Brethren,
We have had superb attendance at our degree work this year. It’s great to see everyone coming out to support the candidates and the lodge. It’s also been great to sit in lodge with some of the “older” members. Please come back often—we need your wisdom and experience!
I’d like to close with an excerpt from a little book I’m reading called, “5-15 Minute Talks” by Elbert Bede, P.M., 33°. This is from a chapter called “What Did You Expect of Freemasonry?”
“Freemasonry, as an institution, has promised its petitioners nothing, but each of us as an individual member of that institution has encouraged the beliefs and hopes with which petitioners knock at our preparation room door. If we as individual Freemasons encourage the hopes and beliefs with which our petitioners come to us—the same beliefs and the same hopes with which each of us came to Freemasonry—do we not as individuals morally bind ourselves to attempt to provide that which our petitioners have been by us led to expect? And, doesn’t the petitioner in turn bind himself to attempt to provide for those who follow him into the Tyled Circle the things he expected for himself?
If each of us, and each of those who follow us to the altar of Freemasonry, does his part to make Freemasonry what he expected it to be for himself, Freemasonry will be for others all that they expected it to be.
Freemasonry as an institution promised nothing—absolutely nothing—but she returns with interest—compound interest, if you please—all that we commit to her care.
What do YOU expect to get OUT of Freemasonry? What are YOU putting IN?”
Fraternally,
Jon Majerus, JW