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 2007 Newsletters
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Minnesota River Valley Lodge #6 July 2007 Volume #9, Issue #07 "Issued with the Permission of the M.W. Grand Lodge of Minnesota"
From the Master’s Desk, Greetings Brothers, Brother Thomas Petersen
has spoken at our last 2 meetings posing the question
"WILL THEY KNOW WE ARE MASONS BY OUR WORKS"
a program he is investigating to bring us a public identity.
Brother Thomas of Shakopee reported that he has asked many of the
townsfolk, "Where is the Masonic Hall in town?”
The answers, are along the lines of "A what?" and "Your a Mason,
what's that?" This is a problem for
our lodge. We should have a
presence in town, since we have been in this lodge hall for over 100 years.
Imagine holding an open, Meet the Masons Night, to find people from
the area just walking in to talk to us.
I think, if this is ever to happen it requires that we have a street
presence, us getting visibly out there, showing our faces to our towns and
our membership in this lodge. It
means we are out there for all to see in daily living, rather than just at a
lodge event.
The old way was to be silent about membership.
But, in the silent days a Mason was still known as one because of
public fund-raising in the towns and everyone knew everyone.
Letting yourself out there now as a Mason is not soliciting, it
is acknowledging that you are a man with character.
Do you wear your shirts with the
Masonic logos on the weekend outside of a Masonic event?
Is your Masonic ring on your finger? Have you a Blue Lodge
Sticker on your car? How many
people in Shakopee or your home town know you are a Mason do you think?
What better advertisement for our lodge than you talking with one
of them for a couple minutes?
I imagine many of us are thinking "no,
that just isn't my style."
OK, but could it be our style? Maybe it is not our style because we are
uneasy thinking a question may be asked by a curious stranger who we
fear may have wild and incorrect ideas about Freemasonry.
I think that being unprepared with a good response is the biggest
reason, it just isn't my style.
Answering "Masonry takes good men and makes them better" will not
win any converts, if left standing alone.
I suggest that I am more comfortable with putting a public face
on Masonry since hearing Masonry was "the first Promise Keepers" or
Masonry "is a men's support group."
One of those comments, hearsay has it came from PGM Andy Rice and
as the story goes was an answer he gave to a hostile questioner who
wanted to know why women were excluded.
She pondered the answer before responding "Oh" then dropped her
impromptu attack and walked quietly away. From an article in this
month's Grand Lodge Publication, I read Masonry has been researched and
found to have 4 components most important to the brethren.
1 - Ancient Unifying Ritual... 2 - Social...
3 - Intellectual... and 4 - Spiritual elements.
Make Promise Keepers, Men's support Group and these 4 elements
part of your response and you will have a useful answer allowing you to
get out there with wearing shirts, rings and sticking emblems on the car
with little to no concern.
We have these essential 4 elements already in our lodge.
If someone is really interested
you would have things to talk about.
Remember, we smile and walk away rather than engage in the rare
argument. So you see wearing
our identity isn't about beating people up. If they don't like your
answer, God bless them.
Those that do we may see walk in at our next Meet the Mason's Night.
Any contact in this way with the public would be a terrific
story, and teaching tool at our stated communications. On Future Lodging: We are still at the
stage of gathering input to enable us to make an informed decision on
future lodging. PGM
Mike S WM
The Chaplain’s Corner
You are forgiven.
Can you imagine any words more
beautiful than these? I remember a time when I was out driving on a
beautiful day. It was great day, the sun was shining and the air was crisp.
A couple of artistically formed clouds were dotting the sky. One of my
favorite tunes was playing and the wheels of my car were humming sweetly
over the road. Not a care in the world, when suddenly I noticed those
flashing lights behind me. “But officer, I couldn’t have been going more
that 55 mph”. Well, it seems I was. But the officer, being in good spirits
himself, told me, “Don’t let it happen again”. I was forgiven. What started
out to be a great day, quickly turned into a bad day but just as quickly
turned right back into a really, really wonderful day.
Let’s expand the scope of this thought.
