The Tao of Masonry

Connecticut may seem a long way from Haiti, both geographically and culturally, but five years ago, members of the Haitian community requested permission to form a lodge. After a year under dispensation, during which they had to learn the very different  Connecticut workings, they were chartered as Universal Fraternity Lodge No. 149 in 2006.
The following article was originally written by RW Carl Ek for The Connecticut Freemason.

Universal Fraternity Lodge No. 149 – Their Strength is in Prayer
by Carl G. Ek

The sound of singing could be heard in the anteroom as the lodge opened. The brothers again joined in song as a delegation from the Grand Lodge was received – in French, of course, as this is the native language of so many of the brothers of Universal Fraternity Lodge No. 149.

Yet the music lacked the joy usually associated with the brothers of this lodge. The songs were a capella, with the organist away, dealing with personal issues. Pro-tem officers filled the West and the secretary’s chair. And while the room was well filled, the majority of brothers were almost certainly visitors.

Recently installed Worshipful Master Leslie St. Victor welcomed his visitors – RW’s Deputy Grand Master Charles A. Buck, Jr., Grand Senior Warden James T. McWain, and Grand Senior Deacon Simon R. LaPlace, plus a number of past and present District Deputies and Associate Grand Marshals. All were present to bring early support to brothers just beginning to learn the horrors of Haiti’s earthquake. Universal Fraternity Lodge No. 149, Stratford, was chartered at the Grand Lodge of 2006, but nearly all of its charter members were made Masons in their native Haiti. These good brothers bring traditions of their homeland to their new Grand Lodge, making a positive impression on those who have had the pleasure to visit their communications and celebrations.

In Haiti, it was clear there was nothing to celebrate. The poorest country in the western hemisphere, Haiti has been described as a country lacking food, clean water, medical facilities, infrastructure, or even a working government – and this was before the earthquake. On January 16, less than a week after the quake, even factual information was hard to come by.

WM St. Victor emotionally filled in some of the facts that were known concerning “the inexplicable calamity of the island of Haiti” as it affected members of his lodge. His mom was uninjured, and he was planning to go to Haiti to bring her back to Connecticut. His father-in-law had lived for a half century in Brooklyn, New York before deciding to return to his homeland. His home was flattened; his own 98 year-old mother and an infant survived, but he did not. Bro. Leslie knew of at least six of his relatives who had been taken by the quake and its aftershocks.

The sister of one brother worked for the Archdiocese of Haiti. She died in the collapse of the cathedral, as did the Archbishop. Another brother had seven relatives – including his father and father-in-law – living in the same house. What was left of the structure had been shown several times on television news, but he could get no information about his family. All that he was told was that there were “bad smells” coming from the flattened dwelling.

The Master said that he and his brothers were, as best, coping, “not understanding why, not understanding how, not understanding how much their poor little country would have to suffer.” Against that backdrop, all present took part in a program of hope. “We pray for those who survive,” said WM St. Victor, who asked all present to “learn from the devastation how merciful can be the Almighty.”

Noting that “there is strength in prayer,” the Master led the group in the reading of several psalms, some familiar, others less so. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want…  He restoreth my soul…  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” (Psalm 23:1,3 4) “I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” (Psalm 42:9) “Have mercy upon me, O God…” (Psalm 51) “Make haste, O God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O Lord… But I am poor and needy: make haste unto me, O God: thou art my help and my deliverer; O Lord, make no tarrying.” (Psalm 70:1,5) “Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee? Shew us thy mercy, O Lord, and grant us thy salvation.” (Psalm 85:7) The readings were concluded by the singing of the “Haitian Faith Battle Song,” en Francais, certainment.

A number of visiting brothers stepped forward as early responders to MW Arthur H. Carlstrom’s request that Connecticut brothers wishing to help in Haitian relief send checks to he Universal Fraternity Lodge Relief Fund. Worshipful Master Tony Foote of Corinthian Lodge No. 104, Stamford, presented a check for $1,000, and RW Steven Bowen delivered a Temple Lodge No. 65 check for $2,120. Bro. Chris Buck, Senior Warden of Ansantawae Lodge No. 89, Milford, delivered the proceeds of a collection taken the night before at his lodge. He was startled
to find exactly $149 in cash donations.

