In times of the pandemic.
Due to the corona pandemic, the board of our lodge has canceled all lodge activities until after Easter 2021. Now we are in 2021, in the middle of the month of February, and hope to see us lodge activities again! Our last meetings took place in September 2020 at two barbecue evenings for us brothers and sisters including guests.
March
Easter letter
Dear brother and friend of our St. John’s Lodge “Zum Widder”. The Brotherhood and I send you and your family warm greetings from Berlin/Potsdam and wish you a peaceful and relaxing Easter and a healthy and speedy reunion.
Especially in the past months and the past year, which has been characterized by worries about our health, our limited encounters with our families and friends through Corona, also by the concern about how to continue our work in our everyday life……. I hope that in this year 2021 the hardships will be less and we can work masonically again. Until then, our lodge will adhere to the instructions of the Grand Lodge and will not carry out any ritual work via the Internet, etc. This also applies to instruction lodges and virtual guest evenings.
It is important that we continue to maintain telephone contact as well as individual meetings between brothers within the framework of the legal regulations. We are all united by the need for deepening and for a community that is guided by positive values. It is about a journey inwards, to myself, and a journey outwards, to the brothers and into the world.
Here are a few thoughts for each of us:
Pay attention to your feelings, because they become thoughts.
Pay attention to your thoughts, because they become words.
Pay attention to your words, because they become actions.
Pay attention to your actions, because they become habits.
Pay attention to your habits, because they become your character.
Pay attention to your character, because it becomes your destiny.
With best regards.
May
Pentecost greeting
Dear brothers and friends of St. John’s Lodge “Zum Widder” Potsdam.
After many weeks of abstinence from our Masonic work and our traditional guest evenings, we were only able to talk to friends/brothers on the phone and not only in a Masonic way. It was and is important for us that everyone is healthy. In the so-called merry month of May, we now celebrate the feast of the Holy Spirit “Pentecost”.
We wish you and your families a peaceful, restful Pentecost and hope that we will see each other again at the end of this month in good health; perhaps also for one or two personal encounters. We can all be active here on our own responsibility.
June/July
Dear guests and friends of our St. John’s Lodge, dear Brothers and Sisters,
Our St. John’s Lodge maintains the tradition of a barbecue evening for all brothers and sisters as well as guests of our lodge. Guests and brothers with their families obviously enjoyed and still enjoy new encounters and exchanges on very personal topics and experiences…. And this time under very special conditions for us Freemasons.
We still have the corona pandemic. Nevertheless, we can meet in the garden of the lodge for a barbecue evening.
The restaurant of the lodge has invited us to this barbecue (i.e. the brothers and sisters and their guests of our St. John’s Lodge) as organizers.
June
St. John’s greeting
Dear brothers and friends of our St. John’s Lodge,
In the last weeks and months of this and the past year, it has been difficult for all people, especially for us Freemasons, to live with the distance imposed on us. Nevertheless, we will get through the lost time and master the possibilities of personal contact through telephone conversations and personal meetings, in the faith and hope of a good time to come. In the coming weeks and months, our Masonic life seems to be coming back to life.
Activities and guest evenings are planned for our Lodge…let’s look forward to a good time. Now I would like to recite a poem by Ludwig Uhland from 1834 to all readers of this St. John’s greeting:
Solstice
| Now the sun shall complete its longest beautiful orbit, How it hesitates to turn to the still ocean! Her goddess youthful inclination feels the foreboding nature, and it seems to me that the evening meadow is cautiously silent. |
Only the quail, which usually peels early, wakes the day. Now strikes a wake-up call to the watched glimmer; and the lark rises high in song from the fragrant valley, to catch a glimpse of the already sunlit beam. |
St. John’s Day, the feast of love. You are ready to make us happy;
and though spring’s splendor fade, you still give us bliss.
You lead us to wisdom, beauty, strength, you remove the bandage from our faces,
You consecrate us to good works. Do not forget the rose for us!
December
Advent greeting
The wind in the winter forest drives
the flock of flakes like a shepherd,
and some fir trees sense how soon
it will soon become pious and holy with light,
and listens out. To the white paths
it stretches out its branches – ready,
and resists the wind and grows towards
towards the one night of glory!
Rainer Maria Rilke
