*A GENERAL DESIRE OF KNOWLEDGE*

_W.Bro Oppong Clifford Benjamin_

It's pretty much alright to search for the face of God in a white ceramic cup and a pot of hot Chinese green tea and also in the white pages of the blue booklet.

The other night a Master Mason walked up to me and dragged me against my will to the forecourt of the Temple and said: I've a question for you. His eyes were dead curious and I could taste his breath - fine confusion. Upon his question, I asked for space to collapse and die temporarily. What keeps your interest in the craft? I'm asking you, please. I'm asking your conduct and zeal.

A laughter kicked my cheeks so hard that it burst out. 'I'm serious, please.' 'But who said my laughter isn't serious too?' 'Well, I'm interested in Masonry because I keep seeing the face of God whenever I open my ritual books. The only difference between you and I is probably that I didn't lie to myself, at least I'm true if not to anybody, to myself, that, I am.'

His face started forming all kind of seriousness. Anger had mixed with ugliness. 'Are you mad? What are you talking about?' His words filled my entire being with laughter. I nearly choked myself to the floor. I swear that God was right there. Salvation! Salvation!!
Look here, Mason, I said rather authoritatively, directing a package of his attention and curiosity to my lips and I carefully and deliberately allowed my words to flow from a mountain like a fountain and hit his soul. He was lithic. He was the stones beneath the grace and anguish of a fountain. Suffer! Pleasure! Say truth.

'How long have you been made a Master Mason?'

'Last three years.' (Three years ago)

'Do you have a ritual book?'

'Massa please go on.' (A snobbish way of saying go ahead, please)

When was the last time you read it? When did you perform a role in an opened lodge?

'Massa time no dey oo.' His face was not like it. His forehead read laziness and some other things were clear on his pointed nose like an awkward marriage ceremony.

'Okay, let's get to why I am different from you. Do you know there are other superior degrees in Freemasonry than the Sublime degree?'

'What's the sublime degree?'
I brought my lips together ahead of time to form a long and tiny chuckle.

'You don't even know that the sublime degree of a Master Mason is the third degree and its ceremony is called the Raising? Okay, tell me what you know in Masonry? Talk of Masonry; meetings, heavy banquets and more alcohol and fine ladies like a night's sky, is that not what you know?'

His face was a funeral.

'Look here, to me any Mason who has been a Master Mason for more than two years and hasn't made an effort to further his Masonic career is a liar and unfit to continue as a Mason. It is so for me because as at your initiation the WM asked you a question which he trusted you answered with candour: 'Do you likewise pledge yourself that you are prompted to solicit those privileges by a favourable opinion preconceived of the institution, A GENERAL DESIRE OF KNOWLEDGE and a sincere wish to render yourself more extensively serviceable to your fellow creatures?'
To which you answered 'I do'.

And then when you were admitted, you chose to forget that these are sacred promises and words you have said in the lodge room and so any conduct contrary to those words means a repercussion to you indirectly. Most Masons including myself invite curses for ourselves. Taking sacred obligations in the presence of the God and sealing it with kisses of a Sacred book and right after acting contrary to the words of our obligations. May Heaven aid our united endeavours and deliver us from the many things we do wrong, knowingly and unknowingly - curses. Amen!'

He clapped his hands together in prayers after me. This my brother is not even remorseful. I shook my head. I smiled.

'A general desire of knowledge and you get to the third degree and you are tired already. And you don't want to read what has been given to you. And you are still searching your heart curiously for those privileges you were told Freemasonry possesses in the faces of her members, in the kisses of forks and knives, in the makeups of our beautiful ladies. Good luck, my brother.

Let me help you as the brother who would serve you just the truth about everything in flames of fire. I set your heart ablaze and burn you to ashes that you may taste like water- soft and fresh. Start reading the book. Make progress in the science. Ask. Ask. Ask for exaltation into the Royal Arch Masonry. Ask for advancement in the Mark Master Masons lodge. Ask for perfection in the Rosecroix, otherwise known as the Scottish Rite. Ask your WM for duties to perform in your lodge and visit other lodges. Ask for your summons. Ask. Don't just attend Masonry, belong to Masonry. Be married to Masonry, she is a kind woman. She serves you the truth about the face of God, she relieves you of your necessities and soothes your afflictions and she loves you that's why she fucks you so hard.🤣🤣🤘🏿

W.Bro. Oppong Clifford Benjamin
Worshipful Master of Excelsior Lodge No. 7670 EC.

I'm respectful inviting Brethren to Excelsior Lodge meeting on this Saturday, 16th Sept 2017 at Fante Newtown Masonic Temple in Kumasi. Tyling time is 5:30pm prompt. IGYW Brethren

THE PLATEAU MASTER MASONS FORUM.

 By Brother Oppong Clifford Benjamin.
       Master- Elect of Excelsior Lodge No. 7670 EC. (to be installed 18th March, 2017)

I have visited them twice. It means I have really being educated and enjoyed twice from their Master Masons forum. And I dare say this has become a ceremonial ritual for Plateau Lodge No. 89 in the register of the Grand Lodge of Ghana. And I must congratulate the Worshipful Master and Brethren of the lodge for a wise initiative taken to repair the neck of Freemasonry from breaking off its long and antiquated body.

Though the Master Masons Forum is not a novel of Plateau Lodge (it is already in practice among lodges elsewhere), it can boldly be labelled on their banners as the originators of the initiative in Ghana.
The Lodge meets on certain Saturdays, and on all Fridays predating those Saturdays, in the evenings (at about 7pm), bottles of assorted beers, chairs and silent faces of Master Masons and very revered senior Masons would be arranged in circle with a lonely table placed at the centre and bottles of whisky on its smooth surface such that every brother present is equidistant to the whisky from the circumference. And very loud of the setting is the atmosphere of sedate oneness that filled the air in Right Worshipful Brother Lawyer Kwaku Baah's living room. ( Plateau meets in an inbuilt temple in his home and his large living room is the venue for the forum).

In this busy world, especially in our 'change has come' Ghana, just to be frank, Freemasonry is becoming less and least attractive to the modern society. With new pressures, lifestyle choices, technology a today young man has so many and so much to keep him playing in life so much that he no longer can differentiate day from night. It has therefore become not only necessary but also, I am afraid to say, very crucial for Masons to adopt measures in recruitment, retention and retrieval in accordance with the giant generational difference. It is in view of this fact that Plateau Lodge held and holds the Master Masons Forum to shred off titles and ranks to a common level of Master Masons the better to enable a free and sincere environment of discussion. A discussion of how to meliorate our system of morality, how to lift the veil carefully in order not to naked our allegory and symbols but high enough to retain the young Masons under, hear the problems of the MMs and most importantly for the Master Masons to take emotional strength from the stories about the patience and industry that have kept some Senior Masons in the order for decades and still counting.  Master Masons get a chance of vomiting their hearts out, and the Senior Masons pick and fix them.

In the evening of the immediate past Friday, the rulers embraced new ideas to make Freemasonry as dynamic as the world  from the Master Masons, who in exchange were advised to have patience and move in the faith of our fore fathers. And to climate it all, when Right Worshipful Brother Lawyer Kwaku Baah (an octogenarian) who was quiet in his seat all the while was invited to speak, his words were brief and precise and he said and I quote " In Masonry nobody is going to teach you anything but you acquire the Masonry yourself".