Each of us has done some things that we are not terribly proud of. We may
well be carrying the guilt of these actions as heavy burdens and would love
to lay those burdens down, but how. Maybe we happened to step into church
one Sunday morning and the music was just right, the gospel and the sermon
both touched our hearts, we were moved to pray to be released from our
burdens. And the burdens were lifted. It wasn’t as simple as an officer
telling us to drive slower, and it probably wasn’t a voice coming down from
the rafters, but we knew, without a doubt, that we were forgiven. The spirit
of our compassionate and loving Father is always within us, and is always
guiding us, if we but choose to listen. He can release us from these burdens
and allow them to be put behind us. With a glorious feeling of relief, our
future, fresh and clean, full of new possibilities, will be waiting for us,
without the extra weight.
Forgiveness is one of the most important
issues we all face in life. We will never be free of the need for receiving
and giving forgiveness -- from God and from one another. Again and again, we
find the act of forgiveness a central theme in our book of Sacred Law, the
Bible. In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus showed his recognition of forgiveness by
including our request for God's forgiveness, and our offer of it to others,
as part of the prayer He taught us when He taught us to pray. Joseph's
brothers sold him into bondage, yet he forgave them. While Moses visited
Human nature
being what it is, we find it easier to nourish the thoughts of indignation.
Forgiveness releases us from whatever power a wrong (whether real or
imagined) holds over us. By forgiving, we no longer allow that event to
determine how we treat others. It no longer determines our thoughts and
actions.
We forgive so that we may free ourselves from our bondage to hatred, so that
we may be liberated from the destructive power of this anger.
Forgiveness in this sense is
rarely simple. How often do we say, we “forgive” another person, but still
hold a secret grudge? Because of its difficulty, forgiveness has to be
practiced.
We must
make peace with the past if we are to start anew, if we are to learn how to
subdue our discordant passions. We were given the gift of freewill, and we
have the choice of forgiving and forgetting, or of nurturing that anger and
leading a life of bitterness.
Our Masonic degrees have this element of
forgiveness in both the lectures and in the opening and the closing of our
lodge. In a very real sense, forgiveness offers us the opportunity to
practice Masonic virtues. We are taught that Charity is a central tenet of
Masonry. Forgiveness is a supreme act of Charity because we overlook a
brother's action and extend brotherly love to him. When we forgive a
brother, we set both of us free.
Faith and Hope are also the foundations
of our lodge. By forgiving, we demonstrate that we have Faith that our
brother, who may have wronged us, will want to rectify his actions. We
always have Hope that brotherly love will prevail against all odds.
There are scholars who believe that the
most important contribution that Christianity has made to the world was to
foster the concept of brotherly love. “Do onto others as you would have them
do onto you.” A brother who has wrongfully hurt us is still a brother. Has
it become passé for us to address one another as brothers? I hope not. In
part, our lodge needs to be a place of refuge where one can commit a human
failing and still receive forgiveness. We are taught to "whisper friendly
counsel" in an erring brother's ear. Yes, the brother may have erred toward
us personally, but are we not guiltier of tearing the fabric of our mystic
tie by being unforgiving? What a different world this would be if people
followed our Masonic dictates.
Our
lodge is a sanctuary where men from different walks of life can come
together in brotherly love, leaving the cares of the world outside. Our
lodge, with its canopy of heaven, offers an opportunity to learn Masonic
virtues and then to go into the world and share them. The root of
forgiveness is humility, and all of our Masonic work highlights this
characteristic. Let us live the work. Extend the hand of brotherly love and
let us both forgive and ask for forgiveness, and leave the past behind us.
Prayers for our Brothers and their Families
Please feel free to send me the names of
any of our Brothers and/or their family members, who may be in distress as
we pray to our creator for their comfort and relief. When we think of our
experiences in taking the third degree, we cannot help but remember the
words from Ecclesiastes: “Remember now thy creator . . .”
and please remember those listed below in your prayers. We name the
welfare of our brethren in our petitions because we love them; and knowing
our own need of their prayers, we realize their need of ours.
Be still – and know. . .
Email Addresses I would like to take this
opportunity and ask everyone to please keep the Lodge informed of any email
address changes that you may have.
With the ever changing world with technology we continue to use
emails and our Website to communicate Lodge events and communications that
need to be sent out. If you
happen to have an email address or a new email address and would like to add
it to our distribution list, please send them to Steve Scheffert at
ska@huntel.net.
I will forward them onto our
Secretary for the database once we have them in our distribution list.
For those that have emails with us, please remember that if your
email stops working and we get error messages back that they are
undeliverable, we remove your email from the distribution list. Thank You, Steve
"M Club Lunch" group If you work or live in Downtown Minneapolis ... A number of Brothers who work or live in downtown
The View from the
Healthy, Wealthy and Wise…
We all have heard that phrase throughout our lifetimes.
