Yesterday was the third day of my 100 Day Plan to learn the ritual before going into The Chair of my Lodge. The idea of this 100 Day Plan is being word perfect when installing Officers and closing the Lodge at my Installation meeting, and also to get a good grip on the rest of the other rituals for the coming year. On the first day I concentrated on investing the Immediate Past Master, then investing the Senior Warden, yesterday was investing the Junior Warden, and now today:
Day 4 of 100: Investing Officers – the Lodge “Admin Team”
Today is Day 4 of 100, and I’m looking at Investing Officers, what I have politely called here the Lodge Admin Team (pages 226-229 in my book of Emulation Ritual). These are the Principle Offices, but the ones needed to successfully operate the Lodge and include:
- Chaplain
- Treasurer
- Secretary
- Director of Ceremonies
- Almoner
- Charity Steward
Whoa! Hang on a minute, over the last three days we’ve been looking at one Investiture per day, and now we are doing six?! Yes, but fortunately these six are A LOT shorter than the IPM and Wardens. In each case the WM is asked whom he appoints, the WM says, “I now appoint you my…”, invests with the collar and Jewel, and gives a brief description of the Jewel. There are, however, a few points to remember:
- The Treasurer has been elected, not appointed,
- The Treasurer has an insignia, not Jewel,
- The Chaplain and DC’s jewels are not explained.
One point; it would be very easy to recommend to you not to worry about this part too much as you don’t need to remember what the jewels are as you’ll be looking right at them when you are explaining them. I say do worry about it! Having the object in front of you won’t remind you of the correct words in the book, it’ll just remind you of the Jewel.
I always found it odd when learning the Working Tools that elder Lodge members would say you can always look down to see what the tools are – seriously, I had no problem remembering what they were, it was remembering what the symbolised and saying it exactly as written in the Blue Book when the Provincial Executive are watching!
Hopefully today has been a bit of a change of pace from the last few days where we are looking at shorter pieces (but greater in number) as opposed to the longer piece for the IPM and Wardens. Remember, we aren’t looking to get this word perfect yet, but you should be able to at least recall what each Jewel is, and the general format of investing these offices.