortable companions to power, but they are enormously valuable.

The responsibility works both ways. The adviser must remember that honest counsel does not make him righteous, infallible, or responsible for controlling the outcome. The leader must resist the equally human temptation to confuse discomfort with disloyalty.

Perhaps that is why thinking through this ancient story has left me more at peace with some experiences of my own. Human relationships that once seemed contradictory make a little more sense to me now. A person can value honest counsel and resist it at the same time. He can seek an independent voice while also finding that voice deeply frustrating. He can distance himself from the person offering unwelcome advice without becoming indifferent to what that person has said.

More importantly, I am reminded of the boundary between counsel and responsibility. If someone asks what I think, my obligation is to answer as honestly and fairly as I can. What happens afterward belongs to him. I need not persuade him, rescue him from a decision I believe is mistaken, or carry responsibility for consequences that are not mine. Understanding that does not resolve every disagreement, but it does make the burden considerably lighter.

Herod possessed virtually every form of worldly power available in his circumstances. John possessed almost none. Herod could imprison him, and eventually Herod could silence him.

What Herod apparently could not do was stop listening.

And in the end, even after John was gone, Herod could not stop hearing him.

Notes

1. Mark 6:17–20. The textual tradition is particularly interesting here. The King James Version says Herod "did many things, and heard him gladly," while several modern translations render the passage as Herod being greatly perplexed or puzzled by John and nevertheless continuing to listen to him. Either reading preserves the central paradox: John's words troubled Herod, yet Herod remained drawn to hearing him.

2. Mark 6:21–25. Mark portrays Herodias as harboring the desire to kill John before the banquet and presents the daughter's request as originating with her mother.

3. Mark 6:26–28. The Gospel explicitly connects Herod's decision with both his oath and the presence of his dinner guests. The text therefore supports interpreting social standing and public embarrassment as important elements in his decision, although the broader psychological interpretation developed in this essay is my own.

4. Mark 6:14–16. Herod's later identification of Jesus with the executed John provides the basis for the concluding reflection about the persistence of John's voice in Herod's conscience. The claim about Herod's internal psychology is interpretive rather than something the text explicitly states.

Historical Note: The first-century Jewish historian Josephus independently records Herod Antipas's execution of John the Baptist in Antiquities of the Jews, Book XVIII. Josephus emphasizes Herod's fear that John's influence over the population might lead to political upheaval rather than the banquet narrative found in the Gospels.

When Everyone Was the Star

There is something wonderfully unpredictable about Single-A baseball. You can have a home run, questionable umpire calls, errors, baserunning mistakes, catcher interference, a hit batter, a promotional gimmick called Fantasy Football Losers Night, five-dollar beer, fireworks—and Miles Davis nearly getting you into an argument with the woman sitting next to you. All in one evening.

Tonight was another trip to Ontario to see the Tower Buzzers, the Dodgers' Single-A affiliate, this time against the Inland Empire 66ers, an affiliate of the Seattle Mariners. By my count, this was somewhere around my fifteenth baseball game of the season and my sixth or seventh different ballpark. I've been doing a lot of baseball traveling this summer, and I'm finding that the games themselves are becoming only part of the reason I enjoy going.

Once again, minor league baseball gave me something to think about that had very little to do with the final score.

An Hour Early

I arrived about an hour before the game and headed upstairs to the Flight Club. My seat included access to the air-conditioned lounge and buffet, something I appreciated considerably more tonight because it was hot outside and there wasn't much of a breeze.

Getting there early also gave me an unexpected bonus. The Dodgers game was playing on the big screen inside the lounge, so I spent about an hour watching the major league club before heading outside to watch the young men several rungs below them on the organizational ladder.

In retrospect, there was something interesting about that juxtaposition. For an hour, I watched players who had made it. Then I walked outside and watched players trying desperately to get there.

Single-A Shenanigans

The Tower Buzzers won, and the game had just about everything you expect from Single-A baseball. There was a home run, errors, baserunning mistakes, catcher interference, a hit batter, and a few umpire calls that left everyone wondering exactly where the strike zone had migrated.

And, of course, there was Fantasy Football Losers Night.

