It’s a new year, 2024 (holy smokes, how old does that make me?) I know that lots and lots of us make all sorts of plans around New Years. What do we want to accomplish? What changes do we want to make? In what areas do we hope to grow? Who do we want to be?
Robert Morris Lodge no 97 last summer painted outside of our buliding and rebulit our sign ,also put up a new old sign on our property, just a few years ago completely rewired our buliding. Today we are starting to paint the interior of Temple. our temple is 85 years old this year and we do really try to keep it well maintained. Hopefully we will also have a whole new heating system installed this fall .
This year I have plans to paint our Lodge and add insulation in the attic. A continuous stretch goal is to improve our relationship with the city officials.
This year I am taking a break from Freemasonry to focus on my health, family and vocation. My new heart valve is working fine and I am resting a lot to help my body recover.
As for me, I've got some goals, one for myself, two for my Lodge, and one for my temple.
As President of Centralia's Temple Association, I hope to get our roofing project done early in 2024, and get the moneys we borrowed from our Brothers to do it paid back to them quickly. This roof has been something that we've struggled with since before I was a member of the Lodge, it will be great to have a long term solution in place.
As Master of Doric Lodge, I hope to wipe out the backlog of Degrees that still remains from the time of Covid. I want to see all those EA's and FC's sitting in our Lodge become MM's this year. I also hope to see financial processes put into place so that the Lodge can make financial decisions easier, and with more confidence.
Personally, I hope to become more involved with Scottish Rite this year. Throughout my Masonic career, my involvement with the Rite has ebbed and flowed. That was always OK in my mind, because I felt that my responsibilities to Craft Masonry had to take priority, and those responsibilities were extensive. But now that they are lessening, I hope to have more time for the Scottish Rite.
I'll be giving my first Masonic presentation at a Masonic Education Day in the spring so that should be cool (assuming I can pull it off! :D ). I'm also planning to do some Masonic traveling to other jurisdictions.
As far as my lodge goes, we're making a lot of big changes and one of the things I'm looking to do directly is to start up a lodge book club to get more of our brothers reading on subjects relative to our lodge. I'm hoping to kick us off with Contemplative Masonry by Chuck Dunning.
Those sound like awesome plans! I'm sure that your presentation will go great!
Traveling to other Jurisdictions is something I really enjoy, and I hope that you do as well.
I love the Lodge book club idea. We tried to pull one off at my Lodge some years back, and it had quite a lot of interest at the start, but then it sort of faded away, as we did a lot less talking about whatever book we were supposed to reading, and a lot more general BSing. Looking back on it, I think we made two fundamental errors. First of all, we picked dull books I think, nothing very contemporary. But secondly, we lost the focus of the group, and it sort of just turned into a have lunch together thing. That was probably also related to our dull book selections. I think reading things like Bro. Dunning stand you a much better chance of success.
Just keep choosing more interesting books than we did! I think we looked at the Lodge Library for things we had lots of copies of and made that our selection criteria. Not our best move!
Robert Morris Lodge no 97 last summer painted outside of our buliding and rebulit our sign ,also put up a new old sign on our property, just a few years ago completely rewired our buliding. Today we are starting to paint the interior of Temple. our temple is 85 years old this year and we do really try to keep it well maintained. Hopefully we will also have a whole new heating system installed this fall .
This year I have plans to paint our Lodge and add insulation in the attic. A continuous stretch goal is to improve our relationship with the city officials.
This year I am taking a break from Freemasonry to focus on my health, family and vocation. My new heart valve is working fine and I am resting a lot to help my body recover.
As for me, I've got some goals, one for myself, two for my Lodge, and one for my temple.
As President of Centralia's Temple Association, I hope to get our roofing project done early in 2024, and get the moneys we borrowed from our Brothers to do it paid back to them quickly. This roof has been something that we've struggled with since before I was a member of the Lodge, it will be great to have a long term solution in place.
As Master of Doric Lodge, I hope to wipe out the backlog of Degrees that still remains from the time of Covid. I want to see all those EA's and FC's sitting in our Lodge become MM's this year. I also hope to see financial processes put into place so that the Lodge can make financial decisions easier, and with more confidence.
Personally, I hope to become more involved with Scottish Rite this year. Throughout my Masonic career, my involvement with the Rite has ebbed and flowed. That was always OK in my mind, because I felt that my responsibilities to Craft Masonry had to take priority, and those responsibilities were extensive. But now that they are lessening, I hope to have more time for the Scottish Rite.
I'll be giving my first Masonic presentation at a Masonic Education Day in the spring so that should be cool (assuming I can pull it off! :D ). I'm also planning to do some Masonic traveling to other jurisdictions.
As far as my lodge goes, we're making a lot of big changes and one of the things I'm looking to do directly is to start up a lodge book club to get more of our brothers reading on subjects relative to our lodge. I'm hoping to kick us off with Contemplative Masonry by Chuck Dunning.
Those sound like awesome plans! I'm sure that your presentation will go great!
Traveling to other Jurisdictions is something I really enjoy, and I hope that you do as well.
I love the Lodge book club idea. We tried to pull one off at my Lodge some years back, and it had quite a lot of interest at the start, but then it sort of faded away, as we did a lot less talking about whatever book we were supposed to reading, and a lot more general BSing. Looking back on it, I think we made two fundamental errors. First of all, we picked dull books I think, nothing very contemporary. But secondly, we lost the focus of the group, and it sort of just turned into a have lunch together thing. That was probably also related to our dull book selections. I think reading things like Bro. Dunning stand you a much better chance of success.
Keeping a group focused is always a challenge. Especially a group of brothers. :D
Just keep choosing more interesting books than we did! I think we looked at the Lodge Library for things we had lots of copies of and made that our selection criteria. Not our best move!