The question I have been asked is do the volunteers of the many holiday parades incur the same health benefits as the volunteers who are engaged full time with groups supporting charities? The answer is that I have yet to find studies or evidence to support this idea.

There is no doubt that the many volunteers for the various parades for so many holidays around the world contribute tons of effort and time to their parade day event. Their passion for the event is intense from my research, so they are focused and driven, just as other main stream civic groups or fraternal groups for their charity.

These temporary volunteers also benefit from the networking aspects noted in earlier posts on this site!

The intense pressure to produce some floats or other group presentations gives people practice in leadership and group organizing as well. Each member for these parades to work needs to subvert their own individuality for the greater performance, just as in many sports. To sum it up, everyone can benefit from the experience, but does it also translate into the health benefits of the group charity supporting volunteers?

It remains to be studied I think whether the health benefits already documented for the charity supporting fraternal, civic, and veterans groups also translates to temporary volunteering opportunities.

American Legion

Memorial Day parades by veterans groups in America which many veteran groups participate in are supported by members such as the American Legion, with the symbol above. Often these members engage in activities all year long and only rise to the public view during the parades. These are the types of volunteers which the health producing benefits have been documented.

Shriners

St. Patrick Day parades are  common in the United States. Very often you find a cooperation between well known fraternal groups to put on the parade. I have personally participated in a few as a member of the Shrine, a subdivision of the Freemasons.

The Roman Catholic fraternal group, The Knights of Columbus in my case was the main sponsor for the parade in the Tidewater area of Virginia. This certainly qualifies its members for the health benefits since they are serving all year long but raising their public awareness on this one day for the documented health benefits of volunteering.

Parades during the American professional football bowl games have short but intense opportunities for volunteers to help with float assemblies, the flowers and other aspects which are so amazing to see on the day the events are held. Other holiday parades also offer opportunities for volunteering on a short term basis. Many parades around the world function much the same way, except many of those have religious overtones attached which are for the most part absent from American holiday parades.

The caption above is from Volterra, a festival parade in Italy associated with a cross bow championship. Brazil also has a famous parade, Carnival. Parades from around the world often function with the participation of volunteers in some way or fashion. Most parades would not be what they are if volunteers did not participate.

Many of these parades in America rely on already established volunteer groups to step in and help with the events.

Knights of Pyhthias

FOE

In the above caption, the Order of the Eastern Star, a group associated with Freemasonry which has both men and women members, the very Christian theme is emphasized.

Church groups, youth groups, and in some cases the fraternal, civic, and veterans groups also volunteer their services. It is natural that a call goes out for temporary volunteers to help with a quick infusion of labor though, and these temporary members are the subject of our question in this post. Do they, even on a temporary basis gain the health benefits associated with those already documented for the main stream groups who focus mainly on supporting charities?

My gut feeling is that it is likely. But until the subject is studied properly, we can only speculate.

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The Hindu swastika means in rough translation, “I have value”. It is still found on Hindu Temples. This makes for some confusion for those who don’t know the history of the swastika.

Rudyard Kipling used this ancient Hindu symbol to emboss his books. A British author who had spent considerable time in India, he felt so strongly about this symbol he had it placed on the inside cover of his books with his signature under it and encased in a circle. It was kind of like his logo, before such things were popular.

Kipling Swastika with signature

Then in the 20th century the Nazi party decided the symbol, slightly modified would be ideal for their new political party. This has forever tainted this fine Hindu symbol in the public eye to this day. Few even notice the slight differences that are distinctive only when someone is observant.

Kipling was a man of his times but in many ways way ahead of his times as well. At a time when many British abroad were of the high status society who did not involve themselves with the lesser cast, particularly in India where casts were well defined, joining a group which “met on the level” and implied equality between members was not always popular. Kipling was a Freemason.

What are Freemasons? They are a fraternal group, who volunteer for charities while holding each other to high moral standards. Kipling often found cleaver ways to put Masonic ideals and symbols into his many books. He enjoyed the membership greatly it is believed.

As a Freemason, he would have known more than most about the importance of symbols. So when I purchased a small set of his older books and saw the symbol I was very surprised to say the least. I as stunned that he would put his name under the symbol in his books. I was also relieved to find out how all the history of the symbol evolved and how he repudiated the use of his “logo” for any future productions of his work.

Freemason’s Ben Franklin with author Rudyard Kipling books in background.

The insert above shows the books I purchased and my first notice of the history of the swastika. The two books on the right, newer publications do not reflect the symbol. Both later books were gifts from my great grandmother in my youth. She felt that I should at 7 start reading better literature than Tarzan.

I am reviewing this history to reflect the public perception of a symbol which should not be shrouded in such negativity, when it was for centuries so positive. Sometimes good things or even groups can be mislabeled or even demonized. Not all of them deserve such historical memories.

This is true for groups as well. Some gain a reputation over time in the public eye that uninformed people blindly follow. Opus Dei has enjoyed both notoriety and ill public perception ever since Dan Brown’s book, The Da Vinci Code. For that matter, The Roman Catholic Church also suffered some stigma but eventually the public seems to have concluded that the book really was fiction, despite the sudden interest in all of the places the book referred to in the many locations for the main character, later played by Tom Hanks in the movie by the same name.

