The Cornerstone Newsletter

Busy month ahead

As you will see by reading our Trestleboard notice this month, we have a lot on our plate. During our Stated Meeting February 6th we will be conferring the Entered Apprentice Degree on one candidate and another Entered Apprentice Degree will be conferred on one candidate February 13th. The meeting on February 13th is a Special Meeting beginning at 7:00 P.M.

Our Inspection is slated Monday, February 27, 2012 in the Fellowcraft Degree. Being a Special Meeting, Inspection begins at 7:00 P.M. with refreshments being served afterward. Please support your Lodge and officers with your presence at as many meetings as possible. You'll really enjoy yourself.

In our Under the Master’s Hat article you’ll find that we will begin sponsoring our Saturday morning fund raising breakfasts again the first and third Saturdays, 8:00—11:00 A.M. of each month beginning February 18, 2012. You won’t want to miss all the pancakes you can eat along with sausage, orange drink, coffee and eggs. Help of course will be needed so come to the Complex, eat breakfast and lend a helping hand.

So who’s Tony anyway?

Mark Thursday, March 15, 2012 as a night out with your lady because the Tibbetts-Wick Masonic Temple Association is sponsoring a fund raiser at the TNT Playhouse in Niles. Tickets will be at a cost of $15.00 per person with hors d’oeuvres and refreshments served before the performance.

The play is entitled The Altos, Like the Sopranos Only Lower by David Landau: It's Tony's funeral (or is it?) and his wife Toffee has invited you to the wake. Chris wants you should check your weapons at the door (and if you don't have any, he's got extras!). Uncle Senior has a rigged dice game going and Tony's Ma is -- well just nuts, Tony's shrink Dr. Malaise is giving free analysis and the Father isn't sure what he is doing!  But one thing is for sure, almost no one seems sad that Tony is gone and they certainly don't seem happy once he's discovered alive. Be prepared to dodge bullets, laugh at the songs and see if you can't figure out who put a contract out on Tony. The production is directed by Terri Gilbert.

We always have a great time at TNT so come out for the fun and laughter while supporting our Temple Company all in the same night. We’ll have more details next month concerning time and how to get tickets.

State Secretaries' Meeting

Saturday, March 9, 2012 is a very important meeting for our Secretary. W.B. Brian Williams will be heading to Columbus for the annual State Secretaries’ Association Meeting with our Grand Secretary and fellow Secretaries of the lodges throughout our State. A great deal of interesting and useful information is provided the Secretaries and the meeting is very helpful in creating contacts with other Secretaries as well as Grand Lodge officers and Grand Lodge committee members. We wish you well and have a safe and enlightening journey.

Grand Lodge website redone

The new Grand Lodge website is now active. The website provides leadership, management and ritual instruction as well as Masonic education articles and just about anything you might want to know about Freemasonry in Ohio. If you haven’t been to the Grand Lodge website recently, by all means check it out at www.freemason.com!

Remember family in your prayers

We are saddened by the passing of W.B. Donald Mackey who served as Worshipful Master of Sincerity Lodge in 1986—1987. Worshipful Brother Mackey was also very involved and committed to Niles York Rite Masonry as well as our Blue Lodge.

W.B. Mackey was Raised to the Sublime Degree of Master Mason December 13, 1971 making him a forty-one year Mason.

Love is in the Air! (Job’s Daughters Bethel #35)

Love of Job’s Daughters that is!! We kicked the New Year off with our Installation of Officers followed by an amazing Chocolate Fountain Dessert Buffet…nothing says happiness like chocolate covered Rice Crispy Treats, Strawberries and Pretzels!!

Our first official order of business was attending the Amaranth Youth Night where members got to learn more about five of our amazing daughters and their many activities. A Bowling and Prospect party was the order of the day following our January 22 meeting and Girl Power Ruled!

Since we started the year on a “Sweet” note, it was fitting to end the month with more amazingness as we traveled to Columbus to meet our Supreme Family and watched with much pride as our State Bethel Daughters initiated our very own Jobie-2-Bee Samantha B!

Here is a quick glance at our February calendar –
Visitors and Guest are always welcome!!