What exactly Fantasy Football Losers Night has to do with baseball, I couldn't tell you. Probably nothing. That's part of the charm of minor league baseball. Teams seem wonderfully shameless about inventing reasons to have fun at the ballpark. Every night needs a theme, every inning needs some entertainment, and apparently fantasy football losers need their own night at a baseball stadium.

None of it has to make much sense.

It just has to be fun.

So What?

One of my favorite things about the Ontario ballpark is the organist. He's terrific, and he doesn't simply play the predictable handful of songs we've all heard at baseball games for decades. Throughout the evening he'll slip in all kinds of music, and tonight he was playing quite a bit of jazz.

At one point, he played Dave Brubeck's Take Five. Later came Miles Davis and So What.

Sitting next to me was a woman who had struck up a fairly lengthy conversation with the woman sitting in front of her. They were talking quite a bit. In fact, at one point she was telling the other woman that her husband complains about how much she talks.

Meanwhile, between pitches, the organist was playing So What.

Without really thinking about it, and mostly under my breath, I went along with the music.

"So what?"

She turned and looked directly at me.

There are moments in life when you immediately understand that what you intended and what another person heard are two completely different things.

"No, no," I quickly explained. "The music. That's the name of the song. So What. Miles Davis."

Now I'm sitting in a minor league baseball stadium explaining Miles Davis, jazz, and the musical selections of the ballpark organist to a complete stranger so neither she nor her husband thinks the guy sitting next to her has just offered unsolicited commentary on her conversation.

Fortunately, she understood, and it became funny rather than confrontational. We ended up having a pleasant conversation ourselves throughout the rest of the evening.

That's another thing I like about these smaller ballparks. You're close enough to the game to hear things happening on the field, but you're also close enough to the people around you that strangers occasionally stop being strangers.

When Everyone Was the Star

Somewhere during all of this, I started paying closer attention to the players themselves.

Think about who these young men were only a few years ago. For many of them, they were probably the best baseball player at their high school. Maybe they were the best player in their entire league. The pitcher was the kid nobody could hit. The shortstop was the kid everyone came to watch. Their parents sat in the stands while coaches, teammates, and probably a few scouts talked about how far this kid might go.

Some went on to college and became stars there. Eventually somebody from a major league organization noticed them. They were scouted, drafted, signed, or otherwise brought into professional baseball.

Then something happened that must be both exhilarating and humbling.

The star walked into a clubhouse filled with stars.

Everyone there had been the best player somewhere. The pitcher who dominated his high school league was now throwing to a hitter who dominated another one. The college All-American was standing next to another college All-American. The player accustomed to being the person everyone watched was suddenly just another name on a minor league roster.

And they're still nowhere near the top.

Single-A isn't Dodger Stadium. There are more levels above them, filled with better pitchers, better hitters, better fielders, and other prospects competing for the same handful of opportunities. Even reaching Triple-A doesn't guarantee that you'll ever step onto a major league field.

That has to require an enormous psychological adjustment.

Learning Not to Be the Star

I noticed it particularly when the umpire made a couple of calls that certainly appeared questionable from where I was sitting. The players didn't argue. A batter might hesitate for a moment after a questionable strike call, but then he headed back toward the dugout. The pitchers behaved much the same way. There were no dramatic gestures, prolonged arguments, or attempts to show up the umpire.

They moved on.

Watching them, I started wondering how much of minor league player development has nothing whatsoever to do with hitting, pitching, or fielding a baseball. I suspect part of becoming a major league player is learning how not to be the star.

These young men have entered an organization. Talent got them through the door, but talent alone isn't going to get them to Los Angeles. Now they have to learn discipline, patience, teamwork, and how to deal with failure. They have to learn how to accept instruction when they've spent most of their lives being better at baseball than nearly everyone around them.

Perhaps most importantly, they have to learn that being the best player on the team and being a good teammate aren't necessarily the same thing.

From a leadership perspective, I found that fascinating. Organizations outside baseball struggle with exactly the same problem. Someone excels at one level, gets promoted, and suddenly discovers that everyone around them is talented too. The qualities that made someone exceptional yesterday may only make them average tomorrow.

Professional baseball seems to recognize that transition explicitly. That's why the system isn't merely about practice. It's called player development.

They're developing the player, not merely the swing.

Five-Dollar Beer

Of course, I wasn't contemplating leadership development for nine straight innings. This was still minor league baseball.

