Brethren All,
A memorial service for Most Worshipful Cecil Lane Weatherbee will be held Sunday, October 26, 2025 at 2PM at Piedmont First United Methodist Church, 300 N Main St, Piedmont, AL 36272. The Grand Lodge of Alabama will be opened at the church at 1:30PM. Masonic Rites will be performed at the church at the conclusion of the memorial service.
Sincerely,
Zachary A. Holmes, Grand Secretary
By R. W. Bro. Rob Elsner
Grand Orator, 2024-2025
In a recent homily at a funeral, I mentioned that at the funeral of our brother Sir Christopher Wren, who designed St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Wren’s son famously inscribed on his tomb inside that very building: “Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you.” Wren’s legacy was in the beauty he left behind. The cathedral is an outward, visible monument to the glory of God, and is a central theme of Freemasons. We love the tales, substantiated or not, that we descended from the stonemasons who built those amazing edifices. They are among the ultimate expressions of order, of math, of piety. The greatest cathedrals are testaments to dedication and the generational perseverance of our Craft.
Our beloved Grand Master Richard Shultz asked me recently what I thought the purpose of Freemasonry was. I answered that I think the purpose is to serve humanity and improve the world to the glory of God. That is not too far off from what I expect early stonemasons were attempting to do with building cathedrals.
When I lived in France, I worked across the river from Notre Dame cathedral and saw her flying buttresses every day. Living in London I went to St. Paul’s and looked up at the square and compass in the ceiling and laughed with pride. In Cork, Ireland, our brother William Burges designed and built St. Finbarre’s Cathedral, his being the fifth building on the site since the church there was founded in AD606. I travelled to Amiens and Chartres, Armagh and Washington DC, New York and San Francisco, to Munich and Rome, to Venise and Wittenberg, to see the greatest cathedrals. Each was a masterpiece. I loved the order, the lines, the delicacy of stonework that looked like lace. To me, there was nothing that defined the beauty and artistic expression of what we do as masons more than a cathedral. These works glorify God and bring us closer to seeing heaven than anything else created by human hands.
And yet, even the most beautiful cathedral pales in comparison to the work of the Great Architect. Rounding a road on a recent autumn day, the top down on my old project car, I caught sight of a tree, leaves turning. The magnificence of the colored leaves, with the sun just right behind them, gave me insight into what Moses saw with the burning bush. Awe, wonder, and love for the hands that set the foundations of the earth and prepared the dry land overwhelmed me. I pulled over and turned off the car, the beautiful sound of a well-tuned engine falling silent, replaced by the symphonies of wind and birdsong, insects and babbling brook. God was laughing with and at me, letting me in on His jokes. His creation is more than ours. When He created humans in Eden, we were perfectly human. When we fell, we became less so. We did not need cathedrals as we were already in one. We could not confine God to a house, but He let us build temples and cathedrals to help us understand Him.
For the past 40 years, I have visited Barcelona every few years and watched the progress of the Cathedral of Sagrada Familia, Antoni Goudi’s masterpiece imitation of nature. Instead of forms of lines and angles, that building conforms to divine laws of architecture, taking inspiration from tree and flowers, from waterfalls and mountains. It is a work of submission and admitting that we cannot surpass God’s architecture. Goudi was striving to be MORE human in expressing God’s intentions above human’s ideals. Does everyone like that cathedral? No. But is the intention in the right place? Yes.
As we strive to build the greatest temples and cathedrals of our lives, let us think of the examples scripture sets out for us. Let us seek God and our relationship with him that guides us to improvement and humility. Let us consider commandments to love our neighbors as ourselves. Let us try each and every day to be better men, even if we sometimes go backwards on that path, hope continues for us to advance until we come to what Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Act III) called “that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.”
Outside of my door at work here in Birmingham, I have a small bible verse: Micah 6:8 (NIV): “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Let us find the cathedral of our hearts and hope that we have built them to be good work, square work, delightful in God’s sight. Such an edifice would be the greatest cathedral and the purpose of masonry.
By R. W. Bro. Rob Elsner
Grand Orator
Anniversaries, by definition, happen every year. However, there are milestones that mark special longevity, whether of a relationship or of an institution. In Marriages, we mark some anniversaries with special gifts. In a Lodge, we might mark the 25th, 50th, 75th, or other anniversary with a pin or a certificate. Our Lodges themselves we celebrate with cornerstone rededications or similar at 100, 150, and even 200 years. We are about to celebrate our country’s Semiquincentennial, or 250th anniversary of Independence, and will celebrate with parades, fireworks, and dedications of public works.
