Year: 2015

In your present condition of darkness, what do you most desire? Light! This is a question every Master Mason is asked after he takes each obligation. This answer has many meanings.…Learn MoreFrom the East – January 2016

This month is always a busy one. It is the end of the year. A time that often has work pressures as business close their financial books and we may struggle to meet professional commitments. It is a time of social obligations with end of year and holiday gatherings, parties and celebrations. …Learn MoreFrom the East – December

“You never know what’s around the corner. It could be everything. Or it could be nothing. You keep putting one foot in front of the other, and then one day you look back and you’ve climbed a mountain.”

By: Tom Hiddleston…Learn MoreFrom the East – December

Brethren,

One of the things that sets our fraternity apart from many organization is our ritual. Whether you are proficient in it or not it has remained unchanged over hundreds of years. …Learn MoreFrom the East- November

It is often difficult to distinguish between Masonry and the Enlightenment. The lofty ideas of brotherly love, charity, truth, religious tolerance fidelity, and uprightness of the philosophers and scientists of the time were the ideas of freemasons. Preeminent thinkers like Sir Francis Bacon, John Locke, Sir Isaac Newton, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Voltaire and our founding fathers were by in large intensely religious men who showed by studying nature and using our god given reasoning power we could see God’s work around us. They argued for education, religious tolerance and belief in a Supreme Being.…Learn MoreFrom the East – October

As we start the month of June and begin thoughts of summer and vacation it is worth a brief reflection on what this month means in the history of our fraternity and country.

On June 5, 1730 the Grand Lodge of England issue an edict for Daniel Coxe to act as Provincial Grand Master of the Provinces of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.…Learn MoreFrom the East – June

It is said Geometry is the first and noblest of the sciences and the basis on which the superstructure of freemasonry is erected. It is discussed as one of the liberal sciences in the Middle Chamber lecture, again in the Master Mason lecture with the 47th problem of Euclid, and its importance to operative masons in shaping their structures is visible.…Learn MoreFrom the East – April 2015

In February we honor our Presidents with Presidents Day. Its worthy of noting that 14 of our presidents were Master Masons and 2 started their degrees, but due to the rigors of being elected to public office did not achieve Master Mason. All of them were proud of their Masonic heritage. Did they become presidents because they were masons? Most likely not. Did masonry help form their character into the type of person with the judgment and integrity of a leader to be president? Most definitely! The four virtues of Fortitude, Prudence, Temperance, Justice and tenants of brotherly love relief and truth help form our character that, “The world may know when a person is said to be a member of it he is one who’s hand is guided by justice and who’s heart is expanded by benevolence”.…Learn MoreFrom the East- February

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and New Years Eve. I would think most of us either sang or heard the tune of “Auld Lang Syne”, the new years tradition. A song millions of people around the world knows and loves. We are moved by its message of old friends reminiscing the past. We also tend to reach out to others we have not seen in year(s) and keep the ties that time may have lapsed. Our Poet Laureate Brother, Robert Burns, wrote that song. Brother Burns had commitment to the ideals of the Enlightment, and these ideals came from his Masonic Lodge, and tradition has it that he was installed as Poet Laureate in a lodge. …Learn MoreFrom the East – January