The Key to Success is to Learn from our Failures

The following blog post is from Brother James McKeown, Region H Youth Representative and PMC of Friendship-Bray Chapter.
Failure; it isn’t fun, but it is something that is a part of life. We constantly have to deal with it in school, sports, personal life, and sometimes even in DeMolay. No one’s perfect, which is why I'm sure we've all experienced failure at least once or twice in our lives. People might think it's a way of saying that you didn't succeed, but I see failure as an experience gained. An experience, good or bad, can be used as experiences for your benefit. Quitting is the only true way to fail at something. I’m going to tell you a few stories of failure that happened to me.

The first story happens over the span of four years. I played basketball for my grade school from 5th grade to 8th grade. Over those four years, I was never on the best team, despite my school having one of the best basketball programs in the Catholic School League. I would always be on the “B” team, due to my lack of skills, but that didn’t stop my team from winning. Every one of those four years, my team would be top three in the league, putting us in good spots for the playoffs. We fought hard each year through the playoffs to make the championship and made it to the big dance all four years! In true Buffalo Bills fashion, we lost the championship four straight years. Looking back at this makes me ask the question, "why?" "Why couldn’t we just win one of those championship games?" "Why couldn’t I step up and do more for my team?" I’m never going to get an answer to these questions. The reason I ask these questions is because they are part of the experience I gained through losing. This experience helped me realize some important things in life. The first thing that comes to mind is that "life is so unfair." We have all heard, or even used this phrase. The only time we think about "life being unfair" is when it smacks us in the face. I truly believe that my team and I never failed. It taught my team and I that winning isn’t everything, that life still goes on after a loss. Losing taught us to keep moving forward and use the loss as motivation to better yourself.   

The second story is about a failure that I experienced in DeMolay. It was September 2017, and happened at the Mid Atlantic Tournament of Champions, which we know better as MATOC. During MATOC, I was set to perform the Magnificent Seven. I should have taken a few lessons from the Boy Scouts prepared better.I was not ready to perform the Magnificent Seven and I was going into this competition knowing that it will not be pretty. The lack of confidence showed, because I got 10 out of a possible score of 1000. I almost gave up halfway through the competition. Quite frankly, I never wanted to do ritual again. This experience of failure was hard to come to terms with, but it also taught me a few key lessons in life. It is still teaching me a lesson, which I still am learning to this day, and that is procrastination is bad. I really wasn’t motivated to learn my part for MATOC and that is the main reason why I procrastinated until the final few days to learn my part. Another lesson it taught me is to be confident. Being confident can make a major difference in one's performance. Looking back at this year's MATOC, I am glad I went. Without this experience of failure, I wouldn’t be learning these key lessons that will help me down the path of life. This experience helps me strive to do better in ritual, because now I know the embarrassment of doing poorly while other people are judging you. Will I do better in ritual now? I don’t know the answer to that question. All I know is that I will strive to do better and try to be the best ritualist I can be. 

Going into writing this blog post, I wanted to share experiences to help combat failure, but I realized that combating failure just comes naturally. We need failures in order to succeed. We need to know the bitterness taste of defeat before tasting the sweetness of victory. I’m glad I got to experience failure, because I can now use these experiences as motivation to better myself. The only way you don’t succeed is when you decide you've given up. Just because you failed at a task, doesn't make you a failure. Learn from these experiences, and I promise you that you will succeed.

Why Do We Do Ritual?

One of the things that sets DeMolay apart from other youth organizations is our ability to perform Ritual. When the term "Ritual" is used, it's usually referred to in a negative sense. The definition of Ritual is "an established or prescribed procedure." When DeMolay performs Ritual, it's used as a prescribed way of expressing the beliefs of our organization and the things we stand for. It expresses our belief in the 7 cardinal virtues of the order, our appreciation towards our country and all those who have served for our freedom, and our respect for the public school system, among several other things. Each piece of Ritual is a lesson that is used to educate members of DeMolay as well as others.    

