The word "clandestine" has a certain meaning in Freemasonry. If you're reading this blog I probably don't need to explain what that is.
It also means secretive or hidden. The reason that I've titled this blog what I have, is that aside from my wife and the brothers in my lodge who have participated in my degrees, nobody knows that I am a Master Mason.
There are various reasons why this is so:
1) My mother has very strong feelings about Freemasonry. All of them negative. I love my Mother dearly, but she has her opinion (right or wrong as I may consider it to be) and there would be nothing gained by her knowing of my affiliation.
2) My experiences as a Mason are (so far) intensely personal and, being a generally private person, I don't feel the need to walk around baring my soul to everyone.
3) Nobody cares. I live in a place with very few Masons (Utah has the second fewest Masons of any US state, I think) so the topic really doesn't come up much. If anyone asked, however, I'd tell them the truth (that includes my Mother).
So, if I'm keeping it a secret, why create a blog about it, then?
Well, I'm human. Here I am a newly minted Master Mason, and I can't talk about it to anybody. I figured if I started up a blog (which quite frankly I don't expect anybody to read) I could at least have an outlet for any Masonic ponderings I have. I thought the title ClandestineMason was kind of catchy, but I don't have any illusions of what I may contribute to the Masonic blogosphere (oh man, I hate that word).
There are a lot of really great Masonic bloggers out there. I am not one of them. I think I'm fairly intelligent and am pretty open-minded and thoughtful, but you should know that anything profound you find here will be purely accidental.
A little info about me:
Age: 31 years
Family: wife and 2 daughters (5 and 2 years old)
Location: Utah
Religion: LDS...Mormon...what have you (Maybe some day I'll post about how that affects my interpretation and views of Masonry.)
Occupation: Computer programmer
That should do for now, I guess.