February 4th – Beef Tips and Noodles fundraiser dinner for Liberty Masonic Complex
February 12th – Our regular meeting & JD-2-Bee Valentines Day party
February 17th to 19—Job’s Daughter University and Winter Weekend in Canton
February 24th—McKinley Coat Check
February 25th – Certified Adult Volunteer Training in Akron
February 26th – Regular meeting
March 3rd – Phantom’s Hockey Game – (group pricing is available and all are welcome so please
call me for more information!!)

**Job’s Daughters is a positive, faith-based organization that provides leadership, builds self confidence, and allows girls to make lifelong friendships…please give us the opportunity to share Job’s Daughters with you and them!! Contact Becky Litowitz, Bethel Guardian, at (330) 716-1105 for more information.

Keepers of the Door

“Darn the luck! I am assigned on a petition again, and I am going fishing tomorrow!” The New Brother looked dolefully at his notification slip.

“Why not see the applicant the next day?” asked the Old Tiler.

“Because he is going out of town. I have to see him tomorrow or else. And I want to go fishing. This committee stuff makes me tired, anyway. Say, if I got the Master to change my name to yours, will you do it for me?”

“Why, of course,” answered the Old Tiler. “I am always proud to be one of the Keepers of the Door.”

“Now that,” said the New Brother, “sounds both interesting and dangerous. It’s interesting, because I don’t understand it and experience has taught me that when I come at you below the belt, as it were, I usually get kicked pronto and unexpectedly. Please explain the door which you like to keep, where the honor is, what me and my committee work have to do with it and remember that I am a poor orphan child alone in the wild anteroom with a raging Old Tiler and not be too hard on me.”

The Old Tiler did not smile. “I would laugh,” he confessed, “only it's Masonry you are jesting about and it’s not a jest. Yes, I will tell you about the door. I wish I could speak the word in capital letters.”

“Masonry is a structure of Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth, cemented with affection, erected on a square to God and towering miles high above puny humanity, its foibles and its failings. Masonry is a structure of which we, its humble builders, are proud, because we know that we have built better than we knew. We have so built, partly because we have had help from so many men of so many past ages, and partly because we have had help we could neither see nor understand.”

“Some look at our temple of Masonry and wonder. Some look, shrug shoulders and pass by. Some look at our temple of Masonry and see it not; others gaze on it and seek to enter.”

“In this country there are nearly 16,000 doors to our temple of Masonry, through one of which a man must pass who would see it from the inside. There are so many doors in order that any man who desires, and who is fit, may find the door which is easy for him to enter. It is not true that it is ‘hard to be a Mason’.”

“We ask only that an applicant be freeborn, of age, a man, and of good character. He may be high or low, rich or poor, great or obscure, famous or unknown. If he is a good man we want him to see our temple from the inside as soon as he expresses a desire to do so.”

“So we have 16,000 lodges—doors—to our temples of Masonry, that no man can say came not in because he could not find a way.”

“Certain things a man must do, inside our temple, and in a certain way he must live. If he lives the life, the temple is stronger. If he does not live the life, the temple is weakened.”

“Hence, Keepers of the Door. Like many another symbol in Masonry, they are three; three Brethren to keep each door safe, sacred and undefiled from the footsteps of evil men, self-seekers, the wicked, the blasphemous, the immoral. Those three who keep each door are not assigned to it for any length of time.”

“Not theirs a service which may become onerous from time-taking effort. The Master appoints three Keepers of the Door for every man who tries to enter. Today it is you and John and Jim. Tomorrow it will be George and Jack and Will. The next day another three will keep the door, if any man raps upon it.”

“With due humility, but infinite pride, I am the Guardian of the Locked Door. As Tiler I suffer none to pass within who have not the right. But the open door no one man may guard; it takes three.”
“You were appointed tonight as one of those three. Some one has rapped on the door and it now stands ajar. To you it has been said, “Keep thou the door; keep thou the faith; keep thou this thy temple pure and undefiled.”

“You do not want the Labor. You want to go fishing. You ask me if I will do the work for you and I answer you gladly, if so the Master shall find me worthy of the honor.”

The New Brother hung his head.

“I shan’t ask him.,” he answered low, “I am ashamed I didn’t understand. I am not, I know, worthy of the honor, but as well I know how, I will keep the door.”

“I thought you might,” smiled the Old Tiler. “After all, no one will catch all the fish; there will be some left for some other time.”

“Not if it interferes with being Keeper of the Door,” answered the New Brother vigorously.

- from Old Tiler Talks by Carl H. Claudy

People see God everyday. They just don’t recognize him.