Speaker 1: 0:01

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. You've reached the internet's home for all things masonry. Join on the level podcast as we plumb the depths of our ancient craft and try to unlock the mysteries, dispel the fallacies and utilize the teachings of pre-masonry to unlock the greatness within each of us. I have you now All right. Welcome back to on the level podcast, formerly on the level with Fred and Chris. Today we have a guest, a special guest. I don't know if I call you Sir Knight, I don't know if I call you most worshipful, right, brother. I'm not good with titles, so I'll just say brother Roberto M Sanchez. Welcome to the show, brother.

Speaker 2: 1:02

Thank you for having me, Chris. It's an honor to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:05

So give me some of your titles. Let me help me sort all this out. I know you've done a lot in the fraternity and a lot of our listeners might not know who you are, and I need them to know who you are before we get into why you're here and what we're going to talk about.

Speaker 2: 1:20

Well, I am a past grandmaster of the grand launch of the state of Mexico and I know that it's not Mexico which is the state that surrounds Mexico City. I'm also the current grand chancellor for that jurisdiction. I'm in the Grand York right lines in Hawaii. I'm the Grand Generalissimo for the Grand Commandery of the Grand Commandery of Hawaii. I'm also in the chapter in the Council line there. I'm the grandmaster of the Royal Society of Knights Occidental. I was the grand bong for the Order of Corks. I'm involved in pretty much every Masonic body that exists, very active, and all I belong to 30 lodges around the world, from Belgium to Alaska, to Hawaii, to the UK. I mean all of Brazil, mexico, obviously, several in the US.

Speaker 1: 2:08

Wow, that's amazing, I get it wrong. How long have you been a Mason now?

Speaker 2: 2:14

I was initiated past and raised in 2005, so 18 years and some change.

Speaker 1: 2:20

And you currently a Texan.

Speaker 2: 2:22

Yeah, I was inter-past and raised in Texas. My family lives here in Texas. I have a house in Hawaii, a house in Mexico. I travel a lot for work. What do you do for work? I'm a consultant for the rail industry, regulatory manager for the rail industry, so I have vast territory which is literally all over the world. So if I'm needed, I'll schedule myself to be wherever I need to be.

Speaker 1: 2:49

So you're a true traveling man in every sense of the word, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 2:55

Be COVID. I estimate 120 flights a year. Since COVID it slowed down a little bit.

Speaker 1: 3:01

Yeah, still busy. That's crazy. I want to thank you for coming on the show. We've been talking through Facebook for a couple months now. I think I reached out to you because I started following some of the happenings of the Grand Lodge Shenanigans in Texas on the Facebook group for Texas Freemasons and you over time, seem to have become the lightning rod that everyone coalesced behind. Is what it looked like from the outside.

Speaker 2: 3:36

You can correct me, if I'm wrong, exactly what happened. The lightning rod is a name that the powers that be in the past were the rail industry has gave me as a. I'm supposed to be a diss, but I turned it into a positive and completely shocked the world, for lack of a better pun. Yeah, but I started into that skit. I've had issues with some of those guys in the past and when I saw them doing the same thing they tried to do to me years ago.

Speaker 2: 4:03

I did not let them get away with it this time.

Speaker 1: 4:06

That's crazy, that the people, the everyday brothers kind of, I mean I guess we should start at the beginning. One of the things that I talked about when I covered this previously was it's really difficult to find out what's really happening from an outside perspective, because the jurisdiction of Texas has laws against talking about anything that happens at Grand Lodge. Outside of Grand Lodge They'll take the charter. If you're in a lodge and Mason's can't talk about it, no one can talk about this stuff. Is that correct?

Speaker 2: 4:39

That's not normally the case. So the junior past grandmaster put a lot of gag orders from the gate. So I guess, to kind of start a little bit at the beginning, we, like most grandmashes, we have rules, codes, regulations that everybody follows, sure, and with ours for the last, I mean, for as long as I've been to Mason, I've noticed that the past grandmasters, the powers that be, I mean I call them the machine, you call them the what? The machine? The machine, the work is seamless and they have a playbook.

Speaker 2: 5:14

And again, I'm very familiar with the playbook because 10 years ago, in 2014, I was a hot up and comer in Masonry. I was district deputy at the time, doing a lot of things. I've made myself available for a couple of office and I was bringing the Masonic Rose Crucians SICF to Texas a second cop to that, not because I asked for it, but because I was tapped by the spring maggots to start a second one and the machine didn't want it, didn't like it. So they threatened me and they told me if I didn't cease and desist, I would rule the day.

Speaker 1: 5:44

And I was okay, so actual threat and real threat?

Speaker 2: 5:49

Absolutely, yeah, and like I was summoned to the past grandmasters office during the grand launch session back in 2013 and Reese Harrison, which that is a name that everybody in Texas knows, but he's very popular, or should I say infamous? That's different than popular. He's very infamous. Everybody knows who he is in the national, like in the big big dog yeah, the most decorated Mason in the history of the United States Got more national titles than anybody ever.

Speaker 1: 6:20

What was his?

Speaker 2: 6:21

brother's name Reese Harrison or Reese L Harrison Jr. He's from.

Speaker 1: 6:27

San Antonio. Is this where the term Reese's PCs came from? That's it. Okay, this makes sense. Now I saw a lot of chatter about Reese's PCs and I was like, wow, reese's PCs, yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:40

Reese's PCs is the term that I came up with for his father, because a lot of people follow this man blindly because they're afraid If you don't do what Reese wants, he would destroy you and he's a lawyer, so I mean. So people are afraid that they might get sued and he dangles Masonic titles and honors and things over people's heads and if you want to play in this game, you have to do what I tell you or you'll never get. And he not only does that in Texas, but a Masonic week, like he's one of the powerhouses, he's one of the three. There's three camps at Masonic week, that kind of roll, the national organizations and he's the head of one. He's the head of the more powerful one, yikes. So people are afraid of this guy, and so that's why I came up with the Tim Reese's PCs.

Speaker 2: 7:22

Is anybody that has sold their integrity for a pot medal to follow this man, for whatever reason? So anyway, back to the story in 2013, when I was getting the second most crucial college in Texas, this man threatened and he told me either you cease and desist for your rule today and your Masonic careers over. And I try to not plead with him, but kind of tell him like look, that's the son of Masonic. I didn't ask for this, it's already happened. It's not how this works, right. And his response was well, no, you do as I tell you or you're done. And he had beef with the Supreme Mags at the time getting Bill Kuhn very good friend of mine.

Speaker 2: 8:02

And he basically told him it's either him or me. You get the pit, you don't get the. You either pick Texas or you pick him and pick right now. I didn't like being threatened or told that I needed to pick a side right then, so I just walked out of the room and 13 days later I had 10 Masonic charges.

Speaker 2: 8:20

10 charges, yeah 10 charges and I try to fight them. The grandmothers wouldn't tell me anything. As I went through it, I found out that a lot of past grandmasters the then grand secretary, a lot of really big deal named Mason, from the time where the ones that wrote the charges and create this whole conspiracy, they threatened a lot of my friends my friends that ended up getting sued, that defended me. It became a huge, massive thing for years.

Speaker 1: 8:45

They got sued outside of the fraternity or just miscarriages.

Speaker 2: 8:49

Civil law. In civil court, every officer and a couple of friends that defended me were sued for a million dollars a piece in hopes that they would all turn on me and give them what they wanted. But every one of them like stood firm. They didn't turn on me. They were like no, what you guys are doing is wrong. So essentially they filed two more Masonic charges. The grandmaster of the next year, michael Wiggins, who is now the SGIG of Texas. He filed two more Masonic charges against me. So now we're up to 12. And again, years before we went to actual trial, they pulled all sorts of synanigans. So I became very familiar with their playbook. Finally, when the trial spent 12 hours at the trial, the jury took seven minutes to find all 12 charges false because they were bullshit. So we pulled those into every single thing that they did. So I knew the playbook. I knew what they were capable of.

Speaker 1: 9:46

So in the jurisdiction of Florida, our digest says that if you bring charges against a brother and they're found to be false, you've opened yourself up to being charged yourself for Masonic conduct. Is that the case in Texas? Thing in Texas.

Speaker 2: 10:02

Now, when my trial was now in the middle of all this trial, I ended up getting sued myself for $10 million by two different individuals, but they were all contingency on me being found guilty at the Masonic trial. When my Masonic charges were dismissed, the trial master looked at me and said you know, these are all now false charges and that is a Masonic offense. Would you like to file charges against all your accusers? And I told them no, I wanted it to end because it had been years and I assumed Masons were good people. So the Masons that defamed me for years would do the right thing and be like you know what we screwed up. We're sorry for causing so much trouble. We'll let. No, not even a little bit.

Speaker 1: 10:40

So this is like one of our biggest weaknesses, I think, as a fraternity is we assume people are doing good or they have good intentions. We assume that, even when they're showing us over and over again that they're not. We try to make the assumption that there's good here, it's going to come to this or the right's going to prevail. But really, at the end of the day and I've gotten a lot of flack from personal friends because I see things and I want to say something and they're like it's not your job to police the fraternity. Well, who's goddamn job is it? Then? I've got a job. Is it the police? Because they're not doing it at the top. So who's supposed to do this stuff If not us?

Speaker 2: 11:18

I think what happened is and it just kind of grew from there, Eventually all of my stuff went away. I won the trial which made all the lawsuits, the ones against me and against all my friends. They all went away, that's everything.

Speaker 2: 11:35

I expected these guys to apologize and rectify what they know. They did the complete opposite. They lied. They said that I squeezed by. They said that the trial never happened, that a grandmaster of mine just became friends and just dismissed the chart. No, none of that happened. I have the 12 hour recording of the trial. No, but it was a long trial. For 12 hours they just sit there and threw all sorts. They claimed that I was the head of a Mexican cartel, which is that's how I can afford to travel everywhere that I go to, and that I'll smuggle and drug. All the guys that were helping me were under the threat of death and that's why they were so loyal to me that if they stepped down a line they would die. It was asinine.