Several brothers mentioned gifts to other relief agencies, while a number noted that they have not yet met but would be making donations as soon as their lodges opened. In total, over $5,500 had already been donated by lodges and brothers present in the 5 days after the initial earthquake, with promises of far more in the upcoming days.

RW Deputy Grand Master Charles A. Buck, Jr. noted his sorrow that his first visit to Universal Fraternity Lodge was under such circumstances. He noted that Freemasons around the state share these brothers’ pain, and will do all they can to lessen it.

Worshipful Master Leslie St. Victor was eloquent in his sadness. “We are asking for prayer. We will be whole again. Please pray for us.” And, as he said quietly to one of the brothers in the Grand Lodge suite as they met in the East, “We’ll be all right. We’ll be all right.”

What a difference a year makes! Last year Friendship Lodge finished up one of the best Apple Harvest fund raisers in recent memory, all the while dodging the rocks and ruts of the construction going on at the front of our building. This year we sold slightly more fried apple wedgies than last year – by 5:30 pm on Sunday we actually sold out of the 1,000 Cortlands that we’d bought. The word it definitely getting around about our delicious, tasty apple treats. We had an impressive number of repeat customers – some of them within a half hour of their first purchase!

Unfortunately, we had quite a bit of chopped steak left over, both cooked and defrosted. Ironically, we think that this is because the weather on Saturday was so nice – as in warm in the mid-80s – that people were too hot to eat regular food, and instead merely snacked on apple treats. Since the meat had already been paid for, some of the brothers on clean-up detail took it home (I’ve got a couple of bags in the freezer, just waiting for me to add it to a nice tomato sauce), and some of it was donated to the soup kitchen that uses our lodge hall during the day. This is the first year that we haven’t donated any healthy apples to them.

Although our profits weren’t as high as they were last year, we’re pleased that our expenses for the year are more under control. We’ve done a lot of repair and maintenance work, both inside and out in the last year, and the little bit that we have to go requires more time and sweat than actual money, so overall we’re in pretty good shape.

Here are some pictures of the 2007 Apple Harvest, along with a nice shot of the completed front of the building.

And once again the thanks go out to the unsung (‘cos I’m not singing) heroes of the annual festival. We’d get nowhere without the usual dozen or so people who come down every morning to open up or stay until late to clean up. Again, great work and I’m sure that all of the members of Friendship Lodge thank you and your wives and/or partners for the hours that you put in. We certainly could not have made it a success without you.

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Okay, say what you will; but how can I not mention a golf tourney with a name like this?

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The Friendship Lodge “Year of Giving” program is still going well, and for the third major collection of items for the troops overseas, the several local civic groups have organized a benefit concert.

Internationally acclaimed performer and songwriter Elisa Korenne will be headlining the concert on Friday evening, June 8th 2007 that will take place at the American Legion Hall on Main Street, right next door to Friendship Lodge.

Ms. Korenne, as seen from the reviews on her website, provides “edgy and elegant” acoustic and rock music, and has been compared to Tori Amos and Sheryl Crowe (presumably according to her musical style and not to Ms. Crowe’s misunderstood attempt at environmental humor).

The concert will also feature Connecticut rock’n'roll band Second Chance, who will play favorites from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Adding to the fun will be the musical talents of another local band featuring a Past Master of Friendship Lodge.

Tickets are available for a $15 donation to the Year of Giving Benefit. Dancing will be encouraged, and the American Legion hosts a cash bar.

For more information, please see the details on the benefit concert website.

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Actually, more like 96 jars.

Quart jars, that is.

Yes, at the end of January I once again donned my operative apron to cook about 96 quarts of tomato sauce.