Ontario has a promotion called the Beer Batter. An opposing player is designated as the Beer Batter, and if he strikes out, beer drops to five dollars for a period of time.

He struck out.

The stadium celebrated, and I went to get my five-dollar beer.

When I ordered one, they tried to give me two. Apparently buying only one discounted beer was an unusual enough decision to require clarification. I assured them that one was fine.

It was very cold, the stadium was very hot, and under those circumstances one cold beer was just about perfect.

Fireworks After Baseball

The Tower Buzzers won, which made the evening considerably more enjoyable than my previous visit, when the Fresno Grizzlies demolished them 17-2.

After the final out came the fireworks. I've now seen several minor league fireworks shows this summer, and I'm becoming convinced that fireworks after a baseball game are one of life's underrated pleasures.

You don't need Disneyland. You don't need the Fourth of July. You don't need a massive stadium filled with fifty thousand people. Sometimes it's enough to sit in a small ballpark with a few thousand other people while the stadium lights go dark and fireworks explode beyond the outfield.

Then the lights come back on, everyone gathers their things, and you walk back to your car.

Another summer night completed.

The Road Ahead

By my rough count, I'm somewhere around fifteen baseball games into this season, spread across six or seven different ballparks. I'm hoping to add a couple more major league games before the season ends, and I'd still like to get out to the ballparks in San Bernardino and perhaps Visalia if I can work them into my travels.

But I'm discovering that keeping track of the ballparks isn't really the point. Neither is keeping track of wins and losses.

It's the things that happen while you're there.

It's hearing Miles Davis on a ballpark organ and accidentally making a stranger think you've insulted her. It's watching a home run on a hot summer night. It's getting a five-dollar beer because some unfortunate opposing batter struck out. It's fireworks over the outfield.

And occasionally it's watching a group of young men chase a dream and realizing that one of the first things they may have to learn is how to stop being the person they have always been.

For most of their lives, somebody told these kids they were special. Their talent proved it. Their statistics proved it. The trophies and scholarships and scouts proved it.

Then professional baseball handed them a uniform, put them in a clubhouse filled with other exceptional young men, and essentially said:

Now show us what else you've got.

Maybe that's one of the reasons I keep going to these games. I leave home expecting to watch baseball, and somewhere between the first pitch and the fireworks, I usually find myself thinking about something else entirely.

Tonight it was about what happens when everyone was the star.

And what it takes to become something more.

We Must Not End Here: Prince Hall and the Three Pillars of a Living Lodge

In The Temple Within, I return repeatedly to the three great pillars of Freemasonry—Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty—not simply as architectural symbols within the Lodge, but as a practical framework for thinking about what a healthy Lodge should accomplish. Traditionally, the pillars represent qualities necessary to support and adorn a great undertaking. My argument takes those familiar ideas and asks what they might mean operationally for a Lodge trying to remain relevant to its members and useful to its community.

I have come to think of Wisdom as Masonic education, Strength as pathways for meaningful participation, and Beauty as community engagement. Wisdom gives a Mason something worth learning. Strength gives him somewhere meaningful to put that knowledge to work. Beauty allows the effects of that work to become visible beyond the walls of the Lodge. When those three functions work together, the Lodge can become more than a place where Masons meet. It can become a center of Masonic and civic life.

I have thought about that framework primarily as a response to challenges facing contemporary Freemasonry. We frequently talk about declining membership, retention, Masonic education, and the difficulty of keeping newly raised Masons engaged. Yet the underlying idea—that Masonic knowledge should lead to action and that Masonic action should eventually extend beyond the Lodge—is hardly new.

In 1797, Prince Hall gave us a remarkable expression of it.

Prince Hall and African Lodge

Prince Hall occupies a unique place in both American and Masonic history. On March 6, 1775, Hall and fourteen other Black men were initiated into Freemasonry by a military lodge associated with British forces in Boston. They subsequently organized African Lodge No. 1. In 1784, the group petitioned the Grand Lodge of England for a charter, which was granted, creating African Lodge No. 459. From those beginnings developed the Masonic tradition that now bears Prince Hall's name (Hinks & Kantrowitz, 2013).

