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Hunter Rigdon

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Apr 13, 2023, 11:09:27 AM4/13/23

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April 2023 Edition

Oviedo Lodge Latest News and Updates

As we welcome April, we want to take a moment to acknowledge the wonderful things that happened in March.

Firstly, R∴ W∴ Paul Miller celebrated his 55th year as a Freemason, and we presented him with a certificate during our last stated communication. He also received over a thousand likes and congratulatory messages from Brothers all around the world.

Last Saturday, we hosted our annual Oviedo Lodge Picnic, and it was a fantastic event filled with delicious food, great company, and new memories. We were pleasantly surprised by a visit from Br. Wesley Dolinski and his family. If you missed out on this event, don't worry! We'll have more opportunities for fun and fellowship in the near future.

We also had the chance to work a booth at the Taste of Oviedo event, which generated a lot of interest from potential new members. We're excited to welcome more individuals into our Lodge, and we already have some excellent men who have submitted their petitions and are eagerly awaiting their Entered Apprentice degree.

Looking ahead to this month, we encourage our Brothers to return to the Lodge if they haven't been in a while. As we continue to grow, we need individuals who want to help us rebuild our foundation and ensure the longevity of our Lodge. Education, Charity, and Brotherhood are the keys to our success, and we need your help to achieve our goals.

From the East

My brothers, March was a great month for us. We had another successful lodge picnic. It was very nice to see so many of our brothers and their families enjoying quality time with each other and strengthening the bond of fellowship. I'd like to thank our Junior Warden, Gregg Connell, for making sure that we had all the supplies necessary to make this event as successful as possible.

As we get started in the new month the craft is busy planning even more social outings such as Drive Shack, Axe Throwing, and Monthly cigar nights. We are also currently getting ready to put on an EA degree for four new members on May 15th. I'd like to give a special thanks to our Senior Warden brother Wascar for stepping up and sitting as Worshipful Master for the degree.

Fraternally,

Hunter Rigdon

Worshipful Master

E: W...@OviedoLodge.org

Secretary's Desk

My Brothers,

If you haven’t already paid your dues, it's easier than ever now to pay your dues, as you can pay with a credit or debit card by going to our website at www.oviedolodge.org. Just click on "Credit Card Payments" in the top banner.

As mentioned previously, due to some significant delays in processing, we would prefer that you NOT pay through Circumscribe at this time. If you have any questions about whether you’ve paid this year’s dues, Dues Cards, Circumscribe, etc. please reach out to me.

Finally – Next year my wife Angie and I will be starting our transition to living full-time in North Carolina. Please consider whether or not you could fill the Secretary position for our Lodge starting in 2024. The ideal candidate will have decent computer, communication, and organization skills, and be able to spend an average of 3 – 4 hours per week (outside of Lodge meetings and activities) on necessary administrative tasks required for Lodge operations. If interested, please see me for details, and watch for upcoming Secretary Training classes offered periodically through the Grand Lodge.

Fraternally,

W∴ Steve Kimball
Secretary, PM
E: Secr...@OviedoLodge.org

Important Upcoming Dates

April 10th - Stated Communications
April 12th - MLT Training @ St. Cloud No. 221
April 15th - Pilgrimage Day @ FL Masonic Home
April 24th - Stated Communications
May 12th - Drive Shack Social Outing
May 15th - Entered Apprentice Degree

Charity of the Month

South Seminole DeMolay
DeMolay, the premier international youth leadership organization, striving to shape young men into leaders of character.

Mason Education

A Lodge At Work

By: Walter M. Macdougall

A Lodge is a certain number of Masons duly assembled, with the Holy Bible, Square, and Compasses, with a charter or warrant empowering them to work.

Ask a brother how his lodge is doing, and his answer is very apt to be either that things are going well because there has been a lot of work to do or that the life of the lodge is at a low ebb because there hasn't been much work lately. Ten to one, he is talking about degree work. There is no doubt that performing degrees is a vital part of the work of a lodge, but it is a common short circuit in our Masonic thinking to conclude that exemplifying our degrees constitutes the work of our lodge. Degree work is a means not an end.

Another possible and closely related short circuit lurks in the word jurisdiction. In our everyday Masonic usage, this term signifies the geographic area from which a lodge draws its candidates. Just as the work of a living lodge embraces much more than doing degrees so there is more to the concept of a lodge's jurisdiction than the place a lodge draws its candidates. The working of a lodge of Freemasons is a many-faceted business that takes place, not just within a lodge hall or just among its members, but within the lodge's jurisdiction of compassion and service.

Suppose we find ourselves standing outside "Builders Lodge" in a place called "Needsville, " Here, according to our ritual, gathers a certain number of masons duly assembled, inspired by the Sacred Book, and guided by the compasses and the square. They are, by a charter, empowered to work-that is they have the honor of laboring as Freemasons. On reflection, we realize that Builders' Lodge, like all Masonic lodges, exists even when there are no masons meeting in the building. It exists in the shared belief system of the brethren and in their united endeavor to give concrete evidence of their beliefs through their service to others.

Every Mason who has received his training in Builder's Lodge should know that the dimensions of his lodge spread symbolically to the ends of the earth and that nothing short of universal compassion is the aim of the Fraternity. In more immediate terms, the dimensions of Builder's Lodge spread across Needsville to the borders of the lodge's jurisdiction. Jurisdiction defines a certain community of lodge members and wayfaring brethren alike. It is a community within the community at large, a community of the Craft, alive and operative.

