Templar Edification

Reflections from the 2026 Minnesota Grand York Rite Session Some weekends are measured by motions passed, officers elected, and gavels sounded. Others are measured by handshakes renewed, laughter shared in hotel hallways, conversations that seem to pick up exactly where they left off a year ago, and quiet reminders of why we first knocked at the West Gate. The 2026 Minnesota Grand York Rite Session was decidedly the latter. My journey began Wednesday evening as I arrived in St. Cloud. The hotel had not yet awakened to the energy that would soon fill its halls. After checking into my room, I called home to say goodnight to my family. As has become our tradition whenever I'm away, they insisted on a video tour of my hotel room before bedtime. Afterward I ventured around the corner for dinner, returned to my room, and settled in for the night, looking forward to what the coming days would bring. Thursday morning began simply enough with a few cups of coffee from the in room Keurig, br...

An old memory recently came to mind at our Summer Bible Study on miracles. Forgive me if you’ve heard me tell it to you before. The summer after seventh grade, my family moved. The basement of our new house had yet to be finished, so we stored a lot of the boxes that we hadn’t yet gotten through down below, including quite a few packed-up books. Alas, when autumn came around, we learned that our fresh, clean, concrete basement had been built over a seasonal spring, and the whole thing flooded. We came home on the evening of my birthday to find three feet of standing water working its way up the stairs. My mother waded waist-high through the deluge, taking stock of the damage, when, looking down, she spotted something yellow and rectangular on the bottom. She reached underneath, soaking her entire arm, pulled the object up, and immediately grew pale. Our home congregation, which I’d attended ever since my birth and baptism, used bright yellow Good News Bibles for Sunday School and Youth...

By: Companion Eric Thiem In the Select Master Degree, we are informed of items of significance that are placed in the Ark of the Covenant to be discovered by future generations on their return from Babylon; or in the case of York Rite Masonry to be discovered previously in the Royal Arch Degree. One of those items to be placed in the Ark is an omer of Manna. Doing research; one finds that an omer was an ancient unit of measurement, which is one tenth of an ephah, roughly equivalent to 1.5 to 2 quarts worth. Another definition is the amount of manna it would take to feed one over a period of time, roughly seven weeks or the time between Passover and Shavuot (1) . The Old Testament describes manna as being a fine flake like bread that tasted like wafers that were made with honey. In Exodus 16:19-20, Moses instructs the Israelites not to keep the manna more than a day and when the Israelites disobeyed Moses and kept it and they discovered the manna to be full of maggots and have a pungent...