Master's Message:

Brethren, Family, and Friends,I am excited to be able to address you from the pages of the Clearlake Callayomi lodge's Trestleboard this year.
Upcoming events:Stated Meeting February 1. Winter dress. Temple board meeting at 5:00, dinner at 6:00, meeting at 7:00.
3rd degree practice every Wednesday evening until we pull off the degree.

Masonic Homes online presentation February 23 6-7pm. If you would like to discuss services now, or need the link to the presentation, please give a call at (866) 466-3642. Masons, spouses, widows, and children all have access to their services.

It's not too early to start thinking about making a donation to one of our fraternity's philanthropic projects. It's easily done, but here's the tricky part: you do it from the not-logged in front page of Grand Lodge's website. You can be logged in, that's fine, but if you are, you have to manually navigate yourself back to https://freemason.org. I don't see any button in the member's logged in side to get back to the front. Then go under Masonic Charities to How To Give. If you've donated here before, you can login to the payment service. I had to update my credit card on file, but it was easy. If you are an officer please make sure to click the Yes you are an officer button so we can get credit for it. We will be hoping to achieve 100% officer giving by this year's Annual Communication in the fall.

FWIW, you might not know there is also a program called the Cornerstone Society. This is where you bequeath a part of your estate to the Masonic Homes (and/or the foundation? I'm not sure...I did it for the Masonic Homes). I'm giving a percentage of my life insurance, but you can also leave real estate and I don't know what all. The Masonic Homes is our crown jewel benefit and it relies largely on us to fund it. If you haven't visited one of the properties before, I encourage you to. The dining room looks like a 5 star restaurant. They are top notch facilities available for our brethren and widows and is worthy of our support.

There is an aspect of Freemasonry that often comes to my attention when I enter a lodge room. I might have just come from the frivolity of the dining room, or the energy from driving and arriving a bit later than hoped. But when I cross the threshold into the lodge room, I feel as if I've entered a magical place. Not one so much mystical or church like, though there are mystical elements.

Sometimes I have fear of the upcoming performance, and maybe that tinges how I feel. All powerful magical experiences do seem to have an element of fear about them.

I think maybe it's a combination of the remembrance of what occurs in the room and of the promise of the Acacia: the transmutation of a man's soul to the recognition of the Great Animator, that Supreme Intelligence which pervades all nature, which includes us humans as a single unitary family. Yes, those thoughts certainly create a magically charged emotion.

I think there's also a component of the feeling of responsibility. A responsibility to not do anything that would reflect negatively on the fraternity. We are fragile enough in today's world. And I certainly feel a responsibility to the work of blue lodge Masonry, to make Masons out of good men that ask, and to try to do a good job at it.

But I think the real magic comes from the most basic premise of Freemasonry's outer teaching: that of working blocks of stone. When we look at ancient examples of operative masonry, we see megalithic perfectly cut blocks of stone that can not be cut or moved by any modern machinery. The mysteries of the tools, construction methods, and purpose of pyramids, cathedrals, mosques, and similar structures all around the planet come to my mind when I enter a lodge room.

When we look to the East in a lodge room and see two stone ashlars, of course our first thought goes to the outer teaching of taking a rough man, like the rough ashlar, and making him better, as in the smooth ashlar, but immediately my mind goes to the inner teaching about a magical lost technology.

These ancient stone structures are increasingly thought to have been places of power generation and distribution rather than places of worship. The electric frequencies produced perhaps also being used for healing or for transportation. Perhaps there was known a particular frequency to make it easy to exist in the awareness of the Enlightened state.
What did our ancient operative stone mason brothers really know? Did the speculative masons, the ones who got together to "speculate" on what the real stone masons were doing in their secret meetings, know these secrets? Are these secrets really lost, or are they hidden and forgotten in our oh so Gentle Craft?
A frequency is a vibration. It can be a vibration in air that we might be able to hear or see, or it can be in the electromagnetic spectrum. A spoken word is a vibration. There are even particular tonal vibrations that are not a word per. se., but nonetheless have a name.

The most enduring magical mystery of Freemasonry revolves around a lost word. Was it merely a spoken word, a key? Or was it a vibration of a different sort, one that unlocks gravity, or the soul?
Michael McKeown