On October 1st, W. Bro. Jason Gonce and I headed to my Mother Lodge back in Ireland for the 300th Anniversary of the Grand Lodge of Ireland. We were overwhelmed by the honor of representing you and our Most Worshipful Brother Richard Schultz. Even though we were paying our own way, it was a bargain to be so honored ourselves to be part of history. We flew into Dublin, the capitol of the Republic. We got to visit the Grand Lodge Museum and were given a private tour of the rooms for the various Bodies, immersing ourselves in the History of the place and our forebearers. We dined in restaurants with Masonic history and visited exhibitions about Masonic brothers in the National Gallery and National Library. The white and red saltire cross of St. Patrick was flying, and that flag of the Church of Ireland made us feel at home, since it is what we adopted as the Flag of the State of Alabama.
We took a train to Belfast, in Northern Ireland, for the Tercentenary Meeting. Grand Lodge there meets quarterly, not annually, so that all areas of both countries represented in the Grand Lodge of Ireland get visits and voices, and issues do not escalate. In a Grand Ballroom of an enormous hotel we were seated upon the dais in the front, next to the Grand Master of Greece. He actually preceded us in the march to the front, since we are an older Grand Lodge than they are. We were given Grand Honors, and then I was asked to give the Response. We were given gifts and literally hundreds of photos were taken of us in our spectacular attire. The gold vests and ties, along with our beautiful aprons, were quite popular and made up for the concern that we did not wear sleeve gauntlets as most other Grand Lines do in Europe and elsewhere. Irish Constitution brothers from several countries were in attendance, including a group from the Philippines. Although the Banquet had been sold out for over a year, the Grand Master, M. W. Bro. Richard Ensor, found two tickets for us to attended in the Great Hall of Belfast City Hall. In spite of the beauty of the place, professionalism of the staff, and quality of the food, it was the congeniality and warmth of the brothers that was most memorable. The next day we headed to Cork, all the way in the South. We arrived in time to go to Evensong at St. Finbarre’s Cathedral, which recently (2006) celebrated the 1400th anniversary of its founding in AD606. W. Bro. Jason had never seen the red and green marble from Ireland, and the spectacular beauty of my old home church was overwhelming, as was the choir’s performance. They sang “Locus iste” by Anton Bruckner as the anthem, the notes echoing gracefully in that space, with lyrics that should resound in every Lodge:
Locus iste a Deo factus est, Inaestimabile sacramentum, irreprehensibilis est.
This place was made by God, a priceless sacrament; it is without reproach.
The First Lodge of Ireland building on Tuckey Street is being renovated to meet city code at a cost of over $1.5 million, so we were not able to meet in the hall we have owned since 1726, the fifth building of First Lodge. I was sad that Jason could not see my Mother Lodge: the place where I was initiated, passed, and raised all those years ago. Instead, First Lodge met in the Lodge at Kinsale, a nearby town voted the culinary capitol of Ireland and one of the most beautiful towns in Europe. Dinner at a local hotel was moved up an extra half hour so that we had time to chat beforehand, even though dinner is normally a festive board after the meeting. Again, the brotherly love and welcome was phenomenal. The meeting was filled with beauty and work that reminded us where Alabama ritual came from. W. Bro. Jason was able to follow along with most of the work word for word, although there were a lot of extra words that we have taken out over the centuries here. There were many jokes about my being there, since I do not get back to Ireland very often and some of the younger brothers only know me from my monthly apologies for not being in Lodge. The reunion was lovely, and showed again and again that we are brothers of a world-wide organization who all value the same principles.
While we were in Ireland for the 300th Anniversary of the Grand Lodge of Ireland, just as in 2017 we celebrated the 300th of the United Grand Lodge of England, it is important that you see this as YOUR anniversary. A celebration of where we came from masonically in our ritual and in our passion for the basic principles of brotherly love, relief, and truth. Each time I travel, I remind brothers that to travel and visit lodges helps us to connect to the wider world and to see that each jurisdiction as another piece of the puzzle that makes up the image of Freemasonry. What a beautiful image it is!
Celebrate and love your Mother Lodge and the Grand Lodge of Alabama. Revel in the glorious history that we have, descending from those European Lodges and creating ourselves in our own way. Happy Anniversary to us all, whether 300 or 3.
