Installation Address
I thank you for this opportunity, the respect and
honor you have placed upon me to lead this lodge for the ensuing year is deeply
humbling – but not enough so that I will not take this opportunity to pontificate
to all of you. First, I would like to give my thanks to the past masters and
installing officers on their grand performance and lend my congratulations to
all of the officers of Henry L. Palmer lodge. I would also extend a thank you
to all of our friends and family members whom without their support and
understanding we would not find ourselves at this juncture.
Roughly 30 years ago Henry L. Palmer lodge was a
formidable lodge. Our numbers ranked in the thousands and we had lodge meetings
generally twice a week. Our presence in Wisconsin Freemasonry was known. One
year the members elected to wear light blue sports coats and white shoes as a
badge of being a Palmer mason. And when the Grand Lodge convened at its annual
communication nearly one hundred Palmer members showed up instead of the
requisite three. All dressed in their blue coats. Henry L. Palmer was the lodge
to be a member of.
For many reasons, perhaps the use of a more modern
form of social networking, our numbers, not just at Palmer but in all of masonry,
have dropped. We find ourselves sleep
walking through our meetings (well some of us – some are merely sleeping), we
sleep walk through our rituals, attend haphazardly to our special events, we
shrug off the importance of maintaining relationships with each other, other
lodges, our youth groups, our past members who can no longer be active. All the
while boasting that freemasonry is about making good men better – so why aren’t
we better?
Freemasonry has many purposes but one singular voice
is that Freemasonry makes good men better. We provide principles, direction,
theosophical thought and more. Freemasonry is that ideal that prepares us to be
practicing humble, trustworthy, and charitable men in the hopes that one day
when we knock on that celestial lodge we will be recognized for our efforts. We
often joke that you will get out of freemasonry what you put into it. I believe
we often get this ideal backward – we try
to make good men better. The only man that I can make better is myself, granted
with the collected wisdom and direction of those masons around me I can improve
myself in knowledge but only I can do that – I cannot force others to think or
act as myself. I merely provide a model, as do all masons, but what a model we
can be.
Plato is known for saying “Whatsoever light I have I
will share with others.” From days of antiquity it has been known that “light”
means “knowledge” or “wisdom.” So Plato
is saying ‘what knowledge I have I will share with others’ and is this not the
mission of every mason? To seek further light? To seek further wisdom? To share
their knowledge?
In Mathew chapter 5 we find the words “14-17 Ye are the light of the world… Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works…”
This is the crux of Freemasonry, dispense with the ritual work, the business acumen, the social networking, what you have left is the archetype of decency. A Freemason is literally a trail blazer to model this decency. By our everyday actions, interactions, and stature we light the path of morality. This is what we can do: we can illuminate or educate through our own work. We can shine by example, we can be charitable not just with funds but with judgment.
Our past members understood that legacy and
tradition are important as well as adaptation and progression. It seems as if
us modern masons in all of our wisdom have forgotten how all of these pieces
fit together to make a fine tuned machine. A friend of mine reminded me that
light illuminates but a focused beam of light can shape even the most obdurate
of metals and an array of focused lights is a pulsed laser many orders of
magnitude greater than its average power. Individually we let our light shine
to illuminate a path, collectively we combine our light and we can carve that
path.
This ensuing year will find us trying to uphold some of
this legacy and tradition as well as move forward. We will begin by having our
own special events with our New Year’s Day breakfast which is a tradition from
the very first year of our lodge’s existence. In March we have sponsored a
table at the Shrine’s annual Sportsmen’s Night, April will see our Spaghetti
Dinner and in May we are reviving an old tradition known as the Rose
Celebration which we are reenvisioning as a Ladies at the Table Lodge, June brings
our Scholarship dinner and our annual picnic, October a Past Masters’ and 25/50
member Table Lodge, November our JW Chili Invitational and December our Pizza
with Santa.This is the gauntlet I put forth to you as masons and friends of masons: let your light illuminate the way. Strive to be that “better” person. And in our own way we can be formidable once again.
posted by the Worshipful Master | 7:22 PM
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