Brotherly Love
Brotherly Love is the single most important teaching of Masonry. The Grand Lodge of Oregon’s motto is: Brotherly Love, Relief, Truth. Brotherly Love comes first for a reason. If you only focused on this one practice for the rest of your life, you would surely build a great spiritual edifice and leave this world with a clear conscious and full heart. Brotherly Love starts with our thoughts and takes practice to master. First, let us come to a common understanding of what is meant by the term “brotherly love”. I define this as having empathy and showing compassion for every living person. It is seeking to understand someone rather than sitting in judgement and looking for those myriad ways that we are alike instead of dwelling on our few differences. Brotherly love starts with our thoughts. When we see other people, often our thoughts focus on something that we don’t like about them . Our brains are naturally predisposed to put things into categories and focus o...