To all of you who were able to attend the installation of the new officer line, we thank you. It was an event made so much the better by the skills of the installation team: Worshipful Cary Carlson as the Master of Ceremonies; Worshipful Michael Wilson as the Installing Officer; Worshipful Tom Riley as Chaplain; and Worshipful Bill Stanley as Organist. We officers felt especially privileged to be the focus of so much Masonic talent. I would also like to thank Zimms catering and Bethel 247 Job’s Daughters for looking after us so well at dinner, and Nancy Thomas and my daughter Heidi for getting the flowers where they needed to be without drawing blood. And last but not least I want to thank Marion, our retiring Master and his team of stalwarts for getting the lodge and dining room set up.
We now pitch in to a New Year full of significance for our gentle craft. Three hundred years of good men developing themselves to better repair the world that will be enjoyed by their children and grandchildren. And so it is a time to reflect on what we are as people, as Freemasons, and members of our Lodge. The New Year resolutions we all make and most likely break pale into insignificance against the obligations we take as Masons: obligations that bind us to improve ourselves; obligations to our brothers, our families, to society and to God; obligations that force us to dig deep into ourselves and ask whether we are doing the best we can. By these obligations we form a society in which we can all feel “at home” whether we are the high or the low, the rich or the poor, remembering that Masonry unites us all no matter our country, sect, or opinion and causes true friendship to exist among those who might otherwise have remained at a perpetual distance. Our Lodge fully reflects these ideals.
And so I challenge all of you who can, to attend the upcoming first and third degrees, and renew with the candidates those obligations you once took kneeling at the altar, and recognize again the seriousness of those promises made perhaps so long ago. Promises that you kept and which have made our lodge such a strong bastion of all that is best in Freemasonry. As we celebrate the initiation of Noah Maier on January 17th and the raising of Brother Terry Killgore on February 18th, come and help our degree teams do the best of which they are capable.