A Night of Transition
Jun. 23rd, 2007 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurJust got home from the Lodge Merger Meeting. Hammatt Ocean and Seaview Lodges have subsumed themselves into Mt. Tabor Lodge. In pretty much every respect this is a good thing (certainly it was much needed), but it's an occasion for reflection.
The new Lodge is much stronger in several respects -- it has a respectable number of active members again, and enough money that we're probably not going to pay for dinner ever again. But most importantly, it has a much younger line, with only a few retreads (past Masters doing line offices again). And I'm not one of them: for the first time in the fifteen years or so that I've been a Mason, I'm not an active officer. I'm glad that we've got new guys coming up into the line -- we've got several young guys, including our new Senior Steward, who was only raised two days ago -- and it's probably better for me personally (since I'm trying to recover from my overall burnout). But it does feel damned weird being on the sidelines.
That said, I do still have one office, if not one of the official ones: I continue to be Ritualist For Life. (The deal that I made in order to never be Master of the Lodge again.) Now that that is my only office, I think it's time to focus on doing it well. Heaven knows, my SCA students have been teaching me a lot about how to teach, and while I still have a long ways to go there, I'm getting better. Time to apply some of that on the Lodge side. We've been getting sloppy in recent years, and that's hurt us in many ways. Now, I think everyone is motivated to start doing it well again, and it's going to fall substantially to me to help that happen.
Still and all, it does feel like the passing of a phase of life. I realized this morning that I was both the first and last Senior Warden of Hammatt Ocean Lodge, the way we had the same guys just changing seats so much. I suppose that, all by itself, summarizes the lodge's biggest problem. I won't be a constant officer in the new Lodge, but if that is because we have new guys coming in and taking it on, that's for the best. I can view my time as official pinch-hit officer as spent holding the door open, until someone was prepared to come in...
The new Lodge is much stronger in several respects -- it has a respectable number of active members again, and enough money that we're probably not going to pay for dinner ever again. But most importantly, it has a much younger line, with only a few retreads (past Masters doing line offices again). And I'm not one of them: for the first time in the fifteen years or so that I've been a Mason, I'm not an active officer. I'm glad that we've got new guys coming up into the line -- we've got several young guys, including our new Senior Steward, who was only raised two days ago -- and it's probably better for me personally (since I'm trying to recover from my overall burnout). But it does feel damned weird being on the sidelines.
That said, I do still have one office, if not one of the official ones: I continue to be Ritualist For Life. (The deal that I made in order to never be Master of the Lodge again.) Now that that is my only office, I think it's time to focus on doing it well. Heaven knows, my SCA students have been teaching me a lot about how to teach, and while I still have a long ways to go there, I'm getting better. Time to apply some of that on the Lodge side. We've been getting sloppy in recent years, and that's hurt us in many ways. Now, I think everyone is motivated to start doing it well again, and it's going to fall substantially to me to help that happen.
Still and all, it does feel like the passing of a phase of life. I realized this morning that I was both the first and last Senior Warden of Hammatt Ocean Lodge, the way we had the same guys just changing seats so much. I suppose that, all by itself, summarizes the lodge's biggest problem. I won't be a constant officer in the new Lodge, but if that is because we have new guys coming in and taking it on, that's for the best. I can view my time as official pinch-hit officer as spent holding the door open, until someone was prepared to come in...