A Mason's Work

So this week we're going to be talking about the senior warden and as you may recall as

we've gone through some of the other roles in the lodge, it's productive mentally to

imagine sort of from a contemplative place that the lodge room is almost like a big opportunity

to role play.

So you sit in any one of the chairs as a function because the lodge is organized like

sort of ancient work crews, you'll sit in a job or a role and use that to help you analyze

your behavior, your relationships, the systems that you're interacting with in the world.

So as we look at some of these, the role is going to be more obvious than others and the

senior warden is a relatively obvious role in that it is explicitly stated in the rituals

in almost every jurisdiction that the senior warden's job is to close the lodge, pay

the craft their wages if any are due and see that none go away, you know, dissatisfied

or upset.

But what does that really sort of functionally mean?

How does that work?

So if there was ancient work crews, if there were folks that were interacting in that kind

of work environment, your senior warden was the guy who's making sure that all of the

sort of contract terms for lack of a better way, say it, were honored and met.

So the quality of the work was appropriate that it essentially was useful in the function

of the building or whatever and then you would get paid, right?

It wouldn't necessarily be the paymaster, right?

That's that might be somebody else, but they would authorize sort of that payment.

Now again, you know, we don't have a ton of insight as to how these crews actually

worked and whether or not they literally modeled this operatively in sort of everyday life.

It doesn't really matter.

We're using this in a sort of speculative slash operative way.

We're using it to work on ourselves operatively, but in a as an idea as a concept.

So when we look at these things, we're really getting to this, this understanding that every

one of these folks played a role in a conceptual sort of building construction operation.

And so senior wardens role was to make sure again that the work was sort of worthy of its

pay, but fundamentally, what it really makes sure to do, the senior warden make sure to

do is to close.

It's the functional process of closing out.

It's shutting, you know, closing out the account balance.

Terminating our relationship.

It's bringing closure to a situation so that everyone left leaves that situation.

All the parties that are involved in whatever transaction that might be sort of got what they

needed wanted could out of the situation.

And whatever context that might sort of mean for the situation as appropriate, that doesn't

mean everyone's always the happiest, but it does mean that sort of the best possible

outcome was created.

And so when we look at our functional use of these things of the next several episodes,

we're going to talk about what does that look like again at a behavioral level for for

yourself?

What does it look like at a relational level?

How does that work with other people?

And that's systemically, how do we make sure that we essentially create these lines of

demarcation between actively working and closure so that we can essentially free up resource

and kind of move to the next thing?

When we start talking about this a little bit further in each of these places, we're

going to get into some of the practices you might be able to use to essentially build

out closure as a functional element of what you do.

Now again, just like the Worshuffle Master, just like any of the roles in the lodge, as

the senior warden, you can pick up any of the tools, any of the aprons that you need to

kind of do that analysis work.

So don't think that the senior warden itself is just you're going to sit there, sort of

in reflection or meditation and be like, okay, I've got all the answers here.

You may have to pick up additional tools from that position, kind of in that mental landscape

to do the work.

And if you're actively working to become this sort of closure function in sort of real life,

in your lodge or in your workplace, again, you'll get to some of the practices you might

consider to make that more effective as you listen throughout the week.