Sunday, May 13, 2007

A Roof over our Heads

For the most part I have been using this blog as my personal observations going through the degrees and their impact of my perception of the world. While this is the beauty of Freemasonry, there is a practical side to the Craft, and that is the lodge where we meet.

The building is a historical landmark and was erected in 1915, it is a stand alone lodge. I guess what I mean by that is that it isn’t part of a Scottish Rite temple (if that makes sense, I’m sure my more learned brothers will help correct my terminology). It’s a basic lodge, but as I have written before, the lodge brings a sense of comfort to me; the oldness of the building in my opinion is something to be revered, not necessarily shunned. Granted there are some things I would like to see updated, like our webpage for instance, we don’t have one, and I think with a lodge of such rich military history that we should be proudly displaying our heritage. Still, baby steps is the key to any successful endeavor, and the main issue for this past year has been to replace our aging roof. The WM has had a lot of heartache about this topic because of execution of the roof repair. The lodge had three contractors come in and bid and the lodge acceptable what they considered the most reputable and familiar company to the brethren.

Well long story short, the roofing company fell short of their agreed upon work and we had heavy rains the following week which caused damage to the lodge room, and ruined the carpet, this was due to the shoty work done by the roofing company. I have learned that the biggest test of ones leadership is not when everything is going your way, but rather the test of your character and leadership is when you face adversity. All of the great leaders in the world are considered so because when they were leaders everything seemed lost, but because of their leadership they shined, George Washington is best known for this very thing. Now look at Chester Aruther who was known for being a "placeholder", and nothing more. Everyone has their own opinion about how to move forward regarding the roofing situation, and many are already starting to nip at the heels of the WM trying to get their voice heard, and have passed judgment on the WM without allowing him to get the situation under control.

The time is now for the Worshipful Master to show the rest of the lodge his leadership.

2 comments:

Bro. Ken said...

Sorry to hear about the leak, but it brings an interesting observation about lodge structure to mind. Let us know how your WM handles it, or if the other Brethren will make there voices heard on the subject.

Anonymous said...

What is the deal with leaky roofs on masonic lodges? Our current lodge building has had roof problems since we built it in 1965.And reading the old minutes of our lodge our previous building built in 1927 began having roof problems within a year and continued to have them till they built our current building.Even our 1st building used from 1905 till 1927 had roof problems.I think it's some kind of conspiracy:)