I often mention the
fact that the reading of the minutes may be one of the less exciting
parts of a Masonic meeting. Personally, I live for it... I live for
it to be over with, that is.
One of the bodies I
belong to, in my opinion, does it right. At that meeting we always
have a dinner beforehand and the Secretary sets out copies of the
minutes and any other pertinent material such as financial statements
on each table. During the time before the meeting each member has a
chance to read through the handouts. Then, during the meeting,
without a reading, we vote on approval.
It doesn't always go
this way. In my own Blue Lodge — God bless 'em — we still have
the ever-present dronin... uh, I mean reading of the minutes at each
meeting. To add to the frenzy of excitement this creates we also
read the name of every officer in every station, every visitor and
every single word of every petition. I remember one night in
particular when we had multiple petitions. By the end of the evening
I almost had the entire document committed to memory, and would
have... had I not fallen asleep.
When I became Senior
Warden I sat in the West close enough to the Junior Deacon that we
could converse during the meeting. Together we felt we could solve
the problems of the world, so solving the problems of the Lodge was a
piece of cake.
Every single meeting
when the reading of the minutes came up Allen (not his real name, of
course) would turn around to me and say, "When I
get up there in the East, we're not going to do this." He
encouraged me to do it before he got there but I told him I just
wanted to get through my year unscathed and would leave it up to him
to make the radical change.
Years passed. I went
through the East — only scathed a little bit but I survived. Then
I moved to that most coveted of all Masonic positions, Past Master,
and waited for Allen to take the helm; and take it he did — full of
the vigor of his still youthful age and the expectation of the
exciting year he had planned.
I was nearly giddy as I
went to his first meeting knowing he was about to shake the Masonic
world. I sat in great anticipation as Allen opened the meeting.
Then, in an instant, my hopes for a better world came crashing down
as he turned and said, "Brother Secretary, you will read the
minutes..."
I nearly had an
out-of-body experience as we droned through the meeting and Allen
embraced the usual pomp and circumstance — more pomp than
circumstance — of all the meetings and Masters that had come before
him.
After the meeting I
rushed up to him and asked why he had fallen into the routine he
seemed to abhor back in his Junior Deacon days.
His answer sounded a
little familiar, "I just want to get through my year unscathed."
Change is difficult,
Brothers, and the penalty for attempting it may be a good sound
scathing, which many times starts with the words, "In my
day, we did it this way..."