A few years ago I attended the leadership retreat, and the keynote speaker on Saturday night was the WM Owen Shieh of Honolulu Lodge on Oahu. I actually was planning on visiting my daughter who was stationed on Oahu at the time, so I made sure my visit coincided with their meeting night.
Their opening and closing ritual was vastly diffe…
A few years ago I attended the leadership retreat, and the keynote speaker on Saturday night was the WM Owen Shieh of Honolulu Lodge on Oahu. I actually was planning on visiting my daughter who was stationed on Oahu at the time, so I made sure my visit coincided with their meeting night.
Their opening and closing ritual was vastly different than ours. I haven't visited other jurisdictions before, I knew there would be differences, but boy, I was surprised how much. I learned their charter actually was through Queensland Australia, not the states, which accounted for much of it I expect. While the verbiage was similar, the floor work was a lot different.
At closing, WM Owen talked about how he had visited a lodge in Tennessee(?) and had been smitten with one part of the ritual, their closing charge. It seems the GL of Hawaii doesn't include a closing charge in their work. WM Owen then read the Closing charge from a piece of paper, and wouldn't you know it, what he read was basically word for word of our own closing charge.
This really reinforced with me two things - first that yes, people do things differently in other parts of the world, and second, the ritual hasn't changed all that much in our line of charters. Since our historical lineage goes back to that part of the country, it's interesting to see at least some of the ritual work is unchanged over all these years.
In our lodge "library", there are some old ritual books from the early 1900s, written in the same cipher we're using today and quite readable to modern masons. You can see how much the ritual itself has morphed over the years. While the majority of it is the same, there are obvious tweaks made.
I too was surprised when I learned that the Closing Charge isn't given everywhere. It is my favorite part of our Closing, and I think that something that is both uplifting and important is a great way to end a formal meeting.
There is a listing of who uses it and who doesn't, plus variations of it, at:
I've not read any old ritual books, but we have a good library at Centralia Lodge. I'll have to see what we have. Thanks for that tip! It should prove interesting.
A few years ago I attended the leadership retreat, and the keynote speaker on Saturday night was the WM Owen Shieh of Honolulu Lodge on Oahu. I actually was planning on visiting my daughter who was stationed on Oahu at the time, so I made sure my visit coincided with their meeting night.
Their opening and closing ritual was vastly different than ours. I haven't visited other jurisdictions before, I knew there would be differences, but boy, I was surprised how much. I learned their charter actually was through Queensland Australia, not the states, which accounted for much of it I expect. While the verbiage was similar, the floor work was a lot different.
At closing, WM Owen talked about how he had visited a lodge in Tennessee(?) and had been smitten with one part of the ritual, their closing charge. It seems the GL of Hawaii doesn't include a closing charge in their work. WM Owen then read the Closing charge from a piece of paper, and wouldn't you know it, what he read was basically word for word of our own closing charge.
This really reinforced with me two things - first that yes, people do things differently in other parts of the world, and second, the ritual hasn't changed all that much in our line of charters. Since our historical lineage goes back to that part of the country, it's interesting to see at least some of the ritual work is unchanged over all these years.
In our lodge "library", there are some old ritual books from the early 1900s, written in the same cipher we're using today and quite readable to modern masons. You can see how much the ritual itself has morphed over the years. While the majority of it is the same, there are obvious tweaks made.
I too was surprised when I learned that the Closing Charge isn't given everywhere. It is my favorite part of our Closing, and I think that something that is both uplifting and important is a great way to end a formal meeting.
There is a listing of who uses it and who doesn't, plus variations of it, at:
http://bessel.org/charge.htm
I've not read any old ritual books, but we have a good library at Centralia Lodge. I'll have to see what we have. Thanks for that tip! It should prove interesting.