Those dates matter because of the world in which Hall and his Brothers were practicing Masonry. The American Revolution proclaimed liberty while slavery remained a reality. Black Americans occupied an uncertain and often hostile position within the new republic. Hall's Masonic leadership consequently cannot be separated neatly from his advocacy for Black citizenship, abolition, and education. Scholars of early Black Freemasonry have shown how Prince Hall Masonry became both a fraternal institution and a vehicle through which Black men could articulate ideas about citizenship, morality, dignity, and participation in American society (Hinks & Kantrowitz, 2013; Walker, 2008).

Hall himself acted on those ideas outside the Lodge. In 1787, he was among the Black Bostonians petitioning Massachusetts authorities over the inadequate education available to Black children. His advocacy reflected a larger struggle among Black Bostonians to connect education with citizenship, independence, and participation in American society (Mills, 2021).

Hall also opposed slavery directly. He participated in petitions against slavery and the slave trade, making the contradiction between America's professions of liberty and the treatment of Black Americans impossible to ignore. The significance is difficult to miss: Hall was not practicing a Masonry confined to ritual performance. The principles discussed among Brothers were being carried into questions of education, citizenship, slavery, and public morality.

That provides important context for what he told his Lodge in 1797.

A Charge at Menotomy

On June 24, 1797, Prince Hall delivered a Charge to African Lodge at Menotomy, Massachusetts. The address was important enough to Hall's Brothers that it was published at their request. The original eighteen-page pamphlet survives today in the Library of Congress (Hall, 1797).

A Masonic Charge is moral instruction. It takes the principles of the Craft and asks the Mason to consider what they demand of him. Hall's Charge is particularly valuable because we do not need to reconstruct his thinking through generations of later interpretation. We can read his own words.

At one point Hall considers the obligations of charity and love that exist among Masons. He recognizes a particular responsibility toward one's Brothers, but then refuses to allow the moral lesson to remain confined there. He writes:

“although we are to begin here, we must not end here” (Hall, 1797).

The sentence is short, but its implications are enormous. Hall's argument expands outward. Moral concern cannot be restricted to the fraternity, nor confined by divisions of color, place, or nation. His Masonic audience is being asked to understand Brotherhood not as the outer boundary of moral responsibility, but as its beginning.

A Mason learns Brotherhood by practicing it with the man beside him. But if that lesson is genuine, the principle cannot depend upon the other man wearing an apron. The Lodge becomes the place where a moral habit is cultivated, not the boundary beyond which that habit ceases to operate.

Scholars examining African American Freemasonry have identified precisely this larger social dimension. Hinks and Kantrowitz (2013) describe Prince Hall Masonry as promoting fellowship and social advancement while also becoming intertwined with opposition to slavery and racial inequality. Walker (2008) places African American Freemasonry within a larger struggle over democracy and citizenship. Later Prince Hall institutions likewise maintained substantial connections with the communities around them (Muraskin, 1975).

Hall's 1797 Charge therefore gives us something more interesting than an artifact of early Masonic history. It gives us a way to reconsider the three pillars of a living Lodge.

Wisdom: Give the Mason Something Worth Knowing

The first pillar is Wisdom. In The Temple Within, I define Wisdom operationally as Masonic education. A healthy Lodge should explore the deeper meanings of ritual and symbolism, encourage discussion, and help members apply Masonic teachings to their lives.

But Masonic education cannot merely mean accumulating Masonic trivia. The purpose of education is not to create a Mason who knows more facts about Freemasonry than the man sitting next to him. The purpose is to develop his capacity for reflection, judgment, and ethical action.

That idea is consistent with Hall's larger life as well as his Masonic work. His involvement in the struggle for Black education in Boston demonstrates that education and citizenship were closely connected concerns. Mills (2021) shows that the Black educational movement in which Hall participated linked schooling with political agency and the development of citizenship.

Prince Hall Masonry would continue to serve an educational function long after Hall's death. Muraskin (1976), studying Prince Hall Freemasonry as an institution of adult education, found that it provided forms of moral instruction, citizenship education, intellectual development, social training, and practical learning outside conventional educational institutions.

That is Wisdom functioning as more than information. It is formation. In my own Masonic journey, I discovered much the same thing. Understanding the Craft required more than memorizing ritual or attending meetings. It demanded study, reflection, discussion, and perseverance. The goal of Masonic education should therefore not simply be to explain the symbols. It should teach a Mason to think with them.

But education creates another problem. Once we have taught the Mason, what do we give him to do?