Speaker 1: 12:20

Let me ask you this, and this is like okay, maybe our people won't like it, but are these individuals white? Oh, absolutely Okay. Do you think that that had any bearing on their motivations, the fact that you are from another country?

Speaker 2: 12:37

Oh, some of them for sure. I mean I heard it this weekend. That's one of the reasons I don't. I mean I'll need to post a picture online so you could see it. I saw my traveling apron as a past grain master of Mexico is very loud. It's got like a giant Mexican flag on it and that one probably because I know it rises the hair to the back of their head. There's another one that's blue and it's more common to like, but I wear the Mexican flag one just because I know, nice, nice, no.

Speaker 1: 13:09

What was the real reason that you got them so hot and bothered over you? What were you doing that got so under their skin that they had to bury you?

Speaker 2: 13:17

I was flying too close to the sun and rose too fast. I mean 2013,.

Speaker 1: 13:21

They weren't part of the cabal, you weren't part of the machine and you, you clearly weren't going to play game. They're getting at them. When they came to you and tried to get me in line.

Speaker 2: 13:29

The big thing is that most of and that's the problem, and that's where the story gets interesting is that people that go on the on the climb, they'll approach you and, I guess, test you to see if you're going to be bending a knee or play, play the game. And I don't like I answered the no more, like it's me and God and that's it, like I'm not going to just no, no, no, no, no. And I went specifically with the Rose Crucian Charter when the Supreme Magus said I'm going to get a second Rose Crucian College in Texas and I want you to lead it, and I said, yes, sir, and I didn't ask for their permission. And when they told me to turn it down, I wouldn't, that was the last straw. But I mean, I was also running for the grand commanding line at the time and running for the lodge of research and they stopped that because of the charges. So it became like a huge thing.

Speaker 1: 14:15

So once you cleared, all the charges and all the lawsuits are gone, like, how bummed are you about being a Freemason at that point? Or do you feel like justice prevailed? Maybe you have some hope in the fraternity? Like, where are you at at that point?

Speaker 2: 14:28

I mean I was. I was more energized when it was over, just because of how many people from all over the world came to my defense and kind of stood by me, Not loudly, like not like I did with this issue here, but like they stood firm behind me just in case and like just to push me forward and when I would get a little bit no, keep going. So you know what happened that's why I joined as many lodges as I did is that I had several jurisdictions that were like hey, if you get screwed over in Texas, you come right here and you're, you'll be, you'll be good here.

Speaker 2: 14:55

Yeah, not the time I couldn't because I was under charges. So one of the things that you Texas, when you're under charges, you cannot admit you not a failure.

Speaker 1: 15:02

That seems to be a tool they used to weaponize their agenda in Texas To bring charges.

Speaker 2: 15:07

Absolutely, and that's what they've been doing, and that's what made me lose my cool this year, because they, they use that playbook.

Speaker 1: 15:13

So you were triggered. You see what's going on and you're triggered. Now You're like oh hell no, oh hell no.

Speaker 2: 15:19

They were doing it to our all friends of mine and I saw the playbook and I would go up to me like this is what's going to happen next, and they just look at me like you're crazy. And then it would happen. And then I would get phone calls and like how the hell did you know? I lifted that. They're like T shirt, and so the story with what happened this year is that Texas has a weird dynamic than most states, because we're actually fully democratic when it comes to electing our leaders. Most states claim that they are, but they're not.

Speaker 2: 15:46

Most states the grandmaster will appoint the grand steward or the grand deacon and it's no longer advances and becomes the great neck. Not in Texas. In Texas None Nothing is progressive. You make yourself available for the office of grand junior warden and if elected, then you progress and if tradition prevails, but like, you get the vote and every past master in Texas gets a vote. So if you presided over a lodge in Texas, you get one vote, the lodges get three. So we think the quarter in the lodge, whether it's the master, one of the wardens or the elected proxy, he gets a clicker that counts three votes. So the most you can have is four. So, for example, this year I'm more full master for the seventh time of a different lodge and I'm a past master. So I had two clickers, one for three, one for four. So I would get four votes and that's the most any one person can have. And there's pockets in Texas that carry a lot of weight and a lot of votes. The committee on work is one of them, north Texas, I mean. They just divided into several different groups and usually if you have three of those groups you typically win. That's kind of what my analysis or my breakdown of how who gets elected wins.

Speaker 2: 16:54

And we'll go back to December of 20 or November of 22, right November of 22,. There's a guy named Jim Rumsey. Jim Rumsey is right now the new grand junior or the grand senior warden of the Grand Lodge of Texas and at the time he was running for grand junior warden and he was running unopposed. This is the first time since 1964 that anybody had run unopposed with the office of Grand Junior Warden and we're like two months away from Grand Lodge and at the time Brad Billings was grandmaster of the Grand Lodge and Brad very young at the time. He was 39 years old, I think Youngest grandmaster we've had in a long time Not ever. We've had some that have been much younger but back in like 19,. Dickety too. And Brad whether you like him, hate him, love him, whatever, like it is undisputable that he had more activity and more energy brought to the Grand Lodge than any other grandmaster in the last 50 years. Easy, he was probably more in the more in the last 20 years combined. I mean Brad did a lot.

Speaker 1: 17:59

And he embraced new ideas. Right, he was all over social media.

Speaker 2: 18:03

Absolutely, and he did a lot of really good things for the Grand Lodge. But he upset some of the past grants even from the gate for for his, the way that he did his campaign. Essentially he did not break any laws, but he didn't do a traditional campaign for the office of Grand Junior Warden and he beat two other guys that were the favorites to win. So there was a four man race that year and Brad won and he beat two guys that should have beat him. So that pissed them off. So from the gate Brad had enemies in that.

Speaker 2: 18:33

So fast forward, the whole time he's brats go into the line. They're trying to stop them, trying to file charges against them to make them not get to the East. But it wouldn't work because the guys that were in front of them in the line didn't agree with it. So Brad's grandmaster and they have the past grandmasters at this point have a slew of charges that they're going to file against Brad as soon as he gets out of office. So they approach Jim Rumsey, the only candidate running for Grandeur and the warden, and ask them to tell him we're going to file charges against Brad. Are you on board? And his answer is, if they're legitimate, yeah, and they left it at that. Well, this gets back to Reese Harrison and Reese is like no, that's not an answer, go ask him again.

Speaker 2: 19:13

So we went and asked him the same question again back in November and the answer was the same if they're legitimate, I'm on board. And that's not what they wanted to hear. They wanted to hear yes, implicitly. No matter what happens, even if they're fake, false charges, you need to be on board, right? So when you do that, it kind of blew about a proportion.

Speaker 2: 19:36

So in December, during our Grand Chapter and Grand Council session, there is a blue house that's like across the street, from the side door of the Grand Lodge, literally like across the street, and Mason's usually rent that and they have a party there during whatever the Grand York right Grand Chapter session or Grand Lodge session. And there was a party there and Jim Rumsey left the party to go to the Grand Lodge building and have a cup in his hand and he tried to open the side door and it was locked. But they have him on camera holding a cup and allegedly there was alcohol in that cup and that we have a law in the Grand Lodge of Texas that states that intoxicating liquors, which is why we use that term a lot on the Texas free. Mason's is forbidden in the Grand Lodge Memorial building or any building occupied by Mason's in IN Right, not on the building, not on the building in.

Speaker 1: 20:32

We have the same exact law in the jurisdiction of Florida.

Speaker 2: 20:35

Right, and the fact that it says in, not on, created a problem because they filed charges against Jim Rumsey a month before he was running for office to be Grand Junior Warden, for having alcohol on the premises.

Speaker 1: 20:47

So, but the only evidence they had was a picture of him holding a cup.

Speaker 2: 20:50

Yeah, it was all speculation, but now was there alcohol in the cup. I'm not a betting man, but I'm pretty sure there was Right. But again, it is their burden to prove that. And he never.

Speaker 1: 21:04

He never brought it into the building, anyways, right, but it will build.

Speaker 2: 21:08

However, the guys that at the time were in the Grand Line so at the time the Grand Junior Warden, jim Rumber, a Rabin reader, and at the time Grand Senior Warden Bart Henderson, are the ones that filed the original charges against Jim. That was Jim.

Speaker 1: 21:26

I mean I saw that that was done in open Grand Lodge.

Speaker 2: 21:29

That was before that, so they're like, oh OK, you're not yourself right. So this was in December when that happened. Oh, ok, before that, jim. Jim returned the favor and filed charges against Bart and Rabin for the same thing. Because he's like, hey, I was just at Conroe Lodge two weeks ago and Bart Henderson brought a bottle of wine to the Lodge building and, in the Lodge building, presented it to Rabin and said this is for my wife, to yours, I will steal. Guess what. Brad violates the very law that they filed against him because they had intoxicating liquors in the building. In the building, yeah. So whenever he brought those, then everybody dismissed the charges. Brad Billings was Grand Master and he just dismissed both sets because he's like, ok, jim never had it in the building, you guys did, it was sealed on his mistake. Dismissed all of them. Well, the past Grand Machine got four guys to run against Jim Rumsie that year for Grand Junior Warden. So now we're in January of 2023.

Speaker 2: 22:26

Jim is running for office, but the rumor mill at Grand Lodge that you're spread like wild fire that Jim needed to be unelected because he was a drunk. He was an embarrassment to Freemasonry. Jim won in a landslide against four other people. He won on the first ballot. I think he had 1800 votes. Wow, just smart. Well, that's what you come in and that video you saw online happened. As soon as the new Grand Master, clay Smith, gets installed, he receives charges that he's never seen before, which we could all tell he was. That was scripted. He did a horrible job at reading. He read like a toddler, like kindergarten or like kids better.

Speaker 2: 23:08

And it was embarrassing. They did this in front of all the people that showed up to have to watch their family be installed all these instances of insulation, and then they recorded it and put it on YouTube to embarrass Jim. Now we stopped it from happening. We, like Brad Billings, got up to the microphones at point of order, you can't do this. So that became infamous and the very next day, during the executive session, they relieved Jim from his duties, from his ceremonial duties as Grand Junior Warden that they couldn't take as administrative duties. So he's still on the board.