At a young age, young men and women have choices to join activities, such as sports and theater, that allow our youth to share their talents with an audience. The way Ritual is performed by our DeMolays is no different from those activities. The young men of DeMolay take pride in the way they perform each ritual part. They want the viewers to leave satisfied with the way they present the work. The young men make sure that the movement looks good, the words flow properly, and that they look professional in the presentation of the work. It takes effort and practice to make sure that it's performed right, the same way that athletes attend practice and actors hold rehearsals.

As a Senior DeMolay, I enjoy seeing the Ritual performed to such a high quality that the members  are capable of performing it. It reminds me of the days that I put the same effort into those parts. Recently in Pennsylvania, the Mid-Atlantic Tournament of Champions was held in Gettysburg, a DeMolay Ritual Tournament in which members perform their parts competing against the best of the best in the Mid-Atlantic Region. It was encouraging to see the young men perform the Ritual of our work to the level that they did. It shows that we really do have something special with the organization of DeMolay.

Until next time - "Dad" Joe Pullin     

  

Experiences in Ritual Competitions

Today's article comes from Bro.  Isaac Holtzer, Deputy State Master Councilor of PA DeMolay. He writes about his experiences at the Mid-Atlantic Tournament of Champions.

On September 6 - 8, 2013, ten DeMolays from Pennsylvania attended the Mid-Atlantic Tournament of Champions, or MATOC. MATOC is an event that hosts DeMolays from all over Region II of DeMolay International for a ritual competition. Competitions range from "Rookie of the Year," which covers the obligations for new members, to the DeMolay Degree, to the Chaplain Prayers. The goal for every DeMolay there is to get as close to a perfect score as possible, which is 1000, and do better than everyone else who competed. Every competitor starts with a perfect score and they lose points if they mess up the words or there is an issue with the presentation.

Imagine going into a lodge room with four people watching everything you do, ready to catch something you do wrong, and then performing the best ritual you can. This is what Matt Maple, Isaac Holtzer, Lorenzo Rodriguez, Phil Cancila, David Kopp, Eric Dye, Tyler Moyer, Adam Pritchard, Andrew Santilli, and Anthony Kallhoff did at MATOC. They competed in many competitions as a team and individually; they included the Preceptor Trio, Magnificent Seven, Orator, Flower Talk, Ceremony of Light, Chaplain, RD Ceremony, and Majority Service. Many of them even became MATOC Champions, doing better than everyone else in their chosen competitions. A member of PA DeMolay won the Rookie of the Year, Magnificent Seven, Preceptor Trio, and Majority Service. This goes to show that Pennsylvania DeMolay does some very impressive ritual.

I personally have attended the past two MATOCs. Both times I have had the opportunity to meet with other DeMolays from neighboring jurisdictions and compete in brotherly competition. When I first went to MATOC, what made me excited was that everyone helped each other at practicing their ritual, even though they were competing against each other, which really shows how we are truly a fraternity.  The first time I competed I was extremely nervous going into the competition and I hoped I would not receive the lowest score out of everyone. It turned out I did the opposite and I won, but only by five points. At the second MATOC I attended I was not as nervous and I focused on getting a higher score, possibly a 1000, which is very difficult to achieve. I did not get a perfect score, however I did obtain my goal to do better. MATOC has helped give me a passion to do the best I can at ritual and I hope everyone goes to MATOC in their DeMolay career.

Many DeMolays in Pennsylvania hear about the Mid-Atlantic Tournament of Champions and get nervous, not wanting to go, but would like to see how well they can perform ritual. In this past year, we have found a solution to this problem! We now have statewide ritual tournaments at every weekend we have at Patton Campus. This gives every DeMolay the opportunity to compete in ritual even if you do not want to travel to MATOC. The best part about the statewide competitions is that you can compete more than once and try to get a better score. So there is no reason you cannot compete in a ritual tournament!

