“He did.”
“Then why were six Past Masters whispering every word from the sidelines?”
“Quality control.”
That was the joke in a recent installment of my Two British Guys series. Like most good Masonic humor, it works because there is enough truth buried inside it to make us uncomfortable. If you have spent much time in a lodge, you have probably witnessed some version of it. A Brother pauses during the ritual. Somewhere on the sidelines a Past Master whispers the next word. Then another Brother does the same. Perhaps a third joins in with a slightly different word. Within seconds, the man who may simply have been taking a breath is receiving assistance from half the room.
You can watch the original Reel here:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1605239444582930
The comments that followed the Reel made something clear: Masons recognize the problem. We laugh because we have seen it, and some of us have probably done it. But there is more going on here than a joke about Past Masters. There are questions about how we learn ritual, how we teach it, when assistance becomes interference, and ultimately how the Master and officers coach exercise leadership in the lodge.
Why Good Ritualists Whisper
I don't believe most sideline prompting is an attempt to show off. Quite the opposite. Usually the Brother whispering the word is trying to help. Think about how we learn ritual. We repeat it. We say it aloud. We retrieve it from memory and say it again. After enough years, listening to another Brother perform a familiar passage can become almost impossible without following along in your own head. Sometimes your lips move. Sometimes the words come out.
A ritualist who knows the work well may follow another Brother word for word, anticipating what comes next because he has said those same words hundreds of times himself. When the ritualist hesitates, the instinct to supply the next word can be almost automatic. Most of the time the Brother on the sidelines is right. Sometimes he isn't, and that is where the trouble begins.
A Pause Is Not a Plea for Help
One of the first things we should teach an officer is that silence is not failure. A Brother may pause because he is gathering his thoughts, controlling his breathing, deliberately slowing himself down, or allowing an important sentence to settle before continuing. He may simply need another second to retrieve the next phrase. The experienced ritualist on the sidelines recognizes the hesitation and thinks, He's lost it. Then comes the whispered word.
Not every silence needs to be rescued.
An unsolicited prompt can actually create another problem. The ritualist was searching his own memory, and now someone has inserted a word into that process. If another voice supplies something slightly different, the Brother suddenly has to decide which voice to trust while simultaneously trying to remember where he was. What began as assistance becomes interference. Six knowledgeable Past Masters do not make six times the prompter; they make six competing voices.
Start by Getting the Words Right
The long-term solution begins well before the degree. When I served as an officers coach, I believed in doing a read-through. Take the officers somewhere appropriately private, sit down, and read through the degree together. This is not the time to demonstrate how much anyone has memorized. It is the time to make sure everyone understands what the words actually are.
Let the younger officers hear experienced ritualists pronounce unfamiliar words correctly while they see the words themselves. Work through unusual vocabulary and awkward phrases before someone spends weeks committing an error to memory. The objective is to establish a sound foundation before the individual work of memorization begins. Once something has been memorized incorrectly, correcting it means undoing work that has already been done.
After that, memorization belongs primarily to the officer. An officers coach can help, answer questions, listen, and correct, but he cannot put in someone else's hours. When I coached officers, I wanted rehearsal time spent largely on the things that required us to be together: floor work, positioning, timing, coordination, presentation, and the relationship between the words and the movement. Memorization required many hours of individual work, and that work was part of accepting the responsibility of becoming an officer.
One Prompter
The immediate solution to sideline prompting is considerably simpler: designate one prompter. I've done this both as Master and as an officers coach. Before the work begins, everyone should know who the prompter is. More importantly, the officers performing the ritual should know where that Brother will be sitting and how to ask him for assistance.
When I need a word, I look at my prompter. That look means something: I need you. Until then, leave me alone. I may know exactly where I am. I may deliberately be pausing. I may be taking a breath because I know that I have a tendency to speak too quickly. Give me the opportunity to continue before deciding that I need to be rescued.
This should be practiced during rehearsals as well. Teach the officer that getting momentarily lost is not a catastrophe. Stop, look at the designated prompter, receive what you need, and continue. If officers learn that process during rehearsal, there is considerably less reason for panic when it happens during a degree. More importantly, everyone in the room understands who is responsible for helping and when that help should be offered.
