‘An encouraging word to spread the Light’

    

RW Bro. Rich was our lone presenter yesterday at New Jersey Lodge of Masonic Research and Education 1786. He will be appointed Grand Historian in November.

A quick, but enjoyable, meeting of New Jersey Lodge of Masonic Research and Education 1786 was the highlight of my yesterday. We had just one presenter, Bro. Rich, who is to become his grand lodge’s grand historian come November. His talk wasn’t a paper on history, however, it was what one would categorize as speculative. Titled “The Shammesh Candle and Freemasonry: How One Candle Can Illuminate the World,” his discussion was inspired by Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen’s bestseller My Grandfather’s Blessings.

I’m not familiar with it, but the publisher says, in part:

Dr. Remen’s grandfather, an orthodox rabbi and scholar of the Kabbalah, saw life as a web of connection and knew that everyone belonged to him, and that he belonged to everyone. He taught her that blessing one another is what fills our emptiness, heals our loneliness, and connects us more deeply to life.

Rich applied the book’s concepts to Masonic thought, illustrating his points with the candles on a small menorah (after switching off the lights). The shammash (there are various English spellings of the word) candle is that center taper in the nine-branch menorah. The Chabad branch of Hasidim says:

Each of us has the potential to be a shammash. We all have a responsibility to become teachers and impact the lives of others. Just as the shammash is usually placed above the other candles, a person who serves others, a teacher, becomes great because he or she is using a set of superior skills to make others great too. Following the shammash, the path to elevation is not through pushing others down, but by sharing with them and coaxing out the flame they carry within.

There was a little post-meeting grumbling because the presentation was not a tried-by-the-square research paper, but this research lodge, per its by-laws, makes time for other than academic studies. I liked it. It’s ideal for lodge or AMD council. I hope Rich continues to bring it to the brethren.

A large group of us then retired to a local steakhouse. Somehow, I spent fifty bucks on lunch! A cheeseburger, two Oktoberfests, and the worst onion rings known to man. Well, it’s right around the corner, so…

The research lodge will meet next on Saturday, December 9, for which I am to arrange a visit by the author of a historical novel that tells of early Freemasonry. More on that to come.