Speaker 2: 23:49

All that meant is basically like if there's a cornerstone leveling, you can't show up and represent the Grand Lodge. You can still wear your apron, you still get the title, but you don't get to submit reimbursement for travel. I mean, for some of us I think it was like almost six months Jim was like suspended from his duties and in September, like the whole year, we had ups and downs where the Grand Master would do something stupid, right? Clay Smith told all of his deputies that if he saw them online with a cigar or a intoxicating beverage, he would remove them as District Deputy Grand Master. It doesn't matter if it wasn't at Lodge or if it weren't wearing Masonic regalia, if you were online holding a.

Speaker 1: 24:33

There's no law that says that that is an issue, right? No, there isn't Right, there is. So how can you justify that? How does he justify that? That's what he wanted to say. That's like saying if I see you wear polka dots someday, I'm going to just remove you as a Mason. You don't get to arbitrarily make those rules, Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 24:51

You don't, but he did. He thought he was, he thought he was entitled. I mean, there's a lot of things that he does. After he removed Jim Rumsey, he sent out a letter saying it would be a Masonic offense. If you discuss what happened with Jim Rumsey with anybody, can you tell me that I'm an adult? They did, though, right, but they did it out and I didn't stop talking about it because they can't.

Speaker 2: 25:16

That doesn't violate anything of grand-luck. You can't give an edict and interrupt my personal life If I want to tell my wife that you guys are acting crazy and suspending a guy from his. No, that wasn't a secret, they was. You did something secret, but I didn't. If you're not going to stop me from talking, that ain't a grown-ass man, but that's kind of what set this to it, and the whole year he did stuff like that. That just kind of, like you said, it started triggering a lot of things that were seen happening.

Speaker 2: 25:43

And then I approached Brad Billings, I approached Jim Rumsey, I approached Justin Dutty. Justin Dutty at the time was the grand secretary and he was running for grand junior award. Brad Billings, past grandmaster, was running for grand secretary and Jim was running for grand senior award, and I told all three of them this is what's going to happen and by the end of the year, brad is going to be brought up on charges for some of the things that he did last year. Brad is going to be brought up on charges and they're going to try to get rid of all of you guys. And they all kind of laughed and they said, no, they have nothing wrong with us, they can't do that. Okay, sure, that's going to happen.

Speaker 2: 26:18

Like I didn't do anything wrong, but they filed 12 Masonic charges against something that I did not do. So they'll find something, they'll twist it in the court. Mark my words the one that they're going to charge each of one of you with is conduct that brings discredit to Mason, because that's very vague, right? They're going to take their nose and say, well, that brought discredit to Masonry and what are you going to like? It's speculation and it's that guy's opinion so he could file it for that is just to prove that. But nevertheless, if you are under charges for picking your nose because it is un-Masonic, okay, if it takes you by right, like when you're under charges.

Speaker 1: 26:57

You can't be nominated for a position, right, they basically pause your Masonic career. You're locked out, so that's exactly what they did.

Speaker 2: 27:06

So in September I was asked to give a talk and that's what I talked about. I did was at the Houston Festival and the talk was basically just like the trustees and the machine are using Masonic charges as a way to advance their agenda and that was kind of like the spark that sparked this little revolution we created was that talk and everybody that was there. Kind of like within two days everybody in the whole state knew about it and I had people from all over the state asking me to get a copy of it.

Speaker 1: 27:35

When was it roughly yeah?

Speaker 2: 27:37

That was September 9th and that day okay, one of the things that I said at that talk I said before the end of the month and Brad Billings was sitting right next to me I was like this man, brad Billings, is going to be under charges Before the end of the year. That man right there, justin Dudi, is going to be under charges. And sure enough, that day they felt charges against Brad and Dallas. But while we were all having the festival, the machine was filing charges against Brad and some large and Dallas. So, wow, that kind of got me stirred up and I didn't like it. But when people started like well, you need to run for Grandmaster, I don't have the time Like this is crazy. Yeah, and time progressed, we got a grand chapter and grand council in December.

Speaker 2: 28:24

I talked to some of the powers that be from part of the machine, the then deputy grandmaster, bart Henderson. I tell him like amen, what you guys are doing is not cool. You and our friends, Bart, you need to kind of talk to the grandmaster and and cease some of the, some of the stuff. You're creating a division. You don't want a civil war man. And his response was you don't know what you're talking about you don't know the whole story, and I kind of just laughed. I was like part, I know the whole story better than you think. And he goes well, no, you don't. I'm like all right, well then, I might have to prove you wrong one day you don't know the factory story.

Speaker 1: 28:54

That's what he's basically saying.

Speaker 2: 28:58

A couple of days later, that very next day, they had a meeting of the trustees where they tried to fire Justin duty from office as grand secretary, and it didn't work.

Speaker 1: 29:09

I saw it, yeah, it looked like there was some kind of a report that was given that said actually they couldn't find any of what he was accused of.

Speaker 2: 29:20

Well, so then, this meeting. The reason that Justin got saved is because they brought up during this meeting that the upper trustees which is not a term defined anywhere in our law this is something that the grand master made up. The upper trustees became what he called himself as grand master. Bart Henderson is deputy grand master and Raven Reader is grand senior warden, and that would like and for some reason, by calling them upper trustees, he gave them more power than the other three.

Speaker 1: 29:43

The titles are offensive to me. The fact that you have an upper trustee is offensive to me, me too.

Speaker 2: 29:51

But I mean, he made it up, and he made it up just to give them more credence, because our law clearly states what the trustees are and are the elected officers the grand locks, grand master, deputy grand master, senior warden, junior warden, trustee and secretary.

Speaker 1: 30:01

And they run equally. There's no above, below high, low level.

Speaker 2: 30:05

Exactly, and you need four of them for a quorum, four of them for a majority. That's how this works. If you have three guys at a meeting, you didn't have a meeting. If you didn't notify all six, you didn't have a meeting. If you don't have four people voting in favor of it, whatever you voted for didn't pass.

Speaker 2: 30:20

Well, the upper trustees had a secret meeting where they were going to vote to remove Justin duty from office and they approved that and they hired a very expensive law firm to get this done. So, in this meeting that I'm talking about, in December, december 8th, they that's when it came up. So we hired this law firm and they discovered that we have grounds to remove them from office and this is how we're going to do it. And the treasurer went time out. When did you guys approve this? Oh, we had a secret meeting a few months back, a secret meeting like you need. You need all of us there, right? I wasn't in favor of this. And then he's like, well, we submitted a bill and you approved it. I was like, oh, this bill, this bill for $4,000. No, I didn't approve this, I haven't paid for it because we didn't approve it. And so then, when he brought that up.

Speaker 1: 31:12

They got mad at him. Investigation time yeah, Got to get rid of him. He's not playing ball.

Speaker 2: 31:18

So, exactly so, the very next week they kind of like that failed. Nothing happened. And a week later I'm in Mexico and my phone starts blowing up. And I'm in Mexico because we're doing a tall Cedars. I'm on the board of directors for the tall Cedars 11. And we have a house there that we sponsor for kids that are abandoned, that don't have mobility issues, that we help, and we were there on a Christmas party and it was a cool time.

Speaker 2: 31:46

And as I'm getting ready to go to this, the day before, I'm already there and my phone starts blowing up that they have removed Justin Duty from office and they had filed Masonic charges. And they did the same to the Grand Treasure. And the Grand Treasurer's reasoning was because he didn't do a lawful order of the Grand Master of paying $10,000 worth of legal fees that nobody approved. So he got fired for doing his job. Right, we're saying like I'm not paying this because the grand launch they didn't vote for this is not in the budget, we didn't approve it. As a trustees, which the job as the trustees is to run the day-to-day operations of the grand launch when it's not in session, I'm not paying it. So then they fired him and threatened him with charges for the same thing.

Speaker 2: 32:34

That's what blew me over the top Whenever they got rid of Rick. Because Rick is he's in his 80s great guy like straight as an arrow. He is brilliant with finances, he's made a lot of people a lot of money and they attacked them just because he didn't spend them. And everybody else was a younger mason, right Like Jimson is 40s, I think Jim's like 44, 45. Justin Duties 40, 41. Brad Billings is 40. So these are all younger masons that are making themselves available for office. Four guys, that's four people on the board of trustees. So they get. If they all get elected, they have majority of the board, right. So that's when I was like no, not having it, and I published the first team, which was about how they illegally tried to remove Justin from office, and I talked about the lawyer.

Speaker 1: 33:28

You said you published the first team. A lot of people listening aren't going to have any clue what you're talking about. Where does that come from?

Speaker 2: 33:38

So in the South predominant there's a saying that you say spill the tea, which kind of means like give us the gossip Gossip okay. So, that's kind of spilling the tea. Give us the gossip, Gotcha.

Speaker 1: 33:52

I thought there might have been some revolutionary reference to the tea party.

Speaker 2: 33:56

And I also used that together with the talk that I gave on the 9th of September where, like I said, like if we're not careful, they could take our grand launch from us. But I think a revolution is necessary, and so it brought both of those things together about Green Dragon Tavern, where the Boston Tea Party was come up with during a passionate speech, and this idea of movie. So I merged the two together and that became the battle cry was the tease. The tease.

Speaker 2: 34:24

Now, the week before, like during the when the Grand Chapter Grand Council session that took place, I was installed as conductor of the council for the Grand Council of Texas, and the guy that's Grand Master is a good friend of mine named Aaron Zazinski, and Aaron was accosted by several past grandmasters demanding that he remove me from office because I was a lightning rod and I was bad for the for the Grand Council and he shouldn't have me there. He's like. I'm not removing him, he's a good Mason, he's done a good job. So that's when all those terms kind of like hit together at the same time. So I branded the whole tea idea with the spilling the tea, the revolutionary aspect to it and the fact that they were going to call me a lightning bolt as a diss. So I took that away from them and then made it a positive thing. So I started publishing these teas and every other day or so I would publish an article couple pages long, kind of ousting something that some of these guys did. Yeah, so like so more incredible.

Speaker 1: 35:25

I mean the video of the guy peeing in the catering room, for example how did you even? Get that? Where does that come from? So I say, the guy that is a past grandmaster, it's Reese Harrison.