Strength: Give the Mason a Pathway to Participate

This is why I increasingly regard Strength as perhaps the most neglected of the three pillars. In my framework, Strength means creating pathways for meaningful participation. A healthy Lodge provides opportunities for its members to contribute, not merely through elected office, but through mentoring, education, charitable projects, events, committees, community programs, and the countless forms of labor necessary to sustain a functioning Lodge.

A Mason cannot remain permanently a recipient of Masonry. At some point, he must become a participant in it. That distinction becomes especially important when considering Hall. African Lodge was not merely creating a private space in which Black men could enjoy fraternal fellowship. The historical scholarship demonstrates that early African American Freemasonry became intertwined with questions of abolition, citizenship, community formation, public argument, and racial equality (Hinks & Kantrowitz, 2013; Walker, 2008). The Lodge helped create an environment in which men could learn together, organize together, and act together. That is a form of Strength.

Wisdom without Strength risks creating educated spectators: men who attend lectures, study symbols, understand ritual, and perhaps possess considerable Masonic knowledge but have no meaningful avenue through which to convert understanding into labor. A Lodge cannot continually give a man Light and then give him nothing to illuminate. If Wisdom teaches the Mason what the Craft asks of him, Strength creates opportunities for him to practice it.

The Brother becomes a mentor or teacher. He helps organize the charitable project, welcomes the new Mason, assists with education, solves problems, takes responsibility for some part of Lodge life, or finds another place where his abilities can serve the work. Participation does not require everyone to become an officer. It requires a Lodge capable of showing each Brother that there is meaningful work to be done and that some portion of that work can be his.

The lesson thereby becomes labor. The Mason ceases merely to receive and begins to contribute, and what he has learned begins to acquire practical form. That progression naturally carries us toward the third pillar, because once knowledge becomes action, we have to ask where the effects of that action should end.

Beauty: We Must Not End Here

Of the three pillars, Beauty may be where Prince Hall's 1797 Charge speaks most directly to the framework I have been developing. In The Temple Within, I argue that Beauty extends beyond the Lodge walls to the community it serves. Prince Hall expressed the underlying principle with remarkable economy nearly 230 years ago when he told his Brothers that “although we are to begin here, we must not end here” (Hall, 1797).

That sentence changes the way we might understand community engagement. Beauty is not simply public relations, nor is it putting the Square and Compasses on a banner at a community festival so people know the Lodge exists. Neither should charity become primarily an opportunity to take photographs proving that Masons performed charity. Those things may make the fraternity visible, but visibility alone is not Beauty.

Beauty is what the surrounding community experiences when Masonic formation works. If Wisdom has taught a man to think differently, and Strength has given him opportunities to turn those principles into disciplined action, Beauty is the visible consequence of that process. The lessons taught within the Lodge begin to affect families, neighborhoods, institutions, and communities because the men carrying those lessons leave the Lodge and live among other people.

Hall's own life illustrates that movement. His concern with education did not stop with discussion among his Brothers; it entered the public struggle over schooling. His opposition to slavery did not remain an abstract statement about universal Brotherhood; it entered petitions and public argument. His understanding of Masonic charity did not terminate at the edge of the fraternity. The Lodge may have been one place where principles were cultivated and Brotherhood practiced, but Hall's Charge makes clear that the moral circle could not remain closed around Masons alone.

That is what makes “we must not end here” such an important Masonic idea. The Lodge is a workshop in which a man practices fidelity, charity, restraint, responsibility, and concern for another person. But if those principles are genuine, their moral force cannot suddenly disappear when he encounters someone who is not a Brother. Beauty emerges when the character being cultivated within the Lodge becomes visible through the Mason's conduct outside it.

The Three Pillars of a Living Lodge

Prince Hall was not proposing my three-pillar model in 1797, and we should not pretend that he was. To impose a contemporary organizational framework upon his Charge and attribute it to him would distort the historical record. What we can say is that when Hall's thought is placed beside this framework, there is a striking resonance between them.

Wisdom asks the Lodge to give a Mason something worth knowing. It means teaching history, philosophy, symbolism, ritual, and ethical principles, but it also means developing the ability to reflect upon those things and apply them. Strength asks what happens next. Once a man has been given something worth knowing, he needs meaningful opportunities to put that knowledge to work. Beauty then asks where the consequences of that work become visible. If the process is functioning properly, families, neighborhoods, institutions, and communities should experience something different because Masons are present within them.

