TBE

Jay plowed the driveway today, and it struck me that it may be the last time he plows it this year. When we come back from our trip to California and Washington on April 2, we will be coming back to spring. People remember that there was once snow on Mothers’ Day, and with the climate changing anything is possible. But the odds are good that the next time he has the tractor out of the barn it will be for brush hogging.

The snow is frozen hard. Where the wind has swept it, it’s sculpted in waves like sand on a beach where the tide is going out. I know the contours of the snow between the house and the barn, where the wind will push it into the deepest drifts and where the ground will be swept nearly clear. In the mornings after the wind has had its way with the snow overnight, the boot prints I left the night before have vanished, as have the tire tracks up the driveway. The snow has been driven, its surface left pure. If there is a little morning sunshine it glitters – not like diamonds, because who could imagine 21 acres covered in diamonds. It just glitters like itself, like snow covering a field that had once been cleared for farming. We have no plans to plant anything but a few pots of vegetables this year, just to mow the goldenrod over and over to make room for other flora to emerge.

I think about the field lying under the snow, about the tender grass the deer will feast on. But mostly, I just think about the beautiful snow and the bare trees surrounding our hill. With barely a breeze today the branches