I was recently talking to a Brother in the Order about how much fun it is to be in the O.T.O., and how much I enjoy doing the things we do. His response was pretty surprising to me: “But what does the O.T.O. do?”
Having attended the recent Gathering of Bishops,* and Advanced Initiation Training,** I was pretty amazed. I thought it was obvious: We make people into Master Magicians, and we present the Mass, which lets absolutely anyone participate in a magical act.
But after we talked more, I learned he wasn’t talking about that. Yes, we do initiations, yes, we put on the Mass, but … what else? When your local body has all the officer positions filled, and you’re not interested in clergy roles, and you still want to help the Order out with accomplishing its mission, where do you turn? If you aren’t someone who is called to put on classes, are you left with just showing up, drinking wine, and telling people how well they did?
How do you go about supporting the O.T.O. on purpose?
So I started poking around the (wonderfully organized and well-indexed) US Grand Lodge web site, and found that we have an organized approach to expanding the services of the Order within our Kingdom.
There’s an entire page dedicated to our Mission and Planning goals. There are high-level expressions of the overarching goals, but there are also detailed planning documents that list the strategic approach we are taking, and the progress that has been made so far towards those ends. And there are contacts listed for each item so we can offer to help.
Going through the list, I realized there are a ton of things the Order is working on, all the time. There are projects that need volunteers with very specific skill sets. There are tasks that are languishing because things have changed since the last time the planning document was updated. There are opportunities available to people who want to serve in the Order on purpose, but don’t have any open Officer positions locally.
Over the next few posts, I’d like to explore some of the USGL Strategic Initiatives in more detail.
In the mean time, if you’re one of those people wondering how to help out, feel free to browse the list yourselves, see what jumps out at you that you are uniquely qualified to do:
http://planning.oto-usa.org/2011
* hosted by the awesome people of Hidden Spring Oasis
** hosted by the awesome Leaping Laughter Lodge folk