Why so much, you ask? Because, you know, that’s like 24 gallons of sauce. You could overflow a bathtub with that much sauce.

The answer is that I needed a lot of sauce to serve over the 54 pounds of ziti and 160 meatballs. Along with the bushel of salad, and the several dozen loaves of bread, of course.

Pasta Dinner 2007
Click the pic to see the online album

The First Congregational Church of Southington has a mission trip for the high school-aged confirmands (those that are about to be confirmed), and for the last few years the missions send them to places that need some manpower. Usually they are involved with other groups that rebuild or refurbish churches and schools. This year, they are heading down south to assist with some of the damage from last year’s Hurricane Katrina. About a dozen or so are going, and while they will be put up in shelters, they do need to pay for transportation costs.

A few years ago, seeing the success of the Chicken Pie Scholarship dinner in the Fall, Reverend Rick asked my wife if she’d be interested in doing something similar to help the kids defray the transportation costs. My wife has a heart of gold, so naturally she volunteered my services. She volunteers my service whenever somebody needs to cook for a lot of people. In fact, one year, a couple of the church members had seen me in the kitchen so often that they asked her “Is that man a caterer? Because he’s pretty good and we’d like to have him give us a price on a party.” Naturally, I was a bit upset to learn that she told them that I was only her husband. Even more upsetting is that she sent them away without giving me a shot at bidding on the party. No, I’m not a professional cook, but if somebody wants to pay me for throwing a party, I think it’s only fair to give it due consideration.

The first year that we did this I learned something: no matter how accustomed you are at cooking for family and friends, cooking for large groups (we consistently have between 150 to 200 people) is just not the same. Yes, in theory one just takes a recipe and scales it up, but in practice it’s really difficult to work with the equivalent of four or five 5-gallon buckets of sauce. I tend to make meat sauces, so I needed to keep a pot separate for the vegetarians and cholesterol watchers. And I had to tone down the spiciness. And watch the herbs. And keep stirring.

And can you believe that some people can’t have wine in their sauce? The sulfites give them rather unpleasant reactions. Good thing that somebody warned the minister.

I also discovered that one is not even allowed to drink wine in the church while preparing sauce. Actually, the prohibition probably extends to more than just while making sauce – I suspect that they don’t want anyone drinking wine while cooking anything at all.

Like I said – it’s just not the same.

Anyway, by the third year we we had gotten the hang of it, and I’m pleased to say that this year was one of the best ever. We served about 170 people, and the dozen or so confirmands came down to serve and help clean up, and we were out of there by 9:30 – the earliest ever. Naturally we had some help from people who were carefully screened for the ability to work with sharp tools, hot pans, and who wouldn’t mind being around me for two days. And for the token bit of Masonic content, I’d like to thank Brother Ed for staying after dinner to help with the dishes, and his wife Polly who managed to not ask me about joining Order of Eastern Star as we scrubbed the pots.

We had some leftovers, so we made up large Ziplock bags of ziti and my wife ladled in some sauce and tossed in a few meatballs, and sold them the next morning after the services as “ready made dinners.” The dinner raised about $1,500 after expenses, and the only thing that we had left over was a large bag of ziti and some meatballs.

Anyone want to guess what I had for lunch for the rest of the week?

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I’ve written elsewhere that once made a Mason, we can’t very well remove our aprons and be “off duty“, as everything is colored by our new frame of reference. Accordingly, even while not in lodge one will often find me acting in various Masonic capacities. Last weekend found me – quite literally – donning an apron to cook and prepare several hundred pounds of local vegetables and almost 150 pounds of chicken at a local scholarship dinner.

