UPDATE: AS OF FRIDAY MARCH 20TH, 2020, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED ENTIRELY.
The Grand Lodge of Kansas is supposed to hold its annual communication next weekend, which comes at this historically awkward moment in time. Like Masonic meetings of all kinds everywhere, they are running smack dab into the Wuhan Coronavirus Panic of 2020 (which feels like the Burning Hair Festival more and more as each day passes). Every day, state governors, health officials, federal agencies and local bureaucrats are announcing their latest reaction, overreaction, and exploding head positions as they grapple with how much to shut down public gatherings and chain all the exits.
If you click to enlarge the notice above, you can see what the Grand Lodge of Kansas has come up with. The large gathering of lodge representatives has been cancelled, and is being downsized and moved from its hotel meeting space in Wichita to Emporia Lodge No. 12 next Friday, March 20th. They are reducing the number of attendees to the minimum required quorum of just 50 Master Masons total (current grand lodge officers, plus no more or less than 25 sitting Lodge Masters included) in order to elect new grand lodge officers and assure what the feds call continuity of government, or COG (because Washington never met an acronym they didn't like). There will be no business voted on besides approving committee reports – that means no resolutions or other legislation. The new grand officers will be installed, and everybody goes home to resume haggling with rogue toilet paper and hand sanitizer smugglers.
None of this is new. If you peer into most grand lodge by-laws and constitutions, you'll see what your own jurisdiction set up long ago for just such occasions. Masons in earlier times dealt with the "devastations of war" and the "ruthless hand of ignorance" — periods when the nation was at war or other major crisis, as well as during the rabid anti-Masonic period, when ranks of Masons able to attend statewide meetings were reduced to a handful at best. Your grand lodge jurisprudence, rules, and ways and means committees have probably all looked deep into these rules for your jurisdiction by now already, just in case your annual meeting is scheduled for the next few weeks or so.
If your favorite resolution you slaved over for months to word just right to get your cherished pet peeve in the rules changed, try not to get too upset if it has to wait another year. Masonic governance has always moved with the dazzling speed of a drugged brontosaurus with a full belly on a hot, lazy day anyway.
Just remember the most important admonition given to the U.S. government within the Constituion itself. The finest words in the entire document are: "Congress shall make no law..."
Think of all the trouble it would have saved if only they had stopped writing right there.
Meanwhile, elsewhere...
164th Annual Communication Postponed
ReplyDeleteIt is with a heavy heart and out of an abundance of caution and concern for the safety and wellbeing of our Brothers, their families, and their communities, that our Grand Master, M.W. Dale Morrow, with the full support of your Council of Administration and the leadership of our Grand Lodge, has determined that the 164th Annual Communication will be postponed. The 164th Annual communication will be held at a time and place yet to be determined. When such a decision is made, due notice will be sent to all Members of the Grand Lodge and to its constituent Lodges.
Please know that this decision was not made lightly, and those involved in this decision are genuinely sorry for all the inconveniences it might cause. We thank you for your zeal and your service to your Lodge and to our Ancient and Honorable Fraternity.
May the Grand Architect of the Universe Bless and Protect you and your families.
From the Grand Lodge of Kansas Website.