Valley of Lower Delaware, AASR NMJ

03/14/2026

RSVP deadline moved up to Monday, March 16!

03/08/2026

RSVP Deadline moved up to Monday, March 16!

03/07/2026

Come out and enjoy our first Bingo Night. Spread the word!!!

02/09/2026

01/25/2026

📜 This Day in Masonic History – January 25, 1759

On this day in 1759, Robert Burns was born in Alloway, Ayrshire, Scotland.

Burns wasn’t raised in comfort or privilege. He was the son of a self-educated tenant farmer, and much of his learning came at the knee of a father who believed education mattered—even when money was scarce. Reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography… all earned, not given.

By 15, Burns was already writing poetry. Not from ivory towers, but from the fields and farms where he labored. His first poem, “O, Once I Lov’d A Bonnie Lass,” was inspired by a fellow farm worker—proof that real art often comes from real life.

Hard times followed him. Failed farms meant constant moves, new communities, and fresh starts. Yet in Tarbolton, Burns found something important: fellowship. He joined a country dancing school, helped form the Tarbolton Bachelor’s Club, and sharpened his mind through debate and discussion—very much in the spirit of what Freemasonry would later formalize for him.

Burns lived a complicated life. He loved deeply, sometimes recklessly. He was married to Jean Armour and fathered many children, while enduring loss, hardship, and rumor. When desperation pushed him to consider work on a Jamaican plantation, a friend instead urged him to publish his poetry.

That decision changed everything.

In 1786, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (the Kilmarnock Edition) was released—and became an instant success. Burns went on to Edinburgh, fame followed, and his voice—plainspoken, poetic, defiant—found a nation.

He was initiated into St. David’s Lodge No. 174 in Tarbolton at age 22, becoming a Freemason not of ceremony alone, but of character: self-educated, truth-seeking, and grounded in the dignity of labor.

Burns died young, in 1796, worn down by illness and hard living. But his words outlived him—still sung, quoted, and remembered across the world.

A working man.
A thinker.
A poet.
A Brother.

That’s a legacy worth honoring.

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01/24/2026

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11/18/2025

THE LAMB SKIN

It is not ornamental, the cost is not great,
There are other things far more useful, yet truly I state,
Tho of all my possesions, there's none can compare,
With that white leather apron, which all Masons wear.

As a young lad I wondered just what it all meant,
When Dad hustled around, and so much time was spent
On shaving and dressing and looking just right,
Until Mother would say: "It's the Masons tonight."

And some winter nights she said: "What makes you go,
Way up there tonight thru the sleet and the snow,
You see the same things every month of the year."
Then Dad would reply: "Yes, I know it, my dear."

Forty years I have seen the same things, it is true.
And though they are old, they always seem new,
For the hands that I clasp, and the friends that I greet,
Seem a little bit closer each time that we meet."

Years later I stood at that very same door,
With good men and true who had entered before,
I knelt at the alter, and there I was taught
That virtue and honor can never be bought.

That the spotless white lambskin all Masons revere,
If worthily worn grows more precious each year,
That service to others brings blessings untold,
That man may be poor tho surrounded by gold.

I learned that true brotherhood flourishes there,
That enmities fade 'neath the compass and square,
That wealth and position are all thrust aside,
As there on the level men meet and abide.

So, honor the lambskin, may it always remain
Forever unblemished, and free from all stain,
And when we are called to the Great Father's love,
May we all take our place in that Lodge up above.

By Edgar A. Guest