Ronald A. Seale, 33°, Sovereign Grand Commander

The New Year offers fresh opportunities for each of us
as individuals and as Scottish Rite Freemasons.

One of the greatest gifts given to us by the Creator is the chance to start over, a gift we receive most dramatically on the first day of each year. Life, of course, goes on, and we can start anew throughout the year, but nothing strikes as dramatic a note as the tolling out of the Old Year and the joyful greeting of the New Year. It marks an epic moment for making new choices that will inevitably affect the future.

What do you wish your life to be? Have you cared enough, spent enough time with your family and friends, nurtured your spirit with faith, improved your mind with good reading? Have you fully shared your gifts and talents with others?

The start of the New Year is an especially good opportunity for us, as Brothers, to focus on the Scottish Rite and its future. What do you wish our Order to be and what can you do to fulfill that vision? Consider the new members you can bring to our ranks, the Valley programs you can participate in and advance, the Reunions you can support by your presence and example. Acting in the Degrees and being part of the many crews essential to the meeting’s success make any Reunion experience personal and directly satisfying. These activities generate a sense of fraternity and a close fellowship we too often lack in our day-to-day routines.

Our Masonic obligation of charity can also take on a fresh, personal dimension in the New Year if we volunteer at our RiteCare Childhood Language Clinics and so benefit the children who will soon be the future of our communities and nation. Or we can help in fundraising for any of the other local and national Masonic philanthropies that so richly deserve our personal attention. There is much we can do to help mold the future and assure it is good.

The New Year is appropriately symbolized by a baby. The future, like an infant, needs to be nurtured, for our actions now will affect the rest of our lives and touch the lives of many others for good or for ill. If this infant future is to grow to a strong and sturdy adulthood, we must be good “parents,” fulfilling our duties and exercising our proper responsibilities.

Whether it is our own life, the life of the Scottish Rite, or the life of the nation, we now have a chance to begin again. It is up to us to use this opportunity wisely.