Speaker 2: 35:40

This is, this is Reese. Yes, the most decorated powerful Mason in the country.

Speaker 1: 35:45

Yeah, that's him with his pants around his ankle and explain that situation a little for people, because I found it amazing.

Speaker 2: 35:51

So I caught a lot of flak for this, but in a lot of people, a lot of people, especially older Masons, try to tell me that that was wrong. And I didn't do that to embarrass Reese. I did that to prove a point because of the. If the animal would have been on the other, oh yeah, it would be completely different, oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 36:12

As a matter of fact, whenever, whenever the whole thing came up with Jim Rumsey, about him having the alcohol or whatever, reese was trying to get the the the civil law committee to embarrass Jim and they said, if we would have had the full video of him doing something like we would have destroyed him. And this is what Reese is telling people like if they'd like we would have had a video of him doing a little bit more, we would have shown it to everybody. And that's what they put like. His whole idea was to embarrass them. So that would have been any of any of us.

Speaker 2: 36:41

If I would have had an accident or a similar situation, I would be a Mason right now Because we sort of you have to get me expelled. Yeah, so that video I came through it through through legal measures and it happened back in March of 23 and rumors started popping up around about that existing and people were talking about everybody. Nobody would say who was, because everybody's afraid of Reese. So people would pop up on Texas Freemasons and say, well, this happened. So back in April it's a month after it happened I made this pose on the Texas Freemasons kind of allude into it, and I became a Freeman of London, which is an honor that you, that's bestowed upon people by the city council and the mayor of London, which it's an old term, but it basically says that you have certain rights within London. One of those rights is that you can carry your sheep across London Bridge into the city of London and you can relieve yourself in public.

Speaker 2: 37:35

Now again, it's a very old honor, yeah, very old, but into that same like well, apparently we're apparently a past grandmaster that didn't say his name, was jealous that I got that. So he created his own, his own club, called P in the coffee cup, and so the rumor kind of started fluttering and but nobody would say who was name was. So I kind of elongated that to be the last thing. And as I was going through, mike Wiggins, the SG IG, one of his mentors, would, would tell us, like no Roberto's lying, that never happened, that would never happen at a Scottish right building. Mike knew since March that it happened. He actually ordered that the tape be destroyed.

Speaker 1: 38:19

This is so bad on so many levels.

Speaker 2: 38:22

He's like he, when he was told about it he laughed and they're like, no, this is a really big deal because the cater is really upset. And he's like, yeah, well, destroy the tape, don't call me, don't bother me with this again. And all the trustees, the guy that, the guy that, the Bart Henderson, the guy that was going to be grandmaster, the deputy grandmaster last year, he knew about it and he pretended that he didn't. Brian Dotson, I mean all these past grandmasters knew about it and they just kind of turned their the other cheek to it. So what happened in that particular instance is that Reese Harrison for many years was the chairman of the Valley of San Antonio, which means he ran that building, ran that Scottish Riq and was completelyassembled In the kitchen. There is a storage room in the back of that in San Antonio. There's a storage room. In the back of that storage room is a bathroom that nobody used. So Reese always, for the total time that he was personal representative and chairman of the Valley of San Antonio, used that as his own personal bathroom. Well, about 10 years ago he was retired from that office and Somebody else became PR and the people that became PR after him Decided to rent that storage room out to a caterer and that caterer used his own money to gut it and Rebuild it to how you wanted it to and made that into his catering office and in the back of that office there's that bathroom and he wanted to be able to lock the office. But he was told I know you cannot lock this office because inside of this office is where the security equipment is for the bill, so we need to be able to have access to here so we could turn off the alarm right on. So the caterer is like, well then, can I like lock the bathroom and put my safe and like important file cabinets? He's like, yeah, that's fine. And then he also put a camera because it's like if I have to have the door open and unlock, I want to be able to have a camera just if something goes missing.

Speaker 2: 40:12

I know who did it. Well, on one of the one of the days they were having a Santomas of a con meeting and in the large room and Reese Harrison needed to go to the bathroom. So he passed up three bathrooms from from that particular room to go to his private bathroom, right, so not one, not two, but three different bathrooms he passed up because he wanted to go to his private bathroom, right. So he trespassed into somebody else's property that a tenant of the status, right, who uses that room to To prepare food yeah, food to have is is like to bring customers in to display food. I mean it's, it's. He walked into that room when he found it, walked At a spite, not at a necessity, at a spite, decided to put a coffee cup next to the coffee pot and other visible like box of cookies or stuff and Drop this pants like a toddler and peed into a coffee cup On video, on video.

Speaker 2: 41:17

Now, he didn't know that the camera was there, no, of course not. But I mean he's there with the like, with the night humility toss and night carrot toss, like collars around his neck which, for those of you guys that are not members of Saint Thomas of a con, those are super high honors for Living your life with humility and rectitude of conduct. So he's wearing, like, the highest grand cross of this particular order, super invitational, like super hard to get. Very few people have these orders and these, these honors and he's wearing those as he's peeing and somebody else's property that he trespassed out of spite, At a spite, because they locked his private bathroom.

Speaker 1: 41:56

That, that's just so you release that shocking, shocking. Now, this was before your grand law session this year, I believe you released the session started that Thursday.

Speaker 2: 42:09

Released that on Monday.

Speaker 1: 42:11

I lost track of the story once your grand love started. I really I was keeping track of you. Guys were saying, oh, this resolution passed or that one didn't pass. I don't know what those resolutions are, so it was tough to follow. Maybe you could tell us what cuz. You guys went on mass to Grand Lodge.

Speaker 2: 42:29

All of these brothers showed up and and that is that is definitely one of the proudest things I've ever. I've ever done, orchestrated in my life. Because of the teas and I'm not saying this to pat myself on the back or to like it's a fact, it's a fact Like we created a, I will forever have changed the the trajectory of Grand Lodge of Texas. You cannot mention the 180 convention without my name, because it's because of those teas we have the largest attendance in years like that. I retracted from 2004, which was 20 years ago, which was the year that Reese Harrison was Grand Master, by the way, said to 2024, and this, that was the largest attended Grand Lodge session in those 20 years.

Speaker 2: 43:15

We, we had I mean, I lost the final number, but we had we had 3600 votes available to vote and we, we were playing. We were playing high skilled chess against people that were playing checkers. I mean, we dance circles around these people, me and some of my friends and I'm not gonna expose them because they don't need to have any any flak I'll take all the bullets but we created a playbook. We created a playbook that if they do this, we do this, and if they do this, we do this. And we have scripts and we had lines and just like, and they were all followed by law.

Speaker 1: 43:53

Whatever they?

Speaker 2: 43:53

do. One of the main things that they were trying to do is a make sure that Brad Billings and Justin duty and all these people were not eligible for office.

Speaker 1: 43:59

Right, they were trying to there were proceedings because they're they were supposed to hold their Charges and have trials at the Grand Lodge, correct?

Speaker 2: 44:11

They try to do it right before Grand Lodge, right, and it was delayed and delayed against because the people I was able to prove Connections that shouldn't have existed, so, like the guy that was that the trial master, the judge for Brad's case, had like seven conflicts of interest that would have prevented him from being a judge in a real court, right, but they were. But he was, he was part of their team so he was gonna do what they wanted. But so they overlooked all those in discretions, the guy that was the prosecutor against Brad, like they had. They had just given him a charter for it. There was a did a whole nother article about that. That took place in Austin. That just, I mean it was, it was fishy and it was bad.

Speaker 2: 44:51

And, long story short, the, the different mediums, the. The trial was postponed until after Grand Lodge. So we had a resolution that was resolution number 10, which was one of the big ones. That was a resolution that was written that stated that if Masonic charges are filed against somebody that is running for office, the trial had to be handled before the elections and that would take place immediately upon passing. So that was the first one that we wanted to make sure that we did, because that would make sure that Brad Billings the trial, would take place that day. So we could we could elect him as grand secretary, which is one of the big things we were trying to push.

Speaker 1: 45:32

So we pushed for that one, these guys. I can just imagine these guys watching this unfold in front of them, like watching the sand slipped through their fingers.

Speaker 2: 45:42

Essentially, it was a beautiful thing. There was this one guy, past, past Grand Master, terry Stogner. I walk into the building and within seconds he, like he sees me. So I go up to him to shake he's a past Grand Master and I go to shake his hand and he wouldn't. I got stick out my hand and he's, and he just stares at me. I was like you're not gonna shake my hand, right where it's full, he goes after you. What you've been publishing on Facebook. I'm sticking out my hand as a brother. If you choose not to shake it, that's on you now. I mean, you don't have to like what I published on Facebook, but I'm sticking out my hand as a brother. So you shook my hand, break wretch at me. And he's like by the end of the week you're gonna have Masonic charges. And I'm like okay, then by the end of the week you're gonna have Masonic charges to who can play this game. I got stuff on YouTube, terry, when played this play.

Speaker 2: 46:22

He left the next day before lunch was over Because he just saw, like you said, the sand just falling through his fingers. So he left and he was very distraught. Wow, that because it Texas Masons came to play. Yeah, they were tired and like we were Overwhelmingly turning. I mean the we voted down the Grand Masters report. Now people was like what does that mean? Well, if you, we didn't ratify his actions, that's what that means. That means that unless he submitted a supplementary report that we approved, that means everything he did this year did, he did it without our consent. So we did not prove that. So, all the all the all the mayhem that he cost on record, it's we didn't like it.

Speaker 1: 47:05

You were back and that that I don't think I've ever heard of that happening before in any jurisdiction, have you?

Speaker 2: 47:12

No, and and and we did that like we. We turned down. There was a. There was an audit report that we turned down as well. That the audit, the audit committed guy came in there and basically just Defame Brad Billings.

Speaker 2: 47:24

He was just like Brad Billings is a, is a is a fraud, he should be in prison. I mean, essentially he used big words to make it sound like that and then he was called. He's like you can't just be throwing around accusations like that. He came back. It's like I never said that he was a fraud. He just did a lot of fraudulent things and should be in prison for. And then.

