By Andrew Hawes, PM — Jr. Warden
April showers bring May flowers - I used to joke with my sons that this was a partial metaphor, referring to pretty girls as "flowers" and meaning that they should shower at least once a year, whether they needed it or not, in order to not drive away any potential attraction that those flowers might feel towards them! ...I was of course joking, since they were required to shower at least once every month. Ok, so person hygiene jokes aside, April is the first month of Spring, and the month during which we celebrate Easter. As an homage to that tradition, we usually have ham and potatoes at our Stated Meeting dinners for April, but I'm not really sure why ham is considered such an Easter traditional dinner. ...if only there was some way I could find out some information that I didn't have already... oh, wait. The Internet can help! (one quick google search later) ham is traditionally eaten as an Easter meal because the curing process for the meat was done over the winter, meaning that the ham would be ready for consumption in the spring. It also became a generally cheaper option than lamb, which was formerly an easter staple, because pork farming bloomed, and the demand for wool dropped, leading to there being fewer sheep raised over the years. It's amazing to me what we can learn with just a short search for information online - but as always, one must be careful to think about the facts one learns, and cross check them with multiple sources, before taking them as true and accurate - there is almost too much information available these days, and we are more and more turning to simple answers - the "AI summary" of data we see when we do an internet search is designed to make finding information easier for us - but it's data which has been located and distilled for our consumption, and isn't always assured to be relevant to what we're trying to find out!
So, enjoy ham... and think about why you are enjoying it this month. Think about how things change over time. Think about the factors that drive those changes.
Thinking about things in our life is one of the things we are asked to do as Masons. Consider, pontificate, ruminate, and conceive. We don't just eat ham in April because "that's what we do" - there are reasons for everything, and we should understand them!
Comentários