Jaedon Adar-Barnaby wrote: Maybe there shouldn't be any masters. We're always learning anyway.
It happens in almost every religious system. It starts as a quest for at-one-ment. Eventually though, members begin chasing the power and prestige associated with the title "master".. whether or not they've mastered themselves.. much less remembering their original search for at-one-ment..
Personally I think it should refer to a position rather than a rank. If "the greatest among 'us' will be a servant to all" it's only right that it denotes a position of service, not a rank of prestige. Like minister, a master is a caretaker of those in his charge.. If we are to maintain the "respect for the human person"..
Maybe once you reach knight, that should be it.. So we'll follow "The Force" and not fallible "masters" or personal lusts.. Every knight, an equal member. Voting to fill the positions needed to service the younger and unlearned members..
I completely agree with most of this, truth be told. But I approach the term "rank" with a different perspective than some, perhaps. Before I came here, I was at another training site where no one was Knighted, from the administration on down. For much of that time, the best you could hope for in terms of "graduating upward" was moving from n00b to Novice (and it took me three or four years to gain that single step). It was a big thing for most of us when we started making Knighthood plans, and even then that had more to do with offline activities than anything involving the school.
So for me, a "rank" is not a mark of prestige, or even authority, it's a symbol of
eligibility. Here, when you "graduate" to Initiate, you become eligible for an Apprenticeship. When you become an Apprentice, you become eligible to enter into an individualized teacher-student relationship. When you become a Knight, you become eligible to hold most offices, and eventually perhaps to take on an Apprentice of your own. Clergy works the same way: Seminarians become eligible to begin the clerical training; LCPs become eligible to preside over liturgy, OCPs become eligible to take Confiding, etc. But none of these, except arguably the Apprenticeship, are about what someone is eligible to get from the Temple, but about what they become eligible to give to the Temple.
Which kind of goes back to how this thread began, many sidetracks ago (
mea culpa). Streen's been working at this Jedi thing a good long time, and he has insights worth sharing. I actually dug that first excerpt he posted. Totally eligible to do that in Open Discussions, he undoubtedly is, and if it would have stopped there I would have welcomed this thread as an opportunity to reflect presented by a "guest lecturer," so to speak. There are people who aren't part of this Temple structure, but they come and share ideas and insights with us, and we welcome them for the most part. I've learned more from Khaos than I have from some of the folks here, if for no other reason than the change in perspective.
If someone from outside the Temple, or outside the Clergy, wants to show something that helps illuminate what *I* might be doing wrong, that's cool with me. I'm down to listen to whatever will help me be a better Jedi or a better minister. But one of the reasons I have had such a problem with this thread (
mea culpa) is it seemed to me to quickly become about what *we* are doing wrong, and not in a constructive "hey, have you ever tried . . . ?" sort of way. As so many members of calmer temperament than I (
mea maxima culpa) have pointed out upstream, everyone is eligible to bring suggestions.
I'm out of time, so I'm just going to have to end with my apologies for being short-tempered yesterday.
But opinions are opinions, and facts are facts. I'll put the rest in your inbox. 
