 Here
I am again, the interim Editor of the Valley News. The sad story about why I am still the
editor is that no one has stepped forward to volunteer as editor of the
newsletter and the new budget the Valley just passed at the December Stated
meeting has no wages in it for a paid editor for the Valley News.
The new budget reflects the diminishing income from our shrinking
membership. In 1996 when I first
became Secretary of the Valley of Bellingham the first letter I got from
the Supreme Council stated that they had hired an insurance company to
apply their life expectancy tables to our membership and we needed to
prepare our valley for the fact that we would lose one half of our
membership to deaths in the next five years due to the age of our
membership. That was in 1996.
Not only do those deaths of our older members continue but recently a
couple of members have demitted or transferred to other Valleys. Many of us are asking why we have
Brothers leaving our Valley to join another.
I would contend that it
is easy to point fingers and lay blame but much more difficult to
rationally come up with the answer as to why anyone would leave our Valley
by transferring to another Valley or becoming inactive (just not coming to
meetings or taking a demit).
Certainly we have some
men with faults in our fraternity. There
are Masons who criticize, sometimes in un-Masonic ways. We also have men in our midst that can’t
find it in their heart to forgive those who error.
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I could go on and on
about the defects of men and why those defects chase Brothers away. We can’t key on what is wrong and be
successful. Masonry is about loving
your Brother and helping him improve himself and diminish his defects.
A couple of good Brothers,
Wayne Deming, 33° and Jim Hildebrand, 33°,
were my mentors when I first became Secretary of the Valley of
Bellingham and they not only taught me the ins and outs of being Secretary,
they taught me Masonry and that guidance continued when I was Master of my
Lodge. I am so grateful for their
guidance.
One of the tenants of
Masonry that I learned is that Masons elect leaders and in that election
Masons obligate themselves to make that leader successful. It is our obligation that makes Masonry
and Masons great.
I can’t tell you how many
times that I’ve heard the degree director say in the last few years that
people don’t come to lodge because they know he is going to ask them to do
some work. Are people leaving
because they don’t want to do the work? We have no standing degree teams who practice
performing the degrees. Why?
We have a new Executive
Board that has been split off of the Temple Board
at the direction of Bill Miller.
That Board is composed of the Masters of the Bodies and other
leaders of the Valley. It is charged
with leading the Valley forward and recommending actions to be taken by the
Valley. There haven’t been any initiatives
brought forth at this time. Worse
than that, I wish I could think of an action I took to meet my obligation
to help them succeed. You are
obligated to help them succeed, did you help?
If we are going to stop
the bleeding in this Valley all of us are going to have to meet our
obligation and empower our leaders to be successful. That will take a lot of hard but pleasant
work on all of our parts.
Steve Cronkhite, Interim
Editor
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