I was contemplating this phrase the other day using my Masonic “24
inch Gauge.” How, I thought,
would this correlate to the three key Masonic Pillars?
You probably see where I am going here… Let’s see, Beauty also
represents innocence of youth or if you would allow me the privilege to say…
Health? Strength can also
be said to represent Prime Adulthood – with a little stretch of the
imagination one could connect this with Wealth.
And the last pillar, Wisdom or Seasoned Adulthood, already matches.
Mmm, does this phrase
have Masonic roots? I doubt it,
but there it is (at least in my mind) another connection to a key Masonic
lesson. Now some of you
might be saying that I am forcing the connections, but I see it as a chicken
and egg dilemma. Are these
lessons omnipresent and the connections natural or do they drive us to make
the connections where none were ever intended.
I like to think that the former is more likely and the Craft is truly
Ancient with its messages. -- Lew
Gentlemen, Start Your Engines Brothers, Join us, along
with our Brother from Lebanon Lodge for great evening of exciting racing and
good camaraderie at Elko Speedway. The date is Saturday Night, August 18th
at 6:00. Cost is $15.00 per person. Guests are welcome. Use the sign up sheets
in lodge or call
KidsID – at the State Fair!
With summer now here so is Kids-ID.
There are several opportunities coming up where volunteers are still
needed to help with KidsId program.
(Since this is night of our August Stated, Wives of Brothers, Jobs and OES members are staffing this event - Thank you - Contact
As many of our brothers know, but some may
not, KidsID is a program sponsored and funded by the Grand Lodge of
This program is provided at no cost to
the public. The Grand lodge
loans out the cameras and provides the supplies - Our own WB
BEST OF ALL, IT’S
FUN, AS WELL AS REWARDING!!!
Newsletter Articles for the next newsletter will be due by August 14th. You may send articles to me for the newsletter; by any method you desire (email, fax, regular mail, etc…). Articles that are not received by the due date will be held over for the newsletter. We would also like to encourage the other organizations that are affiliated with MN River Valley Lodge #6, such as the Jobs Daughters, Eastern Star, Demolay, etc… to feel free to contribute items to our newsletter and to our Lodge’s Web Calendar. Thank You, Steve Scheffert (news@mn-rivervalley.org) 2224 Birch Circle Blair, NE 68008 Fax: 402-533-8344
9 Fast-Acting Motivation Tools You Can Create in 2 Minutes Short on time but still hoping
to make a change or two in your life? We've got just what you need. With
just a minute or two of your time you can create tools of motivation that
are guaranteed to get you moving and keep you going. Stay Tuned for item #2
next month A ugust BirthdaysOur best wishes to the following brothers who will celebrate their birthday in August:
From the Silent West: As our distinguished
Chaplain says, “Let us practice outside the Lodge what we practice in the
Lodge.” Since becoming a Mason,
I have changed my attitudes about many things.
One striking example is that when I see someone needing some help, I
no longer continue driving along thinking that it is “someone else’s
problem”. I saw a woman outside
the bakery trying to get her car trunk open while also holding a
football-field size box of doughnuts.
My first thought was: SEP – “someone else’s problem”.
I then immediately reversed my thinking, whipped a U-turn into the
adjacent parking spot, got out and helped her.
She was surprised and probably thought that I was going to steal the
bountiful volume of pastries.
After a “thank you” from her I nodded, smiled and hurried into my car so she
wouldn’t gush a bunch of “oh, you’re so kind” and so forth.
I wasn’t there to be gushed on.
I felt a responsibility to help out and nothing more. While at the breakroom
at work, I noticed a money bag with likely several hundred dollars in cash.
No, it never entered my mind to take off with it.
But, for the briefest moment I again thought:
SEP. Although no one at
that early hour would likely walk off with the money, I decided to sit with
it and wait. About 20 minutes later a
man that looked like he was servicing the vending machines walked into the
breakroom. Offering him the
money bag, I asked him if this was his money.
He thanked me profusely and said that he was looking for that.
I started to leave, but he insisted on handing me three $20s from it.
I politely refused telling him that it wasn’t my money.
Then I had to politely
refuse again. Then I had to
REALLY and FIRMLY politely refuse the gift, then I bolted out of there
before things got ugly. These are examples of
Masonic relief and stewardship of others.