Friendship Lodge is supposedly the third oldest organization in town, so it’s no surprise that my wife belongs to the first oldest, the First Congregational Church , located just across the Southington town green from our lodge. Twenty two years ago, several of the women got together in order to sponsor a fall dinner. The dinner became an annual event, and after a few years, they began to sell tickets in order to raise money for the scholarship fund. The menu eventually became a delicious biscuit covering a scoop of chicken, smothered in white gravy with hand-made cole slaw, potatotes and mashed butternut squash; owing to the method in which the dinne was cooked, they called it the Chicken Pie Dinner. Six years ago, my wife started helping out. After a couple of years some of the women, having managed the affair for eighteen years, asked Linda if she would be interested in taking it over. My wife, having some of the same congenital inability to refuse such offers as plagues me, soon compiled the notes and guidelines in order to manage the event.

Anyone in a position similar to mine knows the drill: when your wife or Significant Other takes over a project, you are one of the first ones to get drafted. So every year, just a few weeks after the Apple Harvest Festival, you’ll find me once again visiting one of the most well-known local orchards to pick up butternut squash, potatoes, onions, cabbage, and some other things that I’m sure that I’ve forgotten about. Oh, and the seemingly never-ending hunt for chicken breasts at a good price, preferably under $.99 a pound. Somehow this all comes together during the end of October, and the first Saturday in November is “C-Day”. I’ve noticed that there is a dearth of husbands involved, so the event also entails a good number of aspirin and ibuprofen on my part – the result of moving a dozen or so very, very large boiling pots from the old stove to the sink.

Chicken Pie 2006

A few years ago, we realized that a continually sell-out crowd meant that there were more people who might attend, but we had a limit to the number of people that could fit into the meeting hall. We began to offer “to-go” meals, and then a second seating. The first seating at 5:00 p.m. is always filled, but the dinner crowd typically doesn’t hang around afterwards. The second seating at 7:00 p.m. is smaller, and is when we and the kitchen staff finally get to take a break. This year – mirroring the success of our own fund raiser at Friendship Lodge – we served almost 175 people, for the biggest dinner ever. I know that Linda worked pretty hard over the last couple of weeks to make this event a success, and after everything was added and subtracted we added over $1,200 to the scholarship fund.

Events like this are not easy to run, and we are thankful for the continued help of many of the women who originally started the dinner. At various times during the preceding week some of them helped to peel squash and potatoes, debone chicken, chop up cabbage and onions, and volunteer to make pies for dessert. And on Saturday mornings, the church kitchen is overrun with women gossiping and chatting, and who seemingly just happen to make several hundred biscuits and gallons of gravy in the process. It’s also nice to see some of the new faces stopping in to help – perhaps to run errands, set the tables, serve the meals, and – thankfully – to help with the cleanup afterwards.

Tying this in to the general topic of Freemasonry, I should note that besides the rather cute apron (which, by the way, generated many compliments), First Congregational Church has a number of members who are also members of Friendship Lodge, several of whom showed up to support the dinner.

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Every year thousands of men get up early in the morning and head out to a ritual event in which they pit themselves in a show of machismo, testing their mettle against friends and neighbors, and challenging their physical stamina in a trial of bravery against the vagaries of nature.

I’m not talking about the running of the bulls at Pamplona – I’m talking about charity golf tournaments.

Yes, men who easily ignore the clanging of the holiday Salvation Army bells, men who brusquely dismiss the office request for five dollars to aid the pregnant mail clerk, men who complain about the price of a single box of Girl Scout cookies, will unhesitatingly write a check for an amount from a hundred to two hundred fifty dollars, call in to use a sick day at work, and spend six to eight hours in close quarters; half of it in trying to direct a 1-1/2″ ball with an oversized bent spoon toward a 4″ hole some 300 yards away – several balls, actually, because the leafy and poison ivy-filled woods and the muddy streams will collect a certain number of them – and the other half of the day drinking cheap beer, smoking mid-priced cigars, and eating high-cholesterol banquet food for the opportunity to let a small fraction of that money go to A Worthy and Noble Cause.

I played on Friday.

Anyway, this golf tournament was run by a local businessman who decided that the Noble and Worthy Cause he wanted to support would be the Shriner’s Hospitals. Interestingly, perhaps significantly, Jim is not a Shriner, nor in fact, is he even a Mason. But he is aware of the wonderful work that the hospitals do, and felt strongly enough about this to want to undertake the thankless task of organizing a golf tournament.

