It
is always interesting spending time at the lodge for the first time in a new
year. The turn from one meeting in the previous year to the next is something
that can’t really be explained but there seems to be a new life that is
breathed into the lodge as the page turns on the calendar. I guess it is
something about working for the better part of a year to put a plan together
and now that the time has come we are finally able to put it into action. And it
is also a time to catch up on some of the things that I have missed over the
last couple of months.
Last
night in particular, I spent much of the night jumping from conversation to
conversation either trying to figure out the next steps on a project already
started or looking for some way to get things off the ground. The lodge office,
the contents of which was moved last month, is something that we still have to
figure out and it is pretty astounding how much stuff was in that space which
was now staring me in the face. Needless to say, the pile in the upstairs room
was bigger than I expected.
Seeing
this mountain of masonic ephemera and memorabilia, I immediately started trying
to figure out a way to configure the room. What did we need to keep? What could
we possibly get rid of? Was there a way to have the space serve multiple
functions? Was there enough room in the closet for storage? These were just
some of the questions that initially came to mind which became more detailed as
I explored more options and more closely assessed what we had to work with.
There is tremendous potential that I am excited to see realized in the coming
months.
Toward
the end of the evening it was time to try and get another project off the
ground… raising dues. Obviously a topic that isn’t really going to be very
popular but we have gotten to a point that it is a necessity to have the
discussion (and debate if necessary). We are the smallest lodge in our district
(by a good margin) and we have, by far, the lowest dues in the district (maybe
in the entire commonwealth). That combination is obviously not going to work in
the short or the long term. While I don’t know quite yet what this little
journey will entail, we have at least gotten things started and the
conversation moving in the right direction. We will have to see what happens.
While
this past year was trying and draining in about every way possible hopefully
this year I can maintain the energy that we all have seemed to found in this
new year. There is a lot of work to be done, much more than the few things I
have mentioned and alluded to here and there, and the right people in place and
participating in the success of the lodge on a weekly basis. There are enough
sturdy shoulders to lift this lodge to the next level and I am definitely not
the only who has noticed this and we are all excited about where we are
heading.
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