Speaker 2: 47:46

But he gave his report and just basically defame Brad Billings and say that he did all these things that weren't okay. And then during the discussion, another member of the audit committee came up and be like we should vote this down Because there's eight of us, I think he said on the, on the audit committee, and not one of us other than him saw any of the stuff that he sat asking for. It's like the rest of us. I'm not agree with that. He's putting our names on our report. We are not in favor of that half of that stuff, or either lies or things that he fabricated or things that we didn't find or we Didn't even get the at the look at, so Didn't pass.

Speaker 2: 48:20

Yeah, so it didn't pass like overwhelmingly like, I think like 93% Jim, no, jim got office right, yeah. So so Jim was already granted award and he advanced the deputy grandmaster, which a lot of people now are having buyers, not buyers from more. A lot of people are now like they're guilt setting in because the guy that was deputy grandmaster Did not move up to grandmaster. We elected a past grandmaster for that office and a lot of people were having guilt about that. And Bart is a really good guy. Part Henderson, the guy that was deputy grandmaster, the guy on the left. He was a really good guy, he's been a friend of mine for years, but part was led astray by the then grandmaster Clay Smith, by Reese Harrison and by past grandmaster Brian Natsum. He was doing their bidding, doing what they wanted, and they are the ones that cost him his grandmastership.

Speaker 2: 49:09

So well, you have to be careful who you associate with, because he did their bidding so, like Bart, is a great guy, but he did not do very good things last right. He followed what they, what they told him he needed to do and and it's a shame because I mean I would have loved to see Bart be grandmaster. I was looking forward to that. But this this past year proved that it wasn't gonna be Bart in the in the grand east. It was gonna be Reese Harrison and Brian Doxon Again, and those guys were gonna do whatever they wanted to and they were gonna attack other people and we were gonna have what we had this past year with Clay Smith on steroids with Bart.

Speaker 1: 49:45

So it was gonna be bad. The state wouldn't have survived that. I feel like you guys would have fractured off and tried to form a second Grand Lodge and it would have been a hot mess.

Speaker 2: 49:53

I don't know what would have happened, but it would not have been good. So but we stopped that. And and and again I've been I've been in communications with with other people about that, because I mean some people are like, why feel really bad for Bart? You know, I do too but I mean Like, that's not what my intention was. My intention was not to break Bart's heart. I mean Bart and I are good friends. I mean right there, it's a picture of him installing me as president of the master board and secretaries Association. I mean in Bart are friends with. But there's there's a line and that line is called integrity and Like, you could be my friend. But if you cross that line where you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing, or if you're doing like, then that's when friendship needs to be questioned and a good friend is gonna tell you look, dude you're and you need to rectify that or we're gonna have issues right and I did.

Speaker 2: 50:40

I went up to Bart and I told him hey, dude, like I don't like what you're doing, what you're doing, it's not wrong. And his response was you don't know what you're talking about. Okay then, I guess. I'll show you what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1: 50:52

So Brad is now the grand secretary Yep right.

Speaker 2: 50:56

Is that like we, we had, we, I had, I actually we I had 29 things on my agenda to accomplish at Grand Lodge. 28 of those things Missed Getting a new deputy grandmaster. The, the guy that was senior warden did get elected as as as deputy, so he advanced. The Grand West voted to give him another, another shot. It wasn't, it was close, right, I mean. So he didn't, he didn't win over women, we but the, the Grand West voted to give him another shot. So I have confidence that he's gonna do the right thing this year. But if he doesn't, I'll be back.

Speaker 1: 51:38

So I mean, how much do you think a message was received by the machine? Oh, absolute.

Speaker 2: 51:48

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 51:48

I know that it's over, or do you think they're trying in the background, trying to rebuild some kind of a mentor?

Speaker 2: 51:54

I know they're gonna try to find a way to find my son in charge against me or come after me one way, shape or form. But like I mean, I've already showed them that I'm not a bull you mess with right wish I. Come at me, bro. Come at me, bro. I like I got. I got plenty of ammunition. Like I did not use my most important stuff. Like I kept that for a rainy day yeah, smart, oh I.

Speaker 1: 52:17

If I've learned with these people Part of the Mexican mafia. You would know how to do this right, obviously.

Speaker 2: 52:25

But I mean.

Speaker 1: 52:28

I got a. I got a friend who's from Mexico and Every time I hang out with them he brings tequila and I never remember the end of the night. Son of a mean, always. He's got private reserve stuff coming from Mexico, that's like wow, really really good to kill. They know what they're doing in Mexico.

Speaker 2: 52:53

Actually.

Speaker 1: 52:53

I'm on the show but he's like, oh, they won't understand my accent. I said, look, anyone gets mad about your accent. I don't want them as a listener on the show anyway. So he's gonna be on this. I like that, oh.

Speaker 2: 53:06

Man, I think the third. They're trying to regroup they got most of them did.

Speaker 2: 53:10

I mean cuz you, you had to have blown that message. I can mean that's why some people were leaving early. I mean, and across the board, mike Wiggins, the SG IG, the sovereign grand inspector general, the head of the Scottish right in Texas, ran for the library museum office and Got his ass handed to him by like 70% vote against him for A non past grandmaster. Don comedy was a great guy, great Mason like slaughtered him For the so like he beat a past grandmaster in the SG IG like that's huge in any jurisdiction.

Speaker 2: 53:43

I like the head of the Scottish right in that particular state just lost a Committee for a board of directors for the library museum bill To a regular past master like to a guy that doesn't have a resume a mile long. I mean Don is very active, buddy, he does resume does not compare to Mike Wiggins. And again, don ran from the floor. He didn't. He didn't have a statement of ability printed in the program, like he was from the floor. 70% of those. Wow, they got the message. They got the message now, if they're gonna heed.

Speaker 1: 54:17

It's up to the brothers to stay vigilant now, because they've seen what's gonna happen when you lose attention and when you let people just run wild and you don't ask questions and you don't check behind people. They've seen that what's gonna happen. And oh, the reason I'm so excited to have you on our shows because we're we have listeners all over the all over the world, in different countries that listen. I've been talking to guys in England and Australia and we all have similar problems Wherever we go. The problem is the men. The men are the problems in our fraternity and when the problem is at the top, you can guarantee that it is trickling down throughout the entire system, absolutely guarantee it's gonna happen.

Speaker 1: 55:06

So if you don't hold the people at the top accountable, you can pretty much kiss your entire jurisdiction goodbye, because it is going to slowly evolve into Lord of the Flies right that's what it's gonna happen and you know, and I'm really proud because in the jurisdiction of Florida they asked us not to talk about this, of course, but we had a grandmaster who, after his year, was brought up on charges and expelled from the fraternity for the actions and also some of his cohorts for for the actions that he did. His grandmaster and you know a lot of people are embarrassed by that. That to me means we're doing our jobs like right. Somebody looked into something, they found something, they acted on it, it got taken care of. That's how this system supposed to work. You shouldn't be embarrassed by that. That's a good thing. It's not like somebody you've trumped up some charges and they, like you know, slam the fake trial here. I mean these were things that were well-known, were going on.

Speaker 2: 56:04

And it's happened everywhere. I mean there there's a grandmaster From Alaska that got kicked out. I think last year the year before last he was grandmaster I want to say like in 2014 and he was one of, like, the biggest deals in Alaska. He was a four-star general those that don't know what that means past grandmaster, past grand high priest, past grand commander, past grand master of the council Really big deal was a member of the great prior of America, like one of the biggest deals in In Alaska, and he got kicked out two years ago because he had a vessel like $750,000 from different Masonic organizations there. Like, yeah, those people should not be part of the fraternity.

Speaker 1: 56:44

But it's. It's a story of we need to be like always on the watch and it's every brother's individual job to protect the fraternity from bad actors. Every one of us is responsible for that. You cannot say it's the DDGM's job or it's the grandmaster's job. No, if you saw it, you're responsible for it. Act on it do something about it.

Speaker 2: 57:06

I was exactly my battle cry for this year.

Speaker 2: 57:08

I mean, I walked around and I told anybody that, well, listen, and I published part of that On one of my teas to the one the last day of the grandma, so a week ago, saturday. But my battle cry was like well, we take all these obligations and we have all this pretty ritual that tells us to be proud of our Aprons and we there's nothing higher than that Landsking and we should wear that with a badge of a Mason, and we're and be proud to have that on and yada, yada, yada right. But at the end of the day, if we're not following the precepts, if we're not following the teachings that Freemasonry is doing to us, and we're not wearing that apron with people pleasure to ourselves in honor to the paternity, it looks merely mean man, we're collecting all these badges and all these things. We're just plain dress up, we're just yeah, look at me when the shadow, look at all this shiny new stuff that I have and and you look like my five-year-old little girl With her princess out, exactly, yeah.

Speaker 2: 57:59

Right. So like that's what. That's what we become if we're not gonna follow the precepts, if we're not gonna do what a Mason says we're supposed to do, then we're just plain dress up. We're just a pair of parents playing pretend.

Speaker 1: 58:08

There was a great article I shared the other day and I got I got some interesting comments on it when I shared it. But it basically said imagine if we stopped introducing people by their titles and started introducing them based on their character traits. Imagine if, instead of, we said this is right, most worship over Alberto Sanchez, which automatically people start to treat you differently because of the title. This is brother Roberto Sanchez, he's done this, this, this, he's, he's active in there and there and there they get to know who you are based on your actions. That title means nothing about who you are as amazing, I agree, and people comment on that and say you need to respect titles, and this is a serious thing and I agree, we do respect the titles, we revere the titles in the positions, but the men shouldn't be judged based on the titles. They should be judged based on their actions.

Speaker 2: 59:03

The respect is earned and I'm an admin believer that I had one of the past grandmasters that we just think this time he, he told me several years ago that, like, because he didn't like that I would address to certain past grandmasters or past grandmas and that is as Brother such and such.

Speaker 1: 59:21

But in a jurisdiction of Florida. Our Masonic etiquette book says that's always a valid title to use regardless.

Speaker 2: 59:29

No, we can use it too, but if we are sitting in a hospitality room in Dallas after some, function.

Speaker 1: 59:38

Oh, they still want you to use the title. He wanted me to.