Until next time - Isaac

Remember that ritual post?

As part of my ongoing series on ritual, I present today an article I found over at Gary Dryfoo's page at http://web.mit.edu/dryfoo/Masonry/Essays/mem-ritual.html. It's a great article on how to work on memorizing ritual. While it is geared towards Masons, it is absolutely applicable to memorizing DeMolay Ritual as well. 

Learning & Memorizing Ritual

by Wor. Mark Waks. This article originally appeared in Masonry Universal issue 26.

Ritualist's Corner

One of the problems that most often plagues Masonry is poor ritual. By this, I don't just mean getting the words wrong -- I mean ritual that is drab and uninspiring, which fails to actually *teach* a candidate. Ritual is often mediocre, and it doesn't have to be; anyone can do ritual well, provided he knows a little about acting.

It isn't hard, actually; it's mostly a matter of knowing how to do it, plus a lot of practice. This article is intended to impart some guidelines on how to do Good Ritual. It doesn't demand a lot of time, or any particular talent, just a little drive to do well. Read it and play with it. With some practice, you should be able to use these techniques to good effect in your Lodge. The course is specifically aimed at dealing with the longer speeches, but much of it is also relevant to shorter pieces; I commend it to junior officers.

This is adapted from a lecture that I worked up for my own lodge; having done that, I figured I should try to spread these tips around for the common weal of the Craft. 

1: Figure out the Words

The first step of learning any ritual is to know what you're saying! This should be obvious, but is often overlooked, because brethren are afraid to admit that they don't already know the right words. Don't be afraid to admit your own limits -- I've never met *anyone* who gets every single word right every time.

Start out by listening to someone say the speech, preferably several times. Listen carefully, and make sure you understand what's being said; ask questions if you don't. (After Lodge, of course.)

Next, go through your book and mark words that you can't figure out, or that you're unsure of -- this is the point to catch any mistakes you may be making. Then call or get together with a Ritualist and talk through it, reading out of the book slowly. Have him correct any mistakes, and fill in the words you don't know. Take notes (preferably somewhere other than in the book), because you will forget the corrections as soon as you're on your own.

2: Understand the Speech

This step gets overlooked even more often than the previous one. Read through the ritual a couple of times, and make sure you really grasp it. Don't just know the words -- know what it's talking about. Find out who the characters being talked about are. Again, ask questions.

Now, start trying to understand the speech structurally. Any ritual is made up of components, separate pieces that are linked together. For example, a section may be talking about symbols, with three paragraphs per symbol: concrete meaning, abstract meaning, and purpose. Figure out what these pieces are -- you'll use them later.

The next step is especially useful for long speeches -- visualize the speech. Any speech can be thought of in terms of movements, places, rooms, stuff like that. Words are hard to remember in order; places are easy.  This is why we use symbols in the first place: because they are easy to learn and internalize. Use them.

3a: Small-Scale Memorization

This is never anyone's favorite part; anyone can do it, but no-one finds it simple. It's considerably easier if you do it right, though.

Start out by reading the speech over and over. Don't move on to the next step until you can read it from the quickly, without breaks or hesitation. Read it *out loud*, when you get the chance. This step is particularly important, and skipped more often than any other. Don't skip it -- this is how you get your brain and mouth trained to the words. It may sound silly, but it really matters -- the mental pathways used to talk are distinct from those used to read.

Now, start trying to learn sentences. Just sentences. Read the first word or two of the sentence, then try to fill in the remainder from memory. Don't fret if you can't do it immediately; it will probably take at least 5 or 10 times through before you're getting most of the sentences. You'll find some that are hard -- hammer those ones over and over (but don't totally neglect the rest while you do so). Again, get to the point where you're doing reasonably well on this, before going on to the next step.