In that respect, Jim is a Mason who hasn’t taken his degrees.

Anyone who has helped run a tournament for their lodge or business knows that this could easily become a full-time job: dozens of phone calls to sweet-talk local shops into donating raffle prizes, calls to the local course or country club to set up dates and times, calls to caterers to coordinate the food and beer, calls to friends who never manage to turn in the entry fees on time, calls to sponsors who forget to send in their contributions, more calls to explain to the course that not as many people are going to show up as anticipated, and the last minute discussion with the course when six foursomes show up who forgot to buy advance tickets.

I give Jim full credit for the time and energy that he put in, and kudos for a well-run event, no less so it being his first time. And that makes it all the more curious that I found myself standing with him and the Most Worshipful Chip (former Grand Master of Connecticut) in front of four dozen guys and holding a check that should have been presented to a member of the Shrine.

You see, like Jim, I’m not a Shriner, either.

The story goes back a few months ago when Dave – the best Senior Warden on the East Coast – announced Jim’s tournament in lodge one night. Since Jim was not a Mason, I suspect that some of the lodge members didn’t take it seriously. Also, it was being held in the same week as another, larger golf tournament that is more heavily supported by lodges in my district. Dave and I, though, decided that we wanted to support a local effort, and indeed, between the two of us we supplied about one fourth of the players.

At some point early in the process, Jim emailed the local Shrine and asked if he needed permission to hold a tournament using the Burn Hospital as a charity recipient, and asked for any other pertinent information. They never replied, and in all the rest of the planning, he had forgotten all about this. A week before the event, he was talking with Dave, and mentioned that he was surprised not to have heard from them. Dave (not a Shriner, either), called me to get some information. He figured that as the Master of the lodge, I’d know what was going on.

Boy, is he going to be surprised next year.

I didn’t have any info, but I had the numbers of a few Grand Lodge officers who were probably members, so he called them. He spent the next two or three days trying to get some kind of response from the local Shrine; he believed that it would have been courteous for a representative on hand to receive the donation, or certainly, at least a phone call to say “Thank you for your efforts, here’s where to send the check.” Dave managed to get Most Worshipful Chip down on Friday morning to play; Chip brought several small boxes of Shrine brochures, chatted with Jim and the other players, and at the end of the tournament, accepted a check for over $2,000 on behalf of the Shrine (of which he is a member, although not an officer). I’m still not sure why I was there, but I did take the opportunity to let people know about the great things that the hospitals do for children and burn victims. Chip augmented my statement with some facts, we posed for a few pictures, and sat down. Jim was happy, the players were happy, and I managed not to have to borrow a sleeve of balls to finish the game, so I was happy.

Now, I’m not writing this to bash the Shrine. I sincerely believe that the hospitals are a wonderful thing, and they are a worthy cause to support. A few years ago the Shrine dropped the requirement that members be York Rite or Scottish Rite, and I’ve met quite a few Masons who joined simply to make sure that their dues went to supporting the hospitals. I know that the Shrine is having some financial distress at the moment, so you’d think that they’d welcome any donations, and would follow up on news of golf tournaments; and you’d think especially that ones run by non-Masons would be a curious enough thing for them to take notice. We don’t know what to make of this yet, except that apparently there is a Masonic group that’s even less organized than I am. Any of you that believe the Masons are behind the New World Order, please take note.

McCabe Golf Tourney

My score, in case you’re interested, was -9. Oh, I don’t bother with all that counting of strokes and stuff, that’s for people who know what they’re doing. I count up the balls at the end of the day, and see how many have left. I lost some in the woods, a few in the ponds, and two on – I swear – black holes in the wide-open fairways. But I managed to pull up a few from one of the streams, so my score wasn’t as bad as it could have been. My party finished 20 minutes behind the previous group, and I suspect it was because I wasn’t the only one who spent more time looking for balls than in actually playing.

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