Lodge Night Happenings

What is the format of a lodge night, I don’t know how it goes in your lodge but this is a typical sequence for me. We have meetings right through the whole year, with the business of the lodge being outside of the summer months. I always supposed this was to allow people chance to have holidays, or in olden days the complete reverse, so they could work more hours. Three meetings out of four are what we refer to as instruction nights. That is to say where we will learn the business of the lodge by ritual and discussion. And on the fourth we have a regular meeting, suited and booted and very formal.

On the instructional nights we meet at 7.30pm, I have always found this difficult living on my own because you have to go straight from work and never really get a chance to eat properly, if you are in a marriage and lucky enough to have a wife cooking for you then you will be fed and watered. On the most part we turn up hungry, about 7pm ready to have a drink. Im a bit of a people watcher, its one of my favourite hobbies, so I watch during this time. Generally people splinter off into little groups and ask about each others personal lives, what is happening particularly for them, ie the wives, girlfriends and children, house, work and car. We drink and share the combined knowledge in putting people’s problems to bed by helping and sorting.

Usually the secretary will turn up about 7.15pm and start handing out paperwork, which is a nuisance at that time because it means you have to nurse it for the rest of the night. Just before 7.30pm we head down to the temple for the lodge meeting. Then follows the lodge meeting. No – I am not going to talk about the meeting here, absolutely no need to, that isnt the secret.

After the meeting, varying times, we come out and rush to the bar to get a drink and talk about the meeting for about 20 minutes or so after which you can guarantee we start to think about food. If the centre provides food that would be the suitable option. Sadly in our case, this isn’t so, we end up generally leaving for a curry. Not good for a larger fellow like me, but the friends, banter and chat can make up for this. Real relationships are borne from this bonding time and discussion. For younger brethren you start to get a feel for the lodge affairs, who does what as a job within the lodge and the extent of that work. Too, you will learn about the difficulties of people’s lives and how they are struggling with various problems. The true value of masonic relief evolves here, where you put your minds together to work on problems, outside of the lodge committee to help a brother out. 

The great thing too about Lodge Nights is that we switch off our phones, disconnect with the world, so that for a moment at least, we are not disturbed by emails, texts, facebook or social media and that is quite refreshing.