3b: Large-Scale Memorization

Once you've got most of the sentences, try to move on to paragraphs. Again, some will be easy and some hard. Try to understand exactly why this sentence follows that one -- in most cases, the ritual does make sense. An individual paragraph is almost always trying to express a single coherent thought, in pieces; figure out what that thought is, and why all the pieces are necessary. Keep at this until you're able to get most paragraphs by glancing at the first word or two, or by thinking, "Okay, this is the description of truth," or something like that.

Finally, start putting it all together. This is where the structural analysis in Step 2 gets important. You visualized the speech, and figured out how it hooks together; use that visualization to connect the paragraphs. Make sure you have some clue why each paragraph follows the one before. In almost every case, the next paragraph is either a) continuing this thought, or b) moving on to a related thought. In both cases, you can make memorization much easier by understanding why it flows like that. Convince yourself that this paragraph obviously has to follow that one, and you'll never forget the order.

4: Smoothing It Out

You're now at the point where you've got pretty much all the sentences down, and most of the paragraphs, and you're able to get through the whole thing only looking at the book a few times. Now, start *saying* it.

When you're driving in the car; when you're alone at home; pretty much any time you have some privacy, try saying it all out loud, at full voice. Trust me, it sounds very different when you actually say it aloud. You'll find that you stumble more, and in different places. Some words turn out to be more difficult to pronounce than you expected. Try it a few times.

Start out by trying to do this frequently -- once, even twice every day. It'll be hard at first, but it'll gradually get easier. When you're starting to feel comfortable, slow down, but don't stop. Practice it every couple of days, then every week. Don't slow down below once a week. If you feel up to it, see if you can speed up your recitation. (But do not ever speed-talk the ritual in open Lodge -- that's for memorization and rehearsal only.)

5a: Mindset

Last part. You're now at the point where you pretty much have the ritual memorized. Now, the trick is learning how to perform it well. Very nearly everyone has some amount of stage fright; us acting types often have it even worse than most. The trick to overcoming it is control of the nerves.

Now that you're comfortable reciting the ritual, observe how you do it. By now, you're not thinking about it so much; your mouth is doing almost all the work, with the conscious mind simply making a few connections between paragraphs. That is the right state to be in. Think about how that feels, and learn it.

Before you go in to "perform", do some basic acting exercises. Take a few deep breaths; concentrate on not thinking. I think the ideal is a little light meditation, but it takes a fair bit of practice to be able to drop into that state on demand; for now, just worry about being calm. Being calm is far more important than anything else. If you're calm, you're unlikely to screw up too badly; if you're tense, you're far more likely to. Some people like to exercise the body a bit, to relax the mind; you should do what works for you.

5b: Acting

Now the final nuance, which separates merely competent ritual from the really good stuff. Now that you're able to let your mouth do all the talking, start listening to yourself. Think about the ritual again, but don't think about the words, think about what it means. What are the important bits? Emphasize those. How could you use your body or hands to illustrate a point? Try talking *to* the person in front of you, not just *at* them -- look them in the eye and make them get the point. You are teaching important lessons here; try to capture a little of the emotional intensity of that importance.

Think of your "performance" as a melding of two parts. Your mouth is providing the words, your mind and heart the emotion. Again, nothing beats practice. This is what rehearsal should really be for -- taking a dummy candidate in hand, and learning how to really get the point across. Don't fret if you find that you need to change "modes" now and then -- here and there you will need to think about the words briefly, when you change paragraphs or hit a hard sentence. That won't throw you, though, so long as you keep track of what you're saying; you've already figured out why each part leads into the next, and that will guide you when you stumble.

Conclusion

Don't expect to get all this down instantly; it takes most people a few years to really get good at it. Just try to advance yourself bit by bit. Learn the transitions and pieces first -- if you have that, you can get through the ritual. Next time, work on memorizing more thoroughly. The time after that, work on getting it really smooth. After a while, you can build up to the point where you have the luxury to act. And at that point, you will find that you start doing the kind of ritual that Masonry is meant to have -- both moving and interesting, enough so that the candidate (who is, remember, the whole point) actually *learns* what you're saying, and what it actually means. And if you really do it well, you'll find that you come to understand the meaning of the ritual a good deal better yourself...

