Klienk.MSG

             ARCHITECTS OF FAITH


THE STORY ends with surprise and elation. Archimedes, one of the
foremost inventors of ancient Greece, had puzzled long on how to
detect the amount of alloy mixed in the gold crown of the King of
Syracuse.  In a flash of insight, he understood the principle of
specific gravity and shouted "Eureka!" an exclamation meaning, in
Greek, "I have found it!"

  This moment of inspiration has struck all men of science from
Archimedes to Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Edison and the modern
researchers of today.  Often the solution to the problem is
evidentÄyet unseen.  Suddenly, it is there so clear and obvious
that one wonders why it was not seen before.

 Similar moments of insight occur in all areas of life.  The laws
of existence, though covered by the debris of daily living, are
simple and immutable.  They wait only for us to discover them
through our individual awareness.  Then, suddenly, the pieces of
the puzzle fall in place and reveal the once fragmented design in
its entire, intact oneness and beauty.

 This "eureka moment" occurred to me just recently as I was
watching the evening newscast.  The anchor person had a lot to
cover that night. The lead stories, as in several past weeks, were
focused on the disinte- gration of the European Communist block
nations.  Cutting from one demonstration to the next, the
television reporter's camera scanned civic protests in the Baltic
states and prayer vigils in national capitals once firmly under the
Russian heel.

 Suddenly it occurred to me.  Faith and freedomÄthey are
inextricably intertwined.  Where one exists, the other must
inevitably follow.  So obvious!  To have faith in a Supreme Creator
is essential for freedom. That is why the garrison states of today
espouse atheism.  If man abandons faith in Deity, he loses an
essential element of faith in himself and becomes a ready victim
for oppression.

 God made man free.  What distinguishes man from beast, since the
Garden of Eden to the world today, is humankind's ability to make
moral decisions, to have the knowledge of good and evil, and to
choose good.  Man only fulfills his God-given nature when he
decides for freedom.

 Appropriately, the one elemental condition for membership in our
Craft is belief in a Supreme Creator.  Here is the foundation of
our Order, our most sacred principle.  We are architects of more
than mortar and stone, of great hospitals and Childhood Language
Disorders Centers. We are architects of faith and thus builders of
better men and nations.

 Today's events emphatically prove this point.  In every state once
dominated by official atheism and tyranny, men and women of faith
are stepping forward, and churches are again opening their doors.
People are praying, regaining their faith in GodÄand in themselves.
If we believe in God, we believe in ourselves.  If we believe in
ourselves, we believe in others since they, too, are God's
creations.  Thus we embrace freedom as the right condition of life
for all, the only means by which we and others can fulfill our
divine nature and the Creator's will.

 Truly, Freemasons are architects of faithÄfaith in God, faith in
ourselves, faith in others, faith in our nation, and faith in the
universal triumph of good and freedom over evil and oppression.
Let us always remember this fact and live by it.  In the words of
the American poet James Russell Lowell, let us "Be noble!  And the
nobleman that lies in other men, sleeping, but never dead, will
rise in majesty to meet thine own!"