I remember my father sitting in the Master’s chair. He looked at me, his eyes tender and loving, but with a touch of a twinkle in the corner. He said, “My son --- and now my Brother,” and then he asked me if I thought I had now achieved the exalted place of a Master Mason. I answered in the affirmative. Then he told me that I had one more journey, a perilous one, before I could stand among my Brothers fully qualified to be one of them. After a prayer at the altar and a rather dramatic experience, I found myself embracing my dear father. We whispered words to each other, and the bond was complete. That was in March of 1961. He died seven years later and sits today in Solomon’s Lodge in God’s Holy Temple. Of that I am sure.
 

The author, in clerical collar, is pictured here with his wife, Pat, mother, Etta, and father, Lindsay, at his ordination to the diaconate in December 1960, about a month before he became a member of Garnet Lodge No. 166.

Dad’s initials were GLM. He joked that most of his friends called him “Good Little Man.” I liked that, for I knew it was true. Dad stood only five-feet six-inches tall. But he was a Master Mason through and through. I knew Dad had raised my brother in a Lodge made up of officers in the Air Force. My father and my brother, both Masons by then, often talked with me about the importance and joy of being a Mason, a builder of society, freedom, and democracy.
My brother died in 1971, and I have been the patriarch of my family for 30 years. I think of my father and brother often and try to emulate them as well as the other Brothers I know. In 40 years, I have been a member of three Lodges in Minnesota and one in Texas. My membership is still in Henry Thomas Lodge No. 278 in Smithwick, Texas, but soon I will be transferring again, this time to Lebanon Lodge No. 346 in Eagan, Minnesota. I am active in the Scottish Rite Valley of Minneapolis, and my wife and I are honored to be a part of the Eastern Star. Our lives are full, but never too full to keep us from attending Lodge or worshiping in our local church.
I have never been elected to sit in the succession of positions that lead to Worshipful Master of a Lodge. But I have sat below, and just to the right, of the Worshipful Master, opening and closing the Lodge in prayer, for I have often been asked, given the fact that I am a member of the clergy, to be the Chaplain.
Moses and the Hebrew people spent 40 years in the wilderness, learning the importance of being united as a people. In the 40 years I have sat regularly in Lodge, I have found joy, peace, and a great hope for mankind. Coming from different religious traditions, Masons acknowledge the Eternal Architect and Builder of the Universe as our Grand Master. And we recognize He has accepted each and all of us as His own.
At the closing of the Lodge, with the Master’s hat removed, we all stand uncovered. The prayer is offered with the Volume of the Sacred Law open on the altar. The Chaplain and the Brothers stand with arms crossed over their hearts and their heads bowed. After his eloquent prayer, the Chaplain says, “Amen.” And the Brothers respond, “So mote it be.”
I see now through a glass darkly. But I know God has heard us. And He is pleased.