As in the case of the Masonic terms work and jurisdiction, the word "lodge" with its varied meanings may cause confusion. Your wife asks you if you will be at home this evening. "No" you answer, "I am going to lodge. " In this response "lodge" means a place and an event. You are signifying a communication of the officers and brethren at the lodge hall. Such usage indicates a partial manifestation of the lodge, but, in this last instance, "lodge" identifies an entity neither limited to a particular place or to a special event. Put simply, lodge meetings represent a vital and special function of the larger lodge which is the local community of Masons. The lodge hall houses the operating and training center for this larger lodge. It houses the nerve center if you will. From this place of focus, the leadership of the Master, assisted by his officers and his committees, radiates outward and assumes the responsibility for "putting the Craft to labor" within the lodge's jurisdiction of compassion and caring. [These officers are the future masters in training. It is in leadership training, instruction on how to build an administrative team, and in schooling Masonic educators that our Grand Lodges play their most essential role.]

Consider the extensive dimensions of the lodge's mission! This labor falls into three categories all of which are interrelated and partake of the vision of the Craft.

(a) Care for the Masonic family

(b) Serving the needy and building a better community

(c) Training the builders

"Take care of the widows and the orphans' " this is the great charitable charge we have received from our operative predecessors. This noble charge still stands, but it has been expanded to the entire Masonic family. Our obligations have enlarged with our growing conception of what we as Freemasons came here to do and as new needs have demanded. We feel it is our wider calling to support the aging members, the young Masons laboring to bring up their families amidst an enlarging circle of dangers, and our youth who may find their first introduction to the great beliefs of humanity within our youth organizations.

Who are we as Masons if we do not look after our own? But there is more. What do we understand about our work if we curtail our mission within our own Masonic house? We come to work upon a fairer city of humanity this is what we intend to do. It is our vision to bring a new era of hope and joy within our lodge's jurisdiction of compassion and service. It is the result of our calling as builders within our given jurisdictions of compassion and service which constitutes the work of our lodges.

We all like to see a large number of brothers out to our meetings, for, after all, fraternal companionship is one of the great joys of Freemasonry. However, it is not the primary business, or even the business at all, of the master or his officers to entertain the brethren in an attempt to populate the "sidelines. " Lodges at one time may have served as places of entertainment, they may properly do so now, from time to time, for happiness is part of our business, but lodges are not primarily about "sidelines." They are about main lines of action and vision. Masons, even those who seldom attend lodge meetings, are duty-bound to practice and to live Masonry within their own Needsville.

Recently I had the opportunity to present a fifty-year veterans medal. As so often is the case, the receiving brother began to apologize for not having come to lodge more often. When he was done, a young mason rose and said, "Don't you apologize. I watched you all the years I was growing up in this community, and I wanted to be like you. You and your life are why I am here."

It is the master and his officers' duty to see that the living of Freemasonry throughout the jurisdiction is not haphazard. Every member according to his time and his capabilities should be given some part to play in the work of the lodge, as it promotes human conversation, as it conciliates true friendships, as it stands for justice and equality, and as it "restores peace to troubled minds." It is from the "nerve center" of the living lodge that such direction and leadership of the Craft must come. All this is implied in the phrase "a lodge duly assembled"-assembled, coordinated for the accomplishment of its work.

All successful lodges are operative lodges. Find such a lodge and you will discover leaders (or a leader) who knows how to bind the brethren in a significant expression of the Masonic enterprise, and who have the skill to set them to accomplish this purpose for themselves. Perhaps we have not given enough thought to how much skill, how much-informed art such leadership demands. [And this too must be primary in the concern and the services of a Grand Lodge to its lodges.]

Perhaps we have not sufficiently considered how much-sophisticated skill is demanded if we are to help create within the community that communication, networking, and coordination which is now required in the building of a better world. Certainly, we all tend to forget that below all that we do, welling up and giving strength to all building endeavors, are those moral principles which illuminate and stimulate the Masonic vision.

So now we return to where we began this exploration of a lodge and its work. We find ourselves realizing why our degree work is a vital means and not an end in itself. At the "nerve center," the officers and those members who possess the special gift of being ritualistic teachers assemble to set another man upon the degree journey-that greatest gift which the lodge has to give a brother. One man at a time, heart to heart, mind to mind, the Craft builds its working force. The meaning which gives significance and purpose to the builder's life and to his labors must be discovered it must be journeyed after. This is the purpose of the degree journey, and this is the work of the degree givers, to share the old guideposts, to go in companionship as far as a brother can go, and to celebrate the new understanding and dedication found.

The brethren of Builders' Lodge have a vision to give to Needsville. In giving that vision, the brethren, themselves, will come to understand its immense value. Through the work of the lodge which is going on within its jurisdiction of compassion and service, the brethren will be drawn back to that "nerve center." In that "sacred retreat of friendship and virtue," they will find the quiet joy of renewal. When the Sacred Book is spread and the working tools displayed, there will be created a special place apart from the press of time and the urgency of life's demands. It is a place we name "our lodge. " It is a place from whence we go out renewed and shoulder to shoulder to work again.

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"Wherever they came:' writes Mr. Hope in his Essay on Architecture, "in the suite of missionaries, or were called by the natives, or arrived of their own accord, to seek employment, they appeared headed by a chief surveyor, who governed the whole troop, and named one man out of every ten, under the name of warden, to overlook the other nine, set themselves to building temporary huts for their habitation around the spot where the work was to be carried on, regularly organized their different departments, fell to work, sent for fresh supplies of their brethren as the object demanded, and, when all was finished, again they raised their encampment, and went elsewhere to undertake other work."