I thought today would be spent catching up on the weekend's mail and emails that I have put on the back burner, until I got a frantic call from work, the school was cold and the boilers were out. So I hobbled down to the school and lowered my frame to the boiler room, to find a condensate pump running constantly and two steam boilers with no water in them. Diagnosis: A pin hole in a rubber diaphragm was causing a failure of a valve to open and allow the water to fill the boilers. Although the fix wasn't much time at all, the diagnosis was 4 hours. Its a complex system of piping, electronics, pneumatics and controls.
It reminds me of how our Lodges will bring in a new member and set him in the masters chair before he knows what hit him. I often hear of a man who becomes a WM after only 2 or 3 years as a Mason. Masonry, like my boilers, is a complex system. It has laws, constitutions, rituals, edicts, ceremonies, a charter, a volume of sacred law, prayers, minutes, finance reports, installation, aprons, sword, staffs, circumnavigation, fraternal recognition, Grand Lodge, degrees, dinners, building association, destitution, widows, awards, communications, elections, appointments, winding stairs, ears of corn, orders of architecture, mason of the year, Lou B.Windsor holder, LEO (Lodge Education Officer), short talk bulletins, six steps to initiation, petitions, committees, Roberts rules of order, top hat, jewels, pins, grips and a hundred other things. Like the one wrong word I just used in this list, if you don't spend the time to understand (diagnose) each facet of the Fraternity we call Freemasonry, the chances of being successful as a Worshipful Master are greatly diminished. You will struggle to have a great Lodge.
Sometimes if there is a pinhole in a piece of rubber, and the noise in the room doesn't allow you to hear the air hissing, it can take a long time to find the problem. You end up checking every aspect of the operation until you see or hear the failure. Sound familiar? If I had been in a quiet room, it would have literally taken 10 minutes to repair. I was so focused on getting heat in the building (making everyone happy) that I neglected the problem.
Lesson learned.......