What's a MATOC?

Ah, another day, another blog post.

For those who haven't heard, Central and Eastern Pennsylvania have been experiencing severe flooding in the last twenty four hours. We've been alerted that several of our Brothers in Susquehanna Chapter have been evacuated from their residences and moved to safer ground. Here in Elizabethtown, downtown was flooded pretty severely, but thankfully Patton Campus has remained relatively unaffected (excepting for a wet room or two in the basement.) For those of you that have been to Elizabethtown, I have posted a picture of downtown to show the flooding. We ask that you keep all of your DeMolay Brothers in your thoughts and prayers.

Now, on to the real article for today!

This weekend your State Officers and several Advisors will be heading south to Alexandria, VA, to participate in the Mid-Atlantic Tournament of Champions, otherwise known as MATOC. Just what is MATOC? It is a ritual tournament organized by the Jurisdictions composing Region II of DeMolay International. If you don't know what Region II is, you can read some of our older blog posts. For now, all you need to know is that it is a part of DeMolay International consisting of the Jurisdictions of PA, NJ, NY, VA, DE, MD, Nation's Capital, Ontario, and Italy.

Now, I'm betting you're wondering what a ritual tournament is? The one thing that sets DeMolay apart from most other youth organizations is our ritual. While some of our members find it boring, many more find it interesting and want to learn and participate in its performance. Events like MATOC provide a standardized system for judging and scoring how well a person knows and presents their part. For instance, you can compete by knowing and presenting three different Preceptor parts, or by performing all of the Chaplain's prayers. If you've never attended an event like this, it is an experience you won't want to miss.

Head on over to the MATOC website for more information!

Frat! ~ "Dad" Seth Anthony

Why Ritual?

PA DeMolay had a pretty successful weekend at MATOC (you can find out all about that over at pademolay.org.) But, each year it seems that someone asks the question "... why do we need ritual at all?"

It's a valid question. Most of our members don't like it. Many of them don't understand it. A large quantity find it boring. However, some people do really enjoy it. Why do we do it though? If you are looking to me for an answer, you aren't going to find one. I am no ritual expert. I have participated in precisely one ritual competition in my DeMolay career, where I failed pretty much completely. I think ritual is important, however.

As I usually do, I went in search of what people think about ritual. As it turns out, there is quite a lively debate in the religious community about whether or not "ritual" should be used in services. Now, this ritual isn't exactly like DeMolay ritual, but the idea is close enough that it was worth some reading. The best site I came across was Ritualwell.org. This site deals with thoughts and philosophies related to using ritual in Jewish religious practices. Many of the resources we present are Christian, so I was very intrigued by this.

In an article, aptly called "Why Ritual" by Tamara Cohen and Rona Shapiro, the authors explore why we, as human beings, like ritual. You probably don't even realize the little "rituals" that you have put into your daily life. Do you get out of bed the same way everyday? Do you do your daily chores in a specific order? Do you finish your day in a particular way? Heck, do you feel that you have to watch football on Sundays? If you answered "yes" to any of those things, you've engaged in a ritual.

In much the same way, DeMolay has used its ritual for a reason. It is there to remind us of what holds us together, as brothers, and to denote the special time we have together in our meetings. It is also used to mark special or memorable occasions, such as Chevalier and Legion of Honor Conferrals, Majority Services, and even Funeral Services. Ritual is important because it gives the participants a shared experience that they all know and trust. No matter where you go to a DeMolay meeting, you're going to hear the same basic ritual, reminding you that you are indeed among friends.

So, is ritual important to you? Is it important to your Chapter? Should we still keep it around? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments section!

Frat!~"Dad" Seth Anthony