Before they were the Elks, they were known as the Jolly Corks — a name that is not only cause to smile but a reminder that the “Benevolent and Protective Order,” as it is called, was organized in a different time.
It was 1867, two years after a Civil War in which North and South had sought to dispatch with the faults of brothers using Minie balls and cannon shot.
In that context, a jolly cork represented a kinder, gentler projectile.
So did the Elks’ motto in its approach to getting along with others.
Days before his assassination, Abraham Lincoln — who at his first inaugural had hoped that the nation’s “better angels” would prevail — tried to summoned a more forgiving spirit in the nation after four years of unprecedented slaughter.
He implored the country to move forward “with malice toward none and charity for all” and to rally its spirit “to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
It seems more than circumstance that the Elks motto is from the same era.
On this New Year’s Day when many of us think about resolutions regarding weight loss, exercise programs, quitting cigarettes and other details of our own lives, it seems also a good time to consider our attitudes toward one another and, perhaps, human nature.
I am not an Elk and have no strong preference for Elk over Moose over Mason. But I find the order’s motto interesting.
Founded on what their early texts call “faithful brotherhood,” the order claimed these benefits for its members: It “strips them of selfishness, narrowness and exclusiveness; develops their latent fraternity and companionability; shames them out of ignoble animosities, petty prejudices and personal bitterness; stamps out bickering rancor and resentment; teaches them and strives to make them emulate all the admirable and lovable traits of humanity.”
The order wisely admits that it “cannot change human nature” and claims only that ”it seeks to so mold and influence it as to make men rightly appreciate and esteem one another.”
Which brings us back, on this New Year’s Day, to the motto: The faults of our brothers, we write upon the sands, their virtues on tablets of love and memory.
As 57-year-old journalist, I like that the motto assumes that we and our brothers and sisters have both faults and virtues and always will.
I don’t know if I can go as far as to suggest we should write the faults on sand and the virtues on tablets made of a composite of love and memory, which I presume has a longer shelf life even than stone.
But I do think it might behoove us to move a bit in that direction in the year to come. It seems a more promising path toward “a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
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