Adapting Brother Williams’ Three Pillars To Blazing Star Lodge.

Education: We are starting this, I am standing here talking your ears off and it is a start. However, I should not do this alone. Lodge education comes from everyone. Anyone can do research and write a paper, then bring it here to present. It is encouraged! Also, if you heard or read a published paper and it inspired you, please bring it in, read it to the Lodge, pass it around. Masonic education is what makes us better men. We learn from each other and we teach each other. This is not a classroom; this is where we work. We knock way the superfluous pieces of our ashlars and we get a little better each time we leave the Lodge. Not because we paid the bills after proper audit, but because we were able to take away something that inspired us to be a better man. We take that inspiration out into our communities, back to our families, and with us at work. We then inspire another, and they another, and around and around it goes. This is how we make good men better and how we make the world better.

Fellowship: There is no reason, even during COVID, why we cannot meet here in the Lodge and talk about Masonic topics, about the Buffalo Bills or Buffalo Sabres, about anything really. We can order a pizza or tacos and share a couple of beers. Our Brothers built this Lodge in 1906, many with their own hands. Brothers for decades since then have maintained the building and grounds, cleaned the floors, cutting the grass, changing lightbulbs, installed water lines, filled the toilet paper, and much more. Let us honor them by enjoying the fruit of their labors. Our Lodge is a huge jewel that many are not lucky enough to have. If anyone is interested in arranging a monthly, or weekly time to meet here and discuss Masonic topics and have some Fellowship, please let me know after Lodge or anytime by email, text, or phone.

Ritual: We got some Masonic education, we then had some fun and Fellowship, now it is time to work. To take the knowledge we learned through the education we received, together with the bonds of Brotherhood we formed in Fellowship, and apply all of it to our Ritual. I want us to be perfect at the Ritual, but it is okay if we are not. Delivering a good ritual and backing it up with a proper explanation of the ritual afterward is essential. Because without the explanation and discussion after, we might as well do it all in Latin.