Awesome Day - York Rite Festival

Today was the York Rite Festival in Des Moines.

Kurt has his post up about the Festival. It is worth popping over to read.


You can view the on line album by clicking here.
Click on the pictures to embiggen them.

The Temple is decorated for the Jingle Bell Bash as I told you before and looks really nice.







The Festival began at 7:30 AM which meant that I was up at 5:30 to drive to Des Moines (35 miles) and I got there early enough to open the front door. It is a huge bronze door and I love opening it up.

The Festival brings Masons from all over the state to get their degrees. There were guys there from as far away as Dubuque. The guy in the center is one of my Blogreaders. It was neat to meet him but I am disappointed that we didn't get a chance to visit.

The degrees of the York Rite are very important and meaningful degrees. They depict the building and completion of King Solomon's Temple and the dedication ceremony.

Next they move to the rebuilding of the Temple after the Babylonian Captivity and the finding of the long lost Master's Word which was lost during the Third (Master Mason) Degree. The council Degrees show how the word was saved and preserved for future generations.
















David Dryer is the Secretary Recorder of the Des Moines York Rite and a mainstay for the Festival. He works hard to get the cast lined up and performs in many of the degrees. This year he is the Grand Commander of the Grand Commandery for the state and is also going all over the state and he is just amazing.











The Amaranth served the traditional "maid-rite" and green-been lunch. I look forward to that each year.








Charlie Smithson performs in all of the degrees except the communicated Orders. He does many of the longer lectures. He is also amazing and is working for his Royal Arch Ritualist Award. In order to do that he had to take the part that I generally did and he did a masterful job. Much better than I did. I took a part I had not done for 30 years. When I was Grand Captain of the Host in 1978 the Grand High Priest decided that the Grand Officers would all do the parts of their office. I don't remember ever doing it since. I did OK I think. It was work to bring it "back"






Lighting the candles for Commandery.

This is an impressive ceremony but it was getting really late so I "escaped."








The class. There was one other person who joined the class later in the day for the Commandery Orders but wasn't in this picture. It was my pleasure to be Class Marshall and to take the Class from place to place and line them up for their obligations I really had a great day and made a couple of new friends.






In Des Moines it had been snowing but there wasn't any snow on the ground when I went outside.

In Ames there was snow on the bushes.

Not excited about that.

Thanks for stopping by, Have a great rest of the week-end. ARTYAL. Hugs, j