Speaker 2: 59:42

I'm not going to. I'll call you brother such and such or whatever. I'm not going to kiss your ass and tell you hey, right, worst sir. No, if I respect you I might, just because you know, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like at launch, oh yeah, I'll be the first person to call you that and if somebody doesn't, I'll be the first person to correct them. Right, but if we're in a hospitality room and we all have a sketch in our hands and you walk in and I shake your hand and I'm like, hey, what's up, tommy? And you will know no, no, no, that's right. Worshifold Past, grandmask. No, no, no, no, no, no. Go go eat something. Like, get out of here.

Speaker 1: 1:00:20

Yeah, you really do. Like I was pretty involved in Freemasonry in Florida and I went to a lot of official functions and I bring my wife to the ones that were important to me and she would always ask me why are they clapping for these people, like what have they done? And I'm like not much, not much really. I'm like why are you clapping? I'm like I don't know, this is just what we do. If they have a title, we clap, and if you got a really high title, we clap special. Like that's how we are. It really is not a lot about who you are as a person or what you've done as an individual. It's very title driven. And that's a weird thing, because the fraternity is not about that. It really is that's supposed to be.

Speaker 2: 1:01:04

No, we're all on the same level and some of us are on the same level or are more on the level than others. Like no, no, we are all on the level. Everybody evil. No, you don't get to be a little higher because you have a 33rd or because you have your past. No, no, no, no, no, no, we're all on the level.

Speaker 1: 1:01:22

Right.

Speaker 2: 1:01:23

That's one of my favorite stories and I mean I'm going to have to cuss on this one because that's part of the story. She is All right. My wife. I met my wife through Freemasonry.

Speaker 1: 1:01:35

My mother when I first.

Speaker 2: 1:01:37

Yeah, like my when I was, when, when I joined Masonry, my mother in law was there are whole, my whole in-laws are very active in Masonry, right, like my father in law has been all sorts of titles in Masonry. My mother in law was a couple of years ago she was the international president for the social order of Bocius, supreme worthy president, I think it's the official title. So like they're very, very enthralled in Masonry and they're very active in the night temper section of it. So we used to drill and, long story short, my mother in law would always tell me like you need to meet my daughter for 10 years. She told me that until we finally did and that's how I met my wife.

Speaker 2: 1:02:12

So, fast forward. And we are and I'm not going to mention the name because I don't want to embarrass anybody, but we were at a function where we there were roundtables but we were one of the head roundtables and it was me, my wife, past grandmaster of an organization, the sitting grandmaster of an organization, the past grandmaster of the grand launch of Texas, the sitting grand worthy matron of Eastern star, my mother in law, my father in law and me right. So that's the sitting at the table and my wife is really good friends and really likes hanging out with this particular past grandmaster of this national body. Okay, and they're each other, they hang out, and I mean my wife is 35 at the time, she must have been 30 and I will get online me, ask it.

Speaker 2: 1:03:04

I'm 40.

Speaker 1: 1:03:05

Okay. Young very young and free masonry for everything you've done.

Speaker 2: 1:03:10

I hit the ground running. I hit the ground running and anyway it's like this. This man is in the center of the knees and so there. But they're good friends and my he's very intellectual, my wife really likes him, and in the middle of their conversation, like they gavel because we were going to do a prayer. So we stay, we stopped the conversation, we do the prayer, we sit back down and as soon as we sit back down, my wife puts his her hand on the past grandmaster's shoulder and says his name and says okay, such and such, where were we?

Speaker 2: 1:03:40

And to continue the conversation, and the sitting grandmaster of the organization goes and you just kind of clutch this pearls and he's like we don't call him by his name. His name is past grandmaster such and such. We use the correct title here. We don't call him by his name. And my wife looked at him dead in his face and he said I don't play your club. This is my friend such and such, and I'm not going to address him for anything other than that. I don't have any obligations to you. I'm not part of club, I'm not part of game.

Speaker 1: 1:04:04

So anyways and just continued to talk to him, my wife, and get along so well.

Speaker 2: 1:04:10

And it was. It was a beautiful thing because, like the past, grandmaster of Texas just looks at me and starts laughing. The worst he made for this kind of starts doing this. My mother-in-law is like underneath the table now because she's a grandmaster, because she told the grandmaster of this international order, because she tried to use like he tried to tell my wife, like you use the titles for when she's not even a little, she's not even a member of the fraternity, why would she have to use a title?

Speaker 2: 1:04:35

But because most women do like and they're trained to do, they do. You're right, and my mother-in-law is adamant about that. She'll see one of these high grandmaster high and she knows all everybody's title and it's a respect thing and I mean, and I can respect that, but that's her choice and if that's how you choose, that's cool.

Speaker 2: 1:04:55

If I want to call you most worst of all right, worst of all, because I believe you've earned that title in a social setting I'll do it because that's what I do to people that I admire and respect. But if I don't, don't expect me to call you that. If we're in a hospitality room, at a banquet maybe right, because a banquet that's still kind of like a Masonic thing I might extend you that we're on the level so I mean that's a great story.

Speaker 1: 1:05:23

I mean my wife I just recorded the last episode with her and we did a whole hour and 20 minutes about what it's like to be the wife of a Mason, and the sacrifices and the challenges and all that and going to an event and 18 old ladies asking to join their. We need you, we need young people and all that. But you know, moving forward, looking at the future of Texas, do you feel you got to feel more proud and excited for the future at this point that maybe you have in the last five, 10 years? Right?

Speaker 2: 1:05:58

Oh, absolutely Absolutely. I mean, like we prove this past weekend that we matter, our voice matters and it's not just a bunch of people in a purple tower that are going to make the decisions of what happens at our ground.

Speaker 1: 1:06:10

This is a democratic fraternity. Our country was built on the principles of Freemasonry. So if you're a Democrat, not a Democrat, obviously that's. I'm sorry I'm talking to a guy in Texas, but if you're into democracy and you like the idea of our country, then you got to respect that in the fraternity because that's where it originated from.

Speaker 2: 1:06:32

And.

Speaker 1: 1:06:32

I brought a new guy, sean Cooney. He's now the junior warden in my lodge to Grand Lodge last year for the first time and he didn't have a lot of background. But he came in and saw the legislation taking place and the Grand Master put forth legislation that the craft shot down. The Grand Master tried to revise it. They still shot it down. It didn't pass. They just didn't want it. And this is a good Grand Master. He was trying to do a good thing. He was trying to raise the level of our dress in the lodges.

Speaker 1: 1:07:00

But that can be a sticky subject, you know, because people come from work and people work. You know, on a farm in some parts of Florida Like it's really tough to say everybody's got to wear a suit and it didn't pass. Nobody wanted it. And he saw that he came out jaw dropped like whole. I just saw, I think, democracy for the first time in my life, like people voted on something and everybody had a voice and at the end of the day everybody shook hands and loved each other. Nobody was upset or pissed at anybody. Like that's the way it went. Okay, let's move forward.

Speaker 1: 1:07:33

You know, we got to work on that legislation and try to find some ways to get it, and we got to work on that legislation and try to find something that they will like. Obviously it's not a dead issue, but it's not going to pass the way it was and that's like what happened in Texas. The voice of the people should dictate what happens, not a few people in a back room having secret meetings, not telling anybody, making back room deals, trying to squash people's Masonic careers if they don't play ball with them. And that's happening even at the launch level, even in a blue lunch. I've experienced myself in a blue lunch. Yesterday I was on a call with a brother who knows me and called just to tell me his story and he has been basically squashed Masonically and threatened for trying to do what's right, because the people around him are part of the machine and they're linked to the top. If you connect the dots, it all starts at the top.

Speaker 2: 1:08:31

And that's how he did it. That's what we're going to. Yeah, it's a vicious game with a vicious cycle, and I'm not standing, and you shouldn't either. I mean, I'm really hoping that this movement that we had in Texas, this little tea party that we threw ourselves, carries on. Texas is one of the most jurisdictions in the world, and if we were able to do this in Texas, you can do this anywhere.

Speaker 1: 1:08:55

Okay, but you do have to have outgoing personality. You have to not give a shit about the negative crap that's going to be heaped upon you, which most people don't have the fortitude for that, let's be honest. You do, and Texas have you and a few other people. But I know, I see it. People aren't willing to fight. They don't want, they don't have the fortitude or the courage to stand up and take it and you are going to get it. Trust me, if you stand up against the machine, no matter how high or low it is, you're going to catch some shit and people are going to attack your reputation. It will happen and you have to have the fortitude to take that. Hold your head high and show up the next day. Fight in the good fight.

Speaker 2: 1:09:41

And I might kick myself for saying this later, but I'll say it now If anybody needs help in any jurisdiction, come find me, I will help. We're in this together, brothers. It's a thing. I'm here to stand up for justice, for integrity, for doing what's right in our fraternity, because I believe in the valleys that we teach, I believe in the precepts that it does, because my biggest thing, like the biggest reason that I push for this, is that I now have a new son. Right, I have a 14 month old son right now that that was born in November of 22, congratulations, thank you. And first born, but we'll second. I have a little girl. That's five, okay, but I have a son, right, and and my daughter cannot be a mason, but my son can and I am an adamant believer that this fraternity we did not inherit this fraternity from our forefathers.

Speaker 2: 1:10:30

I did. We did not inherit this from George Washington and and Paul Revere. We are borrowing it from our sons, right. So I want to make sure this fraternity gets passed down to my son. It's something that he could be proud of and say you know what? My dad was a member of this fraternity and my grandfather from other side, my dad wasn't. My son will be like an eighth or ninth generation mason with mom side, but that's something that I want him to be proud of and to be able to inherit or get a fraternity that I'm borrowing from him. That way, when he's a mason, it's something that he can be proud of and that we're actually teaching the teachings yeah, and practicing what we teach, and it's so important because we can lose it.