The pillars therefore depend upon one another. A Lodge possessing Wisdom but lacking Strength risks becoming a classroom in which increasingly knowledgeable men remain spectators. A Lodge possessing Strength without Wisdom can become busy without being purposeful, producing activity without clearly connecting that activity to the deeper lessons of the Craft. A Lodge possessing Wisdom and Strength but never allowing their effects to reach the surrounding community can become self-contained, preserving a beautiful internal system whose influence stops at its own front door.

A living Lodge brings the three together. It educates men so that they understand the principles they have undertaken to practice, provides meaningful ways for those men to participate in the work, and encourages that work to become visible through service and conduct beyond the Lodge. Wisdom educates the Mason, Strength engages him, and Beauty reveals what Masonry has produced.

This is why the question of membership retention may be more complicated than simply asking how we persuade men to keep attending meetings. Perhaps we should ask what happens after a man receives the degrees. What does he learn that deepens his understanding of the Craft? What meaningful work is placed before him? Where can he participate without waiting years for an elected office? Most importantly, who benefits from the man he is becoming?

Those are questions about organizational health, but they are also questions about purpose. If a Lodge teaches without providing opportunities to act, something has been left unfinished. If it provides activity without giving that activity Masonic meaning, something has also been lost. And if all of that learning and labor remains invisible beyond the Lodge, Prince Hall's old admonition returns with uncomfortable force: we may have begun here, but we have also ended here.

Begin Here, But Do Not End Here

Prince Hall lived in a world profoundly different from ours. African Lodge existed amid slavery, racial exclusion, revolutionary political change, and uncertainty about the place of Black Americans in the new republic. Modern Lodges face different problems, and it would trivialize Hall's circumstances to pretend otherwise. His Charge was not a twenty-first-century discussion of membership retention, Lodge programming, or community outreach.

Yet the principle he articulated survives the circumstances that produced it. The Lodge must be a beginning. Masonry begins by working upon the individual, giving him symbols through which to examine himself, Brothers among whom he can practice fraternity, and obligations intended to shape his conduct. The Temple begins within, because the first material upon which the Mason is expected to labor is himself.

But successful work upon the individual should eventually produce consequences beyond the individual. The educated Mason should become useful, the engaged Mason should become consequential, and the Lodge should leave evidence of its existence not merely in minutes, membership rolls, buildings, and bank accounts, but in the people and communities touched by the character of the men it develops.

This may ultimately be the connection between Prince Hall's Charge and the three pillars of the living Lodge. Wisdom begins the work by giving a Mason something worthy of contemplation and study. Strength carries that work forward by providing meaningful pathways through which understanding becomes participation. Beauty completes the progression when the character and labor cultivated within the Lodge become visible in the world beyond it.

Prince Hall's challenge therefore remains remarkably contemporary. We may begin among ourselves, but we cannot allow the moral work of Freemasonry to terminate there. If our ritual, education, symbolism, fellowship, and obligations produce nothing beyond the walls of the Lodge, we should ask ourselves whether we have truly built the Temple—or merely studied the plans.

Wisdom may begin the work, and Strength may carry it forward, but Beauty is how the world knows something was built.

References

Hall, P. (1797). A charge, delivered to the African Lodge, June 24, 1797, at Menotomy. Benjamin Edes.

Hinks, P. P., & Kantrowitz, S. (Eds.). (2013). All men free and brethren: Essays on the history of African American Freemasonry. Cornell University Press.

Mills, S. (2021). An African school for African Americans: Black demands for education in antebellum Boston. History of Education Quarterly, 61(4), 478–502.

Muraskin, W. A. (1975). Middle-class Blacks in a white society: Prince Hall Freemasonry in America. University of California Press.

Muraskin, W. A. (1976). The hidden role of fraternal organizations in the education of Black adults: Prince Hall Freemasonry as a case study. Adult Education, 26(4).

Walker, C. D. B. (2008). A noble fight: African American Freemasonry and the struggle for democracy in America. University of Illinois Press.

Wallace, M. O. (2002). Constructing the Black masculine: Identity and ideality in African American men's literature and culture, 1775–1995. Duke University Press.