Brothers, the following article is written in a specific way. If you see something out of place, it is probably there on purpose to hint to a truth. “St. Johns” for instance, without apostrophe, is deliberate. It is alluding to the source from which we get our name sake. Whether or not our founding lodge brethren didn’t understand its original meaning, or whether someone involved in the process thought it was a typo, it is actually an important symbolic reference.  - Chris

Why are we called St. Johns? Is it really because of this guy and/or that one? Of what significance were they, really, that we should claim them? Because they had something to do or say, or something to know and do; do we even know, or is it only suggested? What might we suppose it really means? What about St. Johns days? Is that a clue? Positioned how and when; where in the progression; denoting what? Does it relate to them? What could it matter? What may we speculate it means? How could it be that persons as auspicious as our benefactors should suggest it so prominently?

But we don’t know. We see it every day (or at least every month) but we do not investigate, or we figure it will make sense later, and the days move on. We still don’t know, or we know one thing, something we heard, but not the others, because first we didn’t go looking, and second we didn’t try and make sense of what we may have found. We are lost in clues, and in our defeat we convince ourselves that they are only there to serve as a pleasing edifice, but then what’s making that edifice so pleasing really?  But we don’t ask those questions, and so it lays; inert.

Another meal, another day with friends, another ear full of some dear brother’s biased opinions, and the night is through.  Maybe we just nod and smile or maybe we choose a side, not knowing what St. Johns means.  We become familiar with the signs of our surroundings, but we don’t know them.  We don’t know what they mean or what their language says, just that we have seen them long enough to know that they are associated, and for some maybe this is enough to feel a sense of belonging, because we don’t really know what belonging is, in spite of all the efforts to show us.

We came here to find something, and in our search we found some requirements, some things that need changing, and from those requirements we found some failings, and how often do those just seem to never change? These failings convince us that our ‘something’ was never here, and we get preoccupied.  We pick a side and try and win, and in the confusion we lose ‘something’ more.  How easily we are convinced and dissuaded from our purpose, no matter how solemnly we pronounce them, for some their side is all that matters.

This month St. John’s will celebrate the youth of our order, to be reminded of that pre-compromised zeal and expectation, among other qualities we study, that get lost in transition, as the imprudent labors stain our aprons, we carry on in that dedicated struggle to find the belonging that we so righteously throw away.

	CALENDAR
·    April 7 (6pm):  Officers Meeting  ·    April 13 (7-9pm):  Ritual instruction classes at Greenwood Masonic Center  ·    April 15 (6:15pm) 7:30pm:  St. John’s 9 (dinner) Stated  ·    April 20 (7pm): Greenwood Lodge Fellowship Night – dinner & games  ·    April 22 (7pm):  District 5 LOMA meeting  ·    April 24:  Quarterly meeting of Masonic Service Bureau  ·    May 11(7-9pm):  Ritual instruction classes at Greenwood Masonic Center  ·    May 12 (6pm):  Officers Meeting  ·    May 13 (6pm):  Board of Trustees  ·    May 17 (10am):  FABulous Family Brunch – Ivar’s Salmon House  ·    May 20 (6:15pm) 7:30pm:  St. John’s 9 (dinner) Stated – official visit of DDGM

THE MASON'S CHARACTER

Paul Revere's Ride

LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower, as a signal light, --
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison-bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the somber rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade, --
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay, --
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and somber and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock,
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British regulars fired and fled, --
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm, --
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed,
And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1860.

From Wikipedia: Myths and legends of the Midnight Ride

In his poem, Longfellow took many liberties with the events of the evening, most especially giving sole credit to Revere for the collective achievements of the three riders (as well as the other riders whose names do not survive to history). Longfellow also depicts the lantern signal in the Old North Church as meant for Revere and not from him, as was actually the case. Other inaccuracies include claiming that Revere rode triumphantly into Concord instead of Lexington, and a general lengthening of the time frame of the night's events.

For a long time, though, historians of the American Revolution as well as textbook writers relied almost entirely on Longfellow's poem as historical evidence - creating substantial misconceptions in the minds of the American people. In re-examining the episode, some historians in the 20th century have attempted to demythologize Paul Revere almost to the point of marginalization. While it is true that Revere was not the only rider that night, that does not refute the fact that Revere was riding and successfully completed the first phase of his mission to warn Adams and Hancock. Other historians have since stressed his importance, including David Hackett Fischer in his book Paul Revere's Ride (1995), an important scholarly study of Revere's role in the opening of the Revolution.

Popular myths and urban legends have persisted, though, concerning Revere's ride, mainly due to the tendency in the past to take Longfellow's poem as truth. Other riders such as Israel Bissell and Sybil Ludington are often suggested as having completed much more impressive rides than Revere's; however, the circumstances behind the others' rides were entirely different. Bissell was a news-carrier riding from Boston to Philadelphia with news of the battle at Lexington; Revere had made similar rides with the news in the years preceding the war. The only evidence for Ludington's ride is an oral tradition.) Longfellow's poem was never designed to be history and there are few serious historians today who would maintain that Revere was anything like the lone-wolf rider portrayed in the poem.

Paul Revere was a member of St. Andrews Lodge and Grand Master of Massachusetts.