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A Word from the Master...
6/29/06
My Brothers:
It is a little over a month since we last met in Lodge.
I hope that you are enjoying the summer and keeping cool! Although
the Lodge itself is "dark," it is a surety that our
members are living a life filled with light.
Although there is much misery in the world, we are blessed
with a land which, although imperfect, is far better than those
benighted domains that bear the burden of cruel dictatorship.
I would like to share some profound thoughts of Brother Victor
Hugo with you to ponder during these weeks...
"Are you what is called a happy man? Well, you are
sad every day, and each of them has its great grief or small
anxiety. Yesterday you trembled for a health which is dear to
you, today you are frightened about your own, tomorrow it will
be a monetary anxiety, and the day after the diatribe of a calumniator,
and the day after that again the misfortune of some friend; then
the weather, then something broken or lost, or a pleasure for
which your conscience and your backbone reproach you; or, another
time, the progress of public affairs, and we do not take into
account heart-pangs. And so it goes on; one cloud is dissipated,
another forms, and there is hardly one day in one hundred of
real joy and bright sunshine. And you are one of that small
number who are happy; as for other men, the stagnation of night
is around them. Reflecting minds rarely use the expressions
the happy and the unhappy, for in this world, which is evidently
the vestibule of another, there are no happy beings. The true
human division is into the luminous and the dark. To diminish
the number of the dark, and augment that of the luminous, is
the object, and that is why we cry, "Instruction and learning!"
Learning to read is lighting the fire, and every syllable spelt
is a spark. When we say light, however, we do not necessarily
mean joy; for men suffer in light, and excess of light burns.
Flame is the enemy of the wings, and to burn without ceasing
to fly is the prodigy of genius. When you know and when you
love, you will still suffer, for the day is born in tears, and
the luminous weep, be it only for the sake of those in darkness."
--Victor Hugo: Les Miserables, The Idyll of the Rue Plumet
and the Epic of the Rue Saint Denis, Book VII: Slang; Chapter
I
We may look forward to our next Communication on the third
Sunday of September, the 17th, at 2 p.m., when Brother Brett
A. Ballance will present "The Seven Liberal Arts as Known
in Fourteenth Century Semantics." He will follow this up
at our November 19 meeting with "The Point within the Circle"
which is related to the September presentation.
Best wishes to you and your families! As always, call me
if you can't get to a meeting or if you need familial support!
Warmly and fraternally,
--Joel
W. Joel Berg, Master
Nevada Lodge of Research #2, F.&.A. Masons
3054 Canal Walk Road
Henderson, Nevada 89052-8512
[email protected]
702/614-3363
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
-Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician and philosopher (1861-1947)
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