As everyone who reads this knows, Jon and I belong to multiple communities, and those communities provide the context for our identity. We live and breathe this farm, we live and breathe Blueberry Hill, and I have a longstanding role at the temple as a leader, in addition to our shared role as engaged congregants. Plus, we have our family. In all of these circles, we have dear friends. We are entirely committed to each of these communities and we give ourselves heart and soul to them. Sometimes one more than another, depending on the season.
Every story I write is about something that happens within one of these four communities. In the last two days, all four of these communities have asked something of us, or given us something. I woke up this morning (it is now 5:30) still feeling quite frayed. Bruised, almost, from the roller coaster. It's crazy because nothing terrible happened, nobody died, and almost no one else would even think of this as a bruising couple of days, looking in from the outside.
Luckily, the farm is great. The crew is doing excellent work, both farms look beautiful, the vegetables are plentiful, the management team is succeeding, and we are selling piles of nicely washed beets and lettuce and leeks. CSA customers are really happy and the trains are running completely on time. We could not wish for anything more than this. So there is nothing to report there.
At the end of April, nearly two months ago, I got a frantic call from the rabbi as I was driving home from Loudoun. He was panicked because he had just had a meeting with the President and Vice President of the temple and they had told him that the Board had just agreed that there is not enough money in the budget to renew his contract. He was shocked and upset to be told that the Board had come to this conclusion, without even having a conversation with him about what he might want in his next contract. Since then, much of my non-farm life has been spent dealing with the aftermath of this unexpected revelation.
He called me because I am the chair of the Pulpit Committee and there was no one else to call, really. The Pulpit Committee is the designated liaison between the clergy and the congregation -- we deliver the messages back and forth if the communications are not easy. We talk to people and find out how the clergy is doing and we report back to the Board and the clergy. Sometimes there is nothing to do and sometimes that work just takes all the time that there is.
In the last two months we have been learning how that conversation between the rabbi and the leaders came to be, and we have been using established processes to get the conversation back on track. I wrote about this already on May 30, so this is old news. But that calm between the storms did not hold and more storms came through.
The story isn't interesting enough to tell in detail, but in the last two days, a new level of drama emerged. It's still about personalities and bad patterns, but time is getting short. In less than two weeks, the rabbi would need to decide whether he is going to start looking for a new job. The drama is heightened by the financial troubles at the temple. And it is made so much worse by the President's desire to have the rabbi go, and the congregation's desire to have him stay.
Yesterday, after finding myself crying on multiple occasions about all this trouble, it became clear to me what needed to happen, and happen now. It was not at all clear how to get it to happen, but we had to try. Nancy and I spent a lot of time talking to people, writing, thinking. We found others who agreed with us. And by the end of the day, the President of the congregation resigned, effective immediately. There is no joy here. Only relief that we can try to fix these problems with a new set of players. There are endless meetings on the horizon, and I don't doubt that my name and my integrity will continue to be questioned (hence the tears) and I am sure there is more ugliness to come. This is so tiring.
On Friday night, while it was Shabbat and the emails could stop for a few hours (Reform Jews just stop emailing on Friday night. On Saturday most of us just get right back into it.), Blueberry Hill had its annual recital. Betsy (my friend since we were in elementary school) organizes it every year and it is a triumph of sweetness and joy and warmth and entertainment. This one was amazing. The youngest performer was two years old, singing so quietly, sitting on the piano bench and barely visible, that none of us could hear the words but we could see that he was earnestly singing a long song. The oldest performer was about 85, reading a loving poem that she wrote about her granddaughter coming to visit and hogging the bed. The most polished performance, I thought, was delivered by three musicians (two farmers and a lifelong singer)-- an original rap song based on a great Hamilton song, called the Ten Commandments of Farming. The harmonies and the rhythms were perfect. So clever and delicious. My mother and I, for the first time ever, performed piano duets. We had decided the day before to do it, but I had already learned the duets for a recital in May and my mother could easily learn her part in one day. After two rehearsals in 24 hours, we were ready and we did ourselves proud. All the performances were enthusiastically cheered, and they were all delightful. This is Blueberry Hill at its finest.
Last night, Jon and I went to different social events. I went to the party to celebrate our recently retired choir director and Jon went to the weekly family dinner. He is preparing to be the chef for Jesse's upcoming wedding, and he has been practicing his recipes at these dinners. The choir party was a final gathering for a group that has sung together for decades -- many of the singers are planning to stop singing with us, taking this transition as an opportunity to reclaim their Sunday evenings. Some have been singing for over 40 years together, so this was a bittersweet event.
In a few minutes, I will go down to the stand to help load the market truck with Stephen and Michael Lipsky, then Heinz will roll in with his load of CSA vegetables and then I will get to work on setting up the CSA room for our third week. Sometimes the farm is a source of drama, but not now, thank goodness. The weather is not challenging us at the moment and the work is getting done without undue effort.
As always, I am so glad we are healthy. Jon is doing better than ever right now. Our life is just about as good as it gets.
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