Speaker 1: 1:11:10

We've lost it, we've already lost it in some places, and it can be gone in your lodge, it can be gone in your jurisdiction if you don't be careful. And and these people wrap themselves in power. They surround themselves with an aura of esteem, with titles, right, and they lean on the, on those very people that we all look to, like George Washington and the and the founding fathers that were, that were Freemasons, and say I'm like that guy, and that's how they get credibility Again. It should be about what have you done, though. What have you done, though? Like? Who have you helped other than yourself and your family and your friends? Who have you helped? That's what I want to know. Did you help? Did you help in charity in your community? Like? What have you done, though? Because you don't get to point at those guys. This is our time. We're alive now. This is our fraternity. Right now, we're holding the torch. Like you said, we're. We're holding the torch for our kids coming behind us. If they choose to do that. Hopefully they do. Hopefully we give them a reason to.

Speaker 1: 1:12:17

Second, and I think that you know, with the in, with the People turning more to social media, more modern forms of communication, video conference calls like this, podcast, like we can coordinate and communicate better now than probably at any point in the history of the fraternity? Absolutely, and that scares some people, oh for sure. Attention, who's scared by that? Because that's gonna give you a little clue as to where the problems might be. Oh For sure, there's nothing wrong with talking to each other and coordinating and sharing ideas. There should be nothing wrong. It should be encouraged by our leadership for brothers to communicate with each other and help each other. If anyone's afraid of that, oh that's. Yeah, that's a canary in the coal mine right there, I think. And it's something people should take a close watch shutting down, you can't talk about this. You can't say that, okay, something shady is going on there. You should know that immediately. Don't all pray to the titles and the people saying it. And I'm not against the leadership, okay, like I don't want to come across like the leaders.

Speaker 2: 1:13:31

We're just like, you're just having a beat on the trustees party and and no, no, no, no, you guys are doing stuff. That's. That's shady. You guys are trying to keep us in the dark and that's one of the things that happened that you probably didn't see because it didn't make it out to you, but About a week before the grand launch section, there was a letter that went out to every Texas Mason through Grandview, tiffany Grandmaster, telling all Texas Mason's that, like, basically, don't look behind the curtain. The the Allegations that are being thrown out there are unfounded. And and don't listen, there's, there's somebody that's trying to dismantle us, yes, from within, because jealous of what we're creating.

Speaker 1: 1:14:12

What you're seeing is really happening. What you're hearing is all fake.

Speaker 2: 1:14:15

You see, don't look behind the curtain, don't. Don't pay attention to the evidence that he's already Provided. You don't look that way like. Just trust us, we're cohesive, right? Yes, everybody's good nice friends and people laughed it was.

Speaker 1: 1:14:31

It was a joke. They put out a statement before your grand launch session. That was a total joke.

Speaker 2: 1:14:38

No, absolutely, and I was gonna respond to it. I didn't have to know, you just read it.

Speaker 1: 1:14:43

You could see how bad it was by reading the words that were written in that state.

Speaker 2: 1:14:49

And that was that was I was. That was Bart's nail in the coffin. That's what it. That's what turned everybody against them? Was that one, if anybody, was on the fence, that that pushed them over? Because it showed that they had no remorse for what they were doing and that they were gonna keep doing their stuff. And it was trust us, the government's, here, to help you while while they're like carrying the head of your, like that grandmother on their bike.

Speaker 1: 1:15:13

Servant leadership. We're here, we're supposed to be doing servant leadership like we serve the population, the brothers, and you answer to them. You, you hold a seat for a short time and You're already flawed as a man You're. You should already know that. So you got to be watching out for the fact that you, when you have power, you might abuse it and these guys lean into it and are empowered by it. You know, like I was told you, I was talking to a brother yesterday who's dealing with it in his lodge, and it involves his district deputy and involves People with gold collars as well, and I said just get out of the lodge, man.

Speaker 1: 1:15:50

You can't win this fight. You just need to go to another lodge and try to find some people that are real masons to surround yourself with, or you're not gonna be a Mason in a few years. You're gonna get burnt out. You're gonna be Hating. You're gonna be hating your involvement that you grew the day you even joined this fraternity. If you don't get away from that right now, you need to get out, find a better lodge, regroup, get yourself some good people and you know you have a better experience in the fraternity, unless you're willing to be a voice. Are you willing to do this and this and this? He said no. I said get him, just go get another lodge, just Just leave.

Speaker 1: 1:16:28

Because he tried charges and that didn't work. Yeah, so I really have nowhere else to go at that point. Just just get a new home. And? And we need to be out here talking about the fact that this is going on everywhere in our fraternity and it shouldn't be something that's brushed under the rug or allowed to happen. We got to fight back and we fight back using. You guys did not break a single rule in what you did in the jurisdiction of Texas. Everything was done in order at Grand Lodge, as per the digest of your Grand Lodge.

Speaker 2: 1:17:03

Yeah, we have more every step of the way, so we can't get. We came prepared and we've had that playbook Saved us because every we had a If they do this, we do this, and it was just five. For whatever resolution, for whatever fight we were fighting, it was tabbed and prepared and I said, oh, we can't. We came prepared and it was let so after the meeting. After the meeting, we were told that they were they, a lot of the lawyers, and so the past Grand Masters assembled at the, at the one of the committee rooms in fact, and one of the lawyers went like, look they, they beat you at your own game, they outlaw your, the lawyers, and and they made fools of you, they spanked you at your own game because they came prepared.

Speaker 2: 1:17:40

You underestimated Roberto and his team and I mean, I had a hell of a team. Again, I'm not gonna say their names because I don't want them to get attacked like that. The bullets come me, but I, I, the, my, my, the people that work with me. They deserve a lot of the credit, because there was a lot of us. There was a lot of us and a lot of them put their their Masonic careers on the line, because some of them were more vocal than others. I there was some that were working behind the scenes, that there were a lot of them that were standing up at the podium and Holding onto the little scripts that we would give them and reading their, their portion of their things, to make the arguments and whatever and well, I'm planning to have Dennis Yates and possibly Justin Jones.

Speaker 1: 1:18:20

Do you know these brothers?

Speaker 2: 1:18:22

Yeah, those are. They run a podcast himself. Dennis Was was very boisterous some of the things that happened. Dennis is a good dude, so is Justin.

Speaker 1: 1:18:29

They're they're great guys they're. They're planning to come on. Actually, we're probably gonna be recording this weekend, so they'll have their point of view on all this too. There are people not afraid to Step forward with you.

Speaker 2: 1:18:42

Yeah, dennis, dennis and Justin, for sure, we're, we're, we're, we're. Some of the guys from the beginning that helped help me get that, get get the message out there. They had me on their podcast. What's it I want to say, in December, maybe I don't remember either.

Speaker 1: 1:18:59

Remember for the head on it.

Speaker 2: 1:19:01

Yeah, before grandma, they had me on their podcast to kind of In the word out of some of the things that were happening. And then they had another Podcast where they had me on with a brother, fluff. If you're not familiar with him, he runs a very successful tick tock account, okay, but like I don't know several thousand followers, nice, so we went we had one with him. I mean we've had several where we got the word out, so it was many Texas Masons. Then I can know what was happening.

Speaker 1: 1:19:27

I personally, I try to follow all these podcasts and and support them, because I you know, if you're an outsider, you're gonna look at that as competition and you're gonna like kind of be jealous. But as a brother, we're supposed to rejoice in each other's successes and all these people are trying to Bring light to the fraternity. So we should be supporting each other. That's how we should act as brother. Now for sure, you Wrist your misaligned career. You've risked your personal reputation. You are Still risking that to this by coming on this podcast and talking about what we've talked and and what you said publicly online. You're well aware of that and you just made a very magnanimous offer that if anyone and any jurisdiction is Feeling like they're being Persecuted, wronged or they're witnessing unisonic behavior, they can reach out to you for help. How would they reach out to you?

Speaker 2: 1:20:24

These is where the fine would be Facebook. Okay, we're no M Sanchez. You'll see me. I'm wearing my my high 12 International vice president collar on there would it be okay if I shared your Facebook?

Speaker 1: 1:20:37

you were all with Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:20:41

You can either also Emote me as well Roberto at high, 12 word Roberto at high 12 word Well spelled out right number 12, high H, and then the number 12, number 12, and I mean you can go to the high 12 Web page and my Imo will be there as well. Roberto at high 12.org, getting on me there and I Answering most probably very, very quickly the two ways to get.

Speaker 1: 1:21:18

To provide some hope to some people out there that don't.

Speaker 1: 1:21:22

The way they win is by isolating you or making you feel isolated, and so for sure to have somebody that they can like this brother I talked to yesterday I can't really fix his problems for him, but he knew me because I'm locally known and he just needed to talk to somebody about what to do. And I think a lot of people are in that situation. They don't know, they don't have a friend, they're afraid to talk to anybody in fraternity about it for fear of the repercussions if they tell somebody what they said, and so they stay quiet to themselves and they take it or they leave the fraternity, which is that usually is the goal in yeah, one thing we don't need is be driving men out because we're assholes.

Speaker 1: 1:22:05

But right seems to be happening at breakneck speed in many jurisdictions share.

Speaker 2: 1:22:13

Now, that seems to be one of the. I mean, if somebody does something that they shouldn't be amazing for, then yeah, like definitely file charges against them and get up. That's what they're there for.

Speaker 1: 1:22:21

But I mean like, as you mentioned, there, those trials are always fair, as you know right?

Speaker 2: 1:22:27

No, and it's happened more and more often where people are just being the chart, like in my case when the charges were filed against me, like they kept me in purgatory for years hoping that I would just quit, and Texas we have this thing called as a form 3, where form 3 is a voluntarily, voluntarily explosion. When you have charges filed against you just found a form. Really submit that back done.

Speaker 1: 1:22:47

Yeah, and that's what they were hoping.

Speaker 2: 1:22:48

I mean every, every couple months, I would get a letter from the grand secretary saying do you just want to form 3 it? And I'm like, no, I'm fighting this to the bitter end, like I times on my side I'm young, let's do this, that's right. And. But they were hoping that I would just quit halfway through, because that's what they were hoping. Which is to happen is that I would just leave and I wouldn't be their problem, and and, and they did that more often than not, and a lot of people would just say, okay, yeah, but this isn't worth it.