Please do not interpret these examples of Masonic relief as “gee,
what a great person T.J. is”.
Instead, reflect on them as examples of how we live our lives as Masons,
practicing outside the Lodge what we have learned inside the Lodge.
The Pickle Jar The pickle jar as far
back as I can remember sat on the floor beside the dresser in my parents'
bedroom. When he got ready for
bed, Dad would empty his pockets and toss his coins into the jar.
As a small boy I was always fascinated at the sounds the coins made
as they were dropped into the jar.
They landed with a merry jingle when the jar was almost empty.
Then the tones gradually muted to a dull thud as the jar was filled.
I used to squat on the floor in front of the jar and admire the
copper and silver circles that glinted like a pirate's treasure when the sun
poured through the bedroom window.
When the jar was filled,
Dad would sit at the kitchen table and roll the coins before taking them to
the bank. Taking the coins to
the bank was always a big production. Stacked neatly in a small cardboard
box, the coins were placed between Dad and me on the seat of his old truck.
Each and every time, as we drove to the bank, Dad would look at me
hopefully. "Those coins are
going to keep you out of the textile mill, son. You're going to do better
than me. This old mill town's
not going to hold you back." Also, each and every time, as he slid the box
of rolled coins across the counter at the bank toward the cashier, he would
grin proudly. "These are for my
son's college fund. He'll never work at the mill all his life like me."
We would always
celebrate each deposit by stopping for an ice cream cone. I always got
chocolate. Dad always got
vanilla. When the clerk at the
ice cream parlor handed Dad his change, he would show me the few coins
nestled in his palm. "When we
get home, we'll start filling the jar again." He always let me drop the
first coins into the empty jar.
As they rattled around with a brief, happy jingle, we grinned at each other.
"You'll get to college on pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters," he
said. "But you'll get there.
I'll see to that." The years
passed, and I finished college and took a job in another town.
Once, while visiting my
parents, I used the phone in their bedroom, and noticed that the pickle jar
was gone. It had served its
purpose and had been removed. A lump rose in my throat as I stared at the
spot beside the dresser where the jar had always stood.
My dad was a man of few words, and never lectured me on the values of
determination, perseverance, and faith. The pickle jar had taught me all
these virtues far more eloquently than the most flowery of words could have
done. When I married, I told
my wife Susan about the significant part the lowly pickle jar had played in
my life as a boy. In my mind, it defined, more than anything else, how much
my dad had loved me. No matter
how rough things got at home, Dad continued to doggedly drop his coins into
the jar. Even the summer when
Dad got laid off from the mill, and Mama had to serve dried beans several
times a week, not a single dime was taken from the jar. To the contrary, as
Dad looked across the table at me, pouring catsup over my beans to make them
more palatable, he became more determined than ever to make a way out for
me. "When you finish college,
Son," he told me, his eyes glistening, "You'll never have to eat beans again
- unless you want to." The first Christmas
after our daughter Jessica was born, we spent the holiday with my parents.
After dinner, Mom and Dad sat next to each other on the sofa, taking
turns cuddling their first grandchild.
Jessica began to whimper softly, and Susan took her from Dad's arms.
"She probably needs to be changed," she said, carrying the baby into
my parents' bedroom to diaper her.
When Susan came back into the living room, there was a strange mist
in her eyes. She handed Jessica
back to Dad before taking my hand and leading me into the room.
“Look", she said softly, her eyes directing me to a spot on the floor
beside the dresser. To my
amazement, there, as if it had never been removed, stood the old pickle jar,
the bottom already covered with coins.
I walked over to the pickle jar, dug down into my pocket, and pulled
out a fistful of coins. With a gamut of emotions choking me, I dropped the
coins into the jar. I looked up
and saw that Dad, carrying Jessica, had slipped quietly into the room.
Our eyes locked, and I knew he was feeling the same emotions I felt.
Neither one of us could speak.
This truly touched my heart. I know it has yours as well.
Sometimes we are so busy
adding up our troubles that we forget to count our blessings.
Never underestimate the power of your actions. With one small gesture
you can change a person's life, for better or for worse.
God puts us all in each other's lives to impact one another in some
way.
List of Upcoming Events:
July
August
Visit the
Lodge Website and view the Lodge calendar for our complete list of events.
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