The story is told of a man who turned to the famous sculptor, Gutron Borglum (a Freemason), whose work he had been admiring. “How do you take a rough chunk of stone and make it such a beautiful statue?”
A silly question of course, but the answer of the sculptor is one that intrigues Masons: “There is really nothing to it. All I do is take a hammer and chisel and, from a massive, shapeless rock, I knock away the stone I do not want…and there is the statue. It was there all the time.”
Then there was the woman asked a great columnist, “How in the world do you write all those witty paragraphs?” He responded, “There is nothing to it. All I do is sit down at the typewriter and write them as they occur to me. The writing is easy…it’s the occurring that is difficult!”
There has to be some occurring with the sculptor who knocks away chunks of stone in order to uncover the beautiful statue beneath. But isn’t there a Masonic lesson in the story of the sculptor and the statue?
As Gutron Borglum plainly remarked, images are made by a process of taking away. The perfection is already within. All that is required is to remove the roughness.
In every Masonic Lodge room there is, or should be, the Rough Ashlar and the Perfect Ashlar. In the First Degree we are taught that the Rough Ashlar “is a stone as taken from the quarry in its rude and natural state” and that the Perfect Ashlar “is a stone made ready by the hands of the workman, to be adjusted by the working tools of the Fellow Craft.”
In changing a Rough Ashlar into a Perfect Ashlar, the workman takes away but never adds to. He chips and cuts away the rough edges. He removes the visible flaws. He does not create a new material but takes that which is already there and develops it into the Perfect Ashlar. It took a good piece of marble and a skilled artist to produce the Venus de Milo. Through our Degrees, we can take away much of the roughness, remove the sharp points and obliterate the visible defects. We can produce as good a Mason as there is within our power to produce. But the essential thing is to have a good material upon which to work.
Aided by the Common Gavel and the Chisel of Education, the force of conscience reminds the Mason that a persistent endeavor is necessary to attain the Perfect Ashlar from the Rough Ashlar. By divesting our hearts and consciences of the vices and superfluities of life, we show the perfect man – and Mason – within.
Of course with such persons Masonry doesn’t take men for the purpose of giving them new souls. It doesn’t want them unless under the rough exterior there is concealed a beauty of character that may be revealed through proper application of the Working Tools. It is only then that a man may be developed though what Freemasonry has to offer.
As we advance in stages in Freemasonry, we are continually learning and being taught – and chiseling away the roughness to discover and reveal the perfection that is already present.
As a man applies the lessons to be learned in the initiation process, he transforms himself from the imperfect Rough Ashlar to the Perfect Ashlar. As the Mason learns and grows, the statue of the perfect man emerges…because it was there all the time.
by Shawn Donohugh
The author is a Past Master of Moneta Lodge No. 405 (now Gardena-Moneta Lodge No. 372) and a four-time Past Master of Los Angeles Harbor Lodge No. 332. He currently serves as the Secretary of Los Angeles Harbor Lodge No. 332, Secretary of the Southern California Past Master’s Association, is a member of the Grand Lodge of California’s Lodge Support Committee, and served as Senior Grand Deacon for the Grand Lodge of California in 2014-2015.