Freemasonry has over the years been subjected to harsh and deceptive treatment too. The Roman Catholic Church (RCC) forbid its members from joining for years. More than one Papal Bull was proclaimed with this message. Yet until the Knights of Columbus was created good RCC members joined as they wished and were welcomed.

This is the central point. Freemasonry has a history of not fighting back when confronted with public criticism. The usual path is to let the issue die. Time will heal all things, particularly when replies in public usually are manipulated into further lies. This was the usual pattern for Freemasonry for the first couple of hundred years, though upon reflection with some of the issues many today think this pattern should be discarded.

It seems that any group, even countries if they are around long enough find some peaks and some valleys in the eye of various observers. Sweden wasn’t always neutral for instance, but at one time put forth an army that tramped all over northern Europe.

The RCC has in its past many things which can be seen as both good and bad. The missionaries are seen by Catholics as good, while Native American’s don’t appreciate Columbus Day or the missionary impact on their culture. There is for some the image of Mother Teresa contrasted with the Holy Inquisition responsible for killing thousands and torturing many more! Few things made by man that have any length of history behind them are without this contrast. So it is with volunteer groups and nonprofit groups as well, but on a lesser scale.

Author Allen E. Roberts writes in his book, House Undivided that Freemasons on both sides of the American Civil War fought and died. On some occasions after the day’s battle was done the two sides would gather to conduct a Masonic funeral. This was done on more than one occasion.

Also related in Robert’s book was the well known story about the Grand Master of Iowa Freemasons, Thomas   H. Benton, JR. When Benton found himself as the occupation commander of Little Rock, Arkansas during the American Civil War he is said to have placed a guard of Union troops about the home of Albert Pike, a Confederate general, so that the general’s well known Masonic library would not be destroyed. Albert Pike later became famous for Morals and Dogma, a lengthy and somewhat scholarly book on Masonic rituals in the Southern branch of the Scottish Rite.

This is the same book from which many anti-Masonic crusaders have lifted out of context sentences and portions of content for the purpose of misrepresenting Freemasons into some kind of “new world order”. To blunt, it is simply not true that a bunch of volunteers in a group based on the Bible story of King Solomon are trying to take over the world.

Freemasonry, like other human institutions before and likely after has had her moments of ungentlemanly conduct, or at least some of its members have. The famous member of the American Revolution, Benedict Arnold in betraying his Masonic brother George Washington to the British and then fighting with them has forever been remembered poorly by Americans.

Masons are very careful as a group not to be the one to, “Cast the first stone”. The charge of ever Mason is to make himself a better man. The rituals of the three degrees, which are for the uninitiated easy to find in this information age guide and trust that a man will find himself worthy of study and reflection and be a friend to neighbor and society. Freemasons are as the saying goes today, into coexistence and social harmony.

I personally find that a group which makes as its central theme that all good men who believe in a Supreme Being should congregate and assemble in common with one another without any regard for politics or religion a very good and worthy function which I am very proud to associate with. Joining this fraternity was one of the best decision of my life.

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Even knights need face to face time!

In this post we will examine why face to face time is beneficial and superior to interactions that are conducted through other mediums, like chat rooms or other social media.

Barbara L. Fredrickson, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill has written a new book about love. In it she goes through the data of love and its components. As a researcher she has followed that book with other publications in scholarly journals. The theme of her work is that positivity is good for individuals in multiple ways. She also looks at love from a science point of view and how to enrich the experience.

Humans view love in different ways, but one thing that seems to be true, love leads to social connections. Love also has a physical impact on our bodies. Some love is just connecting with others rather than romantic.

The kind of interaction the internet provides is very different from the face to face type of those who join fraternal or civic groups for instance. Physical interactions such as those found in volunteer groups, “ affects the cardiovascular system called the vagal tone”, she says in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science while writing in a recent Tampa Bay Perspective on March 31, 2013.

The brain is connected to the heart by the vagus nerve. This direct connection supports the old saying of a negative life experience in the area of love breaking the heart. The two are really physically tied together!

Fredrickson studied the health benefits and concluded, “In short, the more attuned to others you become, the healthier you become, and vice versa”. Furthermore, she writes, “This mutual influence also explains how a lack of positive social contact diminishes people”. If you can align yourself in a positive and passionate cause, you can’t seem to do anything but help your health and the cause in most cases, it would seem.

She goes on to explain that the ability to connect with people is a use it or lose it talent and can be strengthened or lost depending on how it is exercised. As any volunteer will tell you, interacting with others is one of the more frequent things that most do. To interact well and stay on course for helping the cause takes a lot of effort and attention. This is more often than not done face to face, with other passionate volunteers who also want to help.

The benefits of face to face time that volunteers get can be very helpful to the health of all participants. Positive interactions with positive people are the most beneficial it seems, which makes sense. However, connecting with other people is part of the human experience and that is what charity groups and the volunteer groups that support them offer in the volunteer experience.

Volunteers by definition are not paid so they must see other less obvious benefits if they are to justify their time and effort. With science hot on the trail of other health benefits seen in positive relationships, everyone should be considering somehow positioning themselves for more happiness as well as physical and mental health improvements.

Find a cause or charity that you can be passionate about and join. Make it a highly positive experience and the health benefits should show up, according to the research. However you might be too happy and busy to notice.

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