Knowing the Ritual Is Not the Same as Knowing How to Prompt
Experience taught me something else: the Brother who knows the ritual best is not automatically the best prompter. I have asked very knowledgeable ritualists to prompt and discovered that they could perform the work beautifully themselves but had difficulty helping someone else through it. Knowing the work and following another person closely enough to help him at exactly the right moment are different skills.
A good prompter must follow another person's delivery closely enough to know exactly where he is while distinguishing between an intentional pause and genuine distress. When assistance is actually requested, he must know precisely what comes next and provide only enough information to get the ritualist moving again. This becomes especially difficult during longer lectures. Let your attention drift for a few seconds, and the lecturer may choose precisely that moment to look at you for help. Now there are two Brothers trying to remember what comes next.
That is why choosing the prompter deserves more thought than simply asking who knows the ritual. The question should be who can follow another Brother's work patiently, remain attentive, recognize when assistance is genuinely needed, and provide that assistance without becoming part of the performance. The best prompter may be the Brother you barely hear all evening.
Teach Officers How to Be Prompted
We spend considerable time teaching officers what to say and where to stand, but we should also teach them what to do when something goes wrong. Prompting should not be an emergency procedure invented in the middle of a degree. It should be part of rehearsal.
An officer should know that if he loses his place, he can stop, collect himself, and look toward the designated prompter. He should also learn that a moment of silence is preferable to panic. There is nothing inherently wrong with pausing for a second or two. In fact, an officer who knows that silence will not immediately produce a chorus from the sidelines may become a better ritualist because he becomes more comfortable with deliberate pacing.
There is a corresponding lesson for the sidelines. Experienced Masons need to learn that knowing the next word does not create an obligation to say it. Sometimes the discipline demanded of the man listening is every bit as important as the discipline demanded of the man speaking.
Then Enforce It
Of course, announcing that there is one prompter does no good if six other Brothers continue whispering from the sidelines. This is where the problem stops being principally about ritual and becomes a matter of leadership. The Master and officers coach have to establish the standard and enforce it consistently.
That does not require embarrassing a Brother in front of the lodge. Most of these men are sincerely trying to help, and their experience should be respected. My preference has always been an old leadership principle: praise in public and criticize in private. If a Brother continues prompting after someone else has been designated, speak with him afterward. Tell him that you know he is trying to help, but several people supplying words creates confusion and undermines the system the officers have practiced.
The correction respects the Brother's intention while addressing his behavior. But the standard has to mean something. If the Master announces one prompter and then allows everyone else to continue prompting anyway, he has not established a system. He has merely made an announcement.
When Help Becomes Interference
There is a larger leadership lesson hidden inside this very Masonic problem. Organizations are filled with knowledgeable people who want to help, and a lodge should treasure the Past Masters and experienced ritualists sitting on its sidelines. Their knowledge represents years, sometimes decades, of accumulated experience. The question is not whether that experience has value. The question is how and when it should be used.
Good leadership establishes who is responsible, when assistance is appropriate, how that assistance will be requested, and who should provide it. Everyone else then has a responsibility of his own: trust the system and allow the person doing the work the opportunity to do it. That can be difficult for someone who knows exactly how he would perform the task himself, but restraint is also a form of discipline.
This raises a worthwhile question beyond ritual. How often in lodge life does well-intentioned help become interference? A Past Master may have years of experience to offer, but there is a difference between making that experience available and stepping into another Brother's responsibility. Sometimes leadership means getting more people involved. At other times it means helping good people understand when their involvement is making someone else's job harder.
Six Voices from the Sidelines
Which brings us back to those six Past Masters. Every one of them probably knows the ritual. Every one of them probably wants the officer to succeed. Every one of them probably believes he is helping. That is precisely why the joke works, but it is also why the problem deserves more than a laugh.
Good ritual requires preparation from the officer, attention from the prompter, discipline from the sidelines, and leadership from the East. The officer has to do the work necessary to know his part. The prompter has to remain attentive without inserting himself unnecessarily. The experienced Brothers on the sidelines have to resist the natural temptation to help simply because they know the words. And the Master and officers coach have to create a system in which everyone understands his role.
There is a lesson in that for all of us who have accumulated enough years in the Craft to know most of the words. Experience gives us something valuable to contribute, but perhaps experience should also teach us when contribution is unnecessary. There are times when the younger Brother needs our instruction, times when he needs our encouragement, and times when he simply needs enough room to find the next word for himself.
Sometimes the most helpful word a Past Master can offer during ritual is the one he decides not to say.
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