Dear Dedicated Members for Change,
One of the duties of Grand Masters is to travel around the jurisdiction and visit Lodges. Needless to say, there is a great diversity in those Lodges. Some big, some small, some active and involved in their communities, some very quiet and isolated. Some Lodges are located in big cities, and others are in the most rural and sparsely populated parts of California. All try to do their best to run a proper meeting, and all provide a friendly and hospitable atmosphere to the visiting Grand Master and Grand Lodge officers who accompany the Grand Master.
One of the best visits I have encountered to date occurred recently when I traveled to San Francisco and paid an official visit to Morse Lodge #257. This is a medium-sized Lodge with 57 members. Half the members came out for the official visit, and many other San Francisco and Bay Area Lodges sent representatives (about 60 people attended the visit).
Morse is a happy and active Lodge, and it showed.
Morse Lodge is a prime example of what I call the three-dimensional Lodge. All three elements are here: (1) The Lodge members know how to run a formal meeting, with full ritual and regalia. There is no hard and fast rule on how agendas should be structured or run, and the Codes are to liberally construed. Morse ran a comfortable meeting and had lots to talk about. Morse Lodge also has a great history in San Francisco, and the members spend time and attention to that history. (2) The Lodge is active in the community, working on projects to benefit community and charitable groups. (3) The Lodge has a very active social life, scheduling fun events for the members, including a Luau, a “Fiesta Mexicana”, and numerous other gatherings for the membership. A visit to the Morse Lodge website – www.morselodge257.org – displays a vibrant website for a vibrant Lodge. Three-dimensional Lodges are the Lodges of the future. To be successful in the 21st Century, and to thrive and grow, a Lodge must become three-dimensional.
And you don’t have to be a huge Lodge to be a three-dimensional Lodge. As noted, Morse #257 has less than 60 members.
Perhaps the thing that impressed me the most is that the members of this Lodge truly enjoyed each other as friends. That, to me, is an important element of fraternal life. At dinner, the members swapped stories and were lively in their conversations. At the meeting, there was the sense that everyone got along in this Lodge and were supportive of each other. No criticism or rancor or harsh debate. People truly were having a good time – and ultimately, this is what one should strive for in fraternal life.
F – L – T
Dave Rosenberg
Grand Master
Jurisdiction of California