Speaker 1: 1:23:12

Because then, and invest that much time, by the time the charges had filed against me, I'd already been a Mason for 10 years and I've already invested a lot, and that's I think that's maybe how you've insulated yourself from repercussions is you have Accomplishments and achievements that could perhaps, you know, show people who you are well, so let's talk about that.

Speaker 2: 1:23:37

They they did try to stop me from getting some of these accomplishments and achievements because, again, when the oh they will Well, they tried original right, like when the first charges were filed against me back in 2014. Like I was, I was an up and comer, right, but I was. I was a. I was not a somebody Young man in his 20s. I was 29 years old when all this stuff happened. I'd like, maybe just turned 30. Like I just proposed to the person who was now my wife. Like I was, I was like I was a takeoff. Yeah, so they had. Like I didn't have all these grand titles and everything else. Those came later, but because I wasn't gonna let them take that oh and some of those, I my motivation was like, well, they're not gonna take this away from me. I don't like the titles, I don't care about the time, right, if that's what's gonna get some credibility, let's do this. And I mean, and I've done fairly well for myself.

Speaker 1: 1:24:28

Yeah, I'm.

Speaker 2: 1:24:29

Sonic yeah, and here we are right, but I mean it. A lot of the ones that I do have is because that's how I was able to get a little bit of credibility, because I mean I'm a young Mason, 40 years old. I've been a Mason for 18 years. But I mean I hit the ground running Because I really like what this organization offers and it has taught me a lot. It's important.

Speaker 1: 1:24:51

I think, to our world, this organization, and we can't, we can't let it slip away. Like I said, it's we're the guys that are active right now and it's on us to keep it or improve it. If we can't and I think that's what you're really looking to do is improve it. People, people often fear this idea because young guys I say young, I'm 48, but in this fraternity that's young they look at us as young and trying to change things. But the change we're trying to make isn't it making it into something different or new. It's trying to make it into what it's supposed to be, what it was. Yeah, bring it back to former glory. That's the change we're trying to make.

Speaker 2: 1:25:34

We're not trying to. I wrote a whole book about that. The true masonic experience it was. It was. It started as a study of where the fraternity was.

Speaker 1: 1:25:43

you wrote a book that you can get on Amazon, or something called a true masonic experience Through masonic experience. All right, I'll go copy.

Speaker 2: 1:25:51

And it started with with my journey and masonry, because I was very disappointed when I joined mason and what I expect Now. My lodge was in transition. We had just sold the building, so that's kind of what I believe it was reason, it was down. But when I joined, what I expected to cut out of it was not what I got.

Speaker 2: 1:26:07

Yeah, like I was expecting the fraternity that George Washington and Paul here and More, and all these people were proud to be members and what I got was to get you on paper plates and reading minutes on home and and and, and I expected everybody to know their work and nobody knew what they were doing and it was atrocious. And my lodge had an average attendance of maybe like seven or eight people attending a stated meeting and I Started implementing some of these older traditions and more traditional aspects of Freemasonry and by the time I was mastered like I had a meeting with 120 people. Imagine that my average attendance was in the 80s. So we went from having seven people and in six, seven years, by the time I became master of the lodge, we had 80 and you didn't do that because you brought in Circus performers and goats and strippers.

Speaker 1: 1:26:53

You did it by trying to be a mason.

Speaker 2: 1:26:57

Right, yeah, I did a lot of research and spent a lot of time figuring out what masonry used to be and we did the precepts. The biggest thing I mean and I talk about it heavily in the book is that I created this concept where I interviewed thousands of masons and I asked them I don't care why you became a mason, because everybody's story is gonna be a little bit different why are you still active? And what I discovered it was it was one of four things, which is like what I kind of dubbed the quadrant, and that quadrant kind of Formulates the fact that masons are active for one of four reasons or multiple of those, whether it be the ritual, the philanthropy, the fellowship and those four Quadrants, whatever you fall into that circle, if you really like Participating in the community and helping out the community, then you focus particularly on the philanthropy part. A lot of Shriners do that. I just want to be able to be part of an organization, so that's what they, that's what they formally.

Speaker 2: 1:27:52

If you really like the rituals and belonging to a lot of groups and do and performing the worst for masters, part in all the degrees and and collecting all the little trinkets from all the, then Gravitate towards that part. If you like the historical and philosophical, philosophical part, where you like, I want to know why we do that motion and why we we use those emblems and then you focus more into, like the largest researcher, just keep down philosophical studies. Or if you like the fellowship, if you just like having a place where you can go and be with your friends right that's. And if you have a lot said actually encompasses, off for those, those are the more active and more successful lot of, because you'll have something for everybody. And that's what I brought to my lunch and it was a formula that worked Because we had something for somebody, whatever. It wasn't that in that quadrant, whether you were philosophy, ritual Fellowship or philanthropy, there was something for you.

Speaker 2: 1:28:46

And a lot of people fall into like multiple things where they like Two or three or even all four of them. But if you offer that, that that's what grows, I mean. And when I was mastered my first time, that lodge had table lodges and chambers of reflection for two degrees and and we brought back a lot of traditions, we talked about the excellence of dress and what that actually means. And yes, it is the internal, not the external, yada, yada, yada, but I mean, you're still showing respect to the institution. So if you are willing to show up to your daughter's wedding and a life beater and shorts, okay, so it was the same way. But if you would be embarrassed doing that there, then you should be embarrassed to a man, yeah, and then you showing true respect to the institution. And if you come from work and you were in overalls and that's the only you can go, then come to lunch. That great.

Speaker 2: 1:29:34

We're not gonna stop right, but if you do have time and if you do, then and if you would be embarrassed showing up that way to your daughter's Graduation or your son's christening or insert special event here, like that's the kind of reference you should hold to the fraternity. So I cover all that in the book and it was a formula that I used for my lodge. That again, those people didn't show up in numbers to see me I'm nothing special. They were given there to see what the lodge was offering. The lodge was offering Freemason, right, which is something me and a 97 year old man will have in common.

Speaker 2: 1:30:04

For me and an 18 year old man, we'll have. It right is that we join this fraternity, is that we've wanted something to do with Freemason, whereas the 90 year old man might want to watch a Program on how to ride a whale and the 60 year old man might want to watch one on how to check your prostate, but the 18 year old's gonna be like me, right. Right, it's that if you have a program on Freemasonry, you know what the 60 year old, the 90 year old, the 40 year old and 18 year old they're gonna be like.

Speaker 1: 1:30:29

This is cool, yep, because that's something we all have one thing I just finished being master at my lodge. I'm finally out, one month out and loving it. But one thing I did was People always say the business meetings are boring, and I know they are, but you have to do that business. So I would always bring a $25 gift card and like six trivia questions that I prepare and as soon as it was getting boring to me, we did Masonic trivia and it was a game everybody played and you raised your hand if you had the question, you went west of the altar and you waited until we had another contestant who win the west of the altar and then those two guys would play heads up for trivia, for the $25 gift card. So everybody had a chance to win money.

Speaker 1: 1:31:16

Everybody thought it was fun and entertaining and it only takes 10 minutes or less if you have good people. But they're learning the whole time and they don't even realize it. So you got to try to think creatively about how to, like you said, how to integrate these different things, because in like trivia, for example, is just what you said a Masonic program. It's all Masonic trivia and it's amazing how many people with goal callers or district deputies don't know the most basic things about Freemasonry. You see it, when you start asking trivia question, ask what the landmarks of Freemasonry are and you'll see I'll go like war oh.

Speaker 2: 1:31:55

You won better ask any American Freemason we talk about. You give three distinct knocks upon the outside of the door and you're getting a mission. Ask any random, find any Grandmaster in the any grand jurisdiction in the United States. Matt, challenge them to tell me what those three knocks are. I guarantee you most of them won't be able to give me that answer well in In the jurisdiction of Florida.

Speaker 1: 1:32:19

We tell them in the entered apprentice lecture that it represents certain passage of scripture.

Speaker 2: 1:32:25

Sure, that's what it does, but but again, the there's a sequence right, and I'm not good. This is a public there is, there is an actual, there is a secret knock that most Americans don't know. But if you go to Europe, or if you got a Canada, even Mexico, if you're late to lodge, the Tyler doesn't knock, you know, hmm, and so I just told you I get it's an E8 knock in that fashion. I don't they want to see. If you know, if you want to see. You know most basins in America wouldn't know. They'd just be like, yeah, you just knock three, no, yeah there's a, there's actual knock for every degree.

Speaker 2: 1:32:59

Yeah, and it's associated with with right, a certain passage in scripture, yeah, and it's. There's a lesson that, the lesson that we kind of diluted here in American ritual, that we don't talk about but the rest of the world still does Right. So again, I challenge the most grandmaster what those that those knocks are. And if and if someone can, I mean, come find me, I'll buy you a drink, but and it's not anything you can say publicly, right, right, okay, yeah because it's a secret, knock right.

Speaker 2: 1:33:28

So if I tell you what the fuck what the knocks are I mean, then, then you're gonna have random people that watch your podcast. I know the secret.

Speaker 1: 1:33:35

Yeah, I'll delete my own podcast if I gave away a secret on the air. There you go. But, robert man, I appreciate you coming on hour and a half he gave us really, really appreciate the time.

Speaker 1: 1:33:48

I know you're a busy guy and you probably have better things to do, but I promise you this is gonna do good for the fraternity. Continuing to talk about this stuff and standing for what you stand for offering to help people, it's all. It's all things. On behalf of the brothers, I would like to thank you for what you're doing and the sacrifices you're making for the fraternity. It's good stuff.

Speaker 2: 1:34:13

My honor, man it's a Masonic labor is to learn and teach others. We're not here for ourselves, or we shouldn't be. I Want what people remember me for is not what they engraved on some monument or a stone. I went for what I left behind another. So that's, that's, that's my whole mantra. Right Doctor's example, leadership by example. I wouldn't expect anything else from anybody else. So I'm honored to be here, I'm honored to help and and I do hope that this inspires other Masons.

Speaker 1: 1:34:40

I think it will. Yeah, thank you for coming on and hopefully we'll have you again in the near future.

Speaker 2: 1:34:46

Absolutely. My brother would love to come back.