Master's Message Brethren, family and friends,
It brings me great pleasure to address you from the pages of the Trestleboard, if only I could move the schedule up a couple of weeks instead of last minute.
March Stated dinner is at 6:00, Wednesday March 1, with the meeting to follow. The Temple Board meets at 5:00. We will have a new visitor at dinner who is a Mason in his heart and needs to make a few friends who might in due time sign his application. Please get to know him. I'm hoping Richard Fonseca will come to present Ben with his Mason of the Year award from last year.
A new website for the lodge is up at http://clearlakemasoniccenter.org. I will be working it over the next months to be focused on renting our hall, but it's a start.
SOI will be at Clearlake Callayomi Lodge on March 8, 6:00 pm. This will be a practice for the 3rd degree for Bro. Derby. The degree is scheduled for March 22 at 6:00pm. We will have help from Hartley Lodge. Please come be a sideliner. We do the work for the candidate, but our reward is the audience.
We will of course make mistakes, plenty of them most likely. I make different mistakes every time through, so it's not a matter of not knowing the work, but rather the gamble of what's going to come out of my mouth next. Frankly that's part of the fun of being a sideliner, that you know our secret ceremonies so well you spot the mistakes. The familiarity of our ceremonies is like a rhythm of awareness.
What we do in Masonry has a magical quality to it. Whether one has a part in a stated meeting or degree or is only watching it, when we enter the lodge room a transformation of our awareness occurs, and we become very sensitive to the feelings of brotherhood working hard in agreement with one another. When our eyes land on the boat over the door in the north west corner of the lodge we are reminded of integrity, and our mortality. When we look to the Monad, the point within a circle, we are reminded of our spiritual aspect that never dies and are reminded to circumscribe our passions by staying aware of our center.
Most interesting to me is the somewhat reverential aspect of Freemasonry in that here in the Blue Lodge we are in the business of creating a transformative experience for the quality men that seek out membership in our fraternity. When we put on a degree we create a life memory for the candidate and empower him to grow as a more spiritually integrated man. Those that have seen our ceremonies dozens of times are never left unmoved by the reminder of Freemasonry's edicts. These edicts are many, and varied, but collectively will allow the transformation of the world into an enlightened, civil, and safe place for the best expression of that Supreme Architect which forever animates.
Michael McKeown
