A Fellow Craft Degree

The sun shot a pillar of fire into the sky tonight. It was awesome.
Once again my camers caught this as I was driving about 65 mph on my way to Ankeny to attend a Lodge Meeting.

Just beautiful

Logic Lodge in Ankeny meets in a beautiful room on the top floor of the Community Activities Center. I had been there before for an Eastern Star meeting so I was pretty sure I could find it.

And I did. They put everything away after each meeting but it serves their purpose.
Besides it is the Brothers who make the Lodge and these Brothers are great. I knew a lot of them.

The son of one of our Past Grand Matrons of Eastern Star was getting his Second Degree tonight. His mother told me about it on Facebook so I wanted to go. He is getting his Third Degree next Tuesday and I can't go to that because it is Star night in Ames and I am an officer.
This is Grant and his dad. I have known Grant for several years. He was around a lot when his mother was Worthy Grand Matron. I knew that someday he would join the Lodge and will also join Eastern Star. He must have just turned 18 (the youngest you can join in Iowa) and will graduate from High School in (as he puts it) 57 days. And you can tell he is ready.
Russ was there also for the Degree. Russ was Worthy Grand Patron for Grant's mother and it was nice to see him there for the degree. Bryce Hildredth was in charge of the degree and he put me to work as Chaplain for the degree and then had me close the Lodge. I have not closed a Lodge since 1980 when I was Master. Scary.

Bryce does a wonderful staircase lecture for the Fellow craft degree and uses a slide show as visual aides when he gives it. He uses one that was written by Ralston James and it is very meaningful. At one point he mentions the candidate's mother and he used a picture of Grant's mother when he gave it. I was seated where I could see Grant's face and he grinned from ear to ear.

When we did our Degree Study at Specialis Procer Lodge on Saturday and one of the things we worked on was the Staircase lecture. Brother Wade wrote a paper on the lecture which you can read here. Speaking of Wade. When he came in to preside for the second section of the degree I noticed that he had a very good looking hat on. As I looked closer it was mine. He had borrowed it. I don't think that either of the officers who presided had advance notice but they both did a great job. It was also neat to talk to one of my Blog readers at the meeting.

On the way home I got to thinking about the number of Masonic Meetings that are being held all around the world each and every day (except Sundays and holidays) and how much volunteer memory work Masons to to bring in new members and of course the other good they do and it bothers me that some folks trash us. I helped a man in Arizona become a Mason and then he repudiated the fraternity in his public blog I still feel betrayed by him. I don't care if a person joins and does not find that it is for him and leaves. But to trash us and state in a public forum that we are evil and anti-Christian is just not right. I guess, however, that he is his own problem. There are six billion people in the world and when I find someone like him I can just cast him into my "outer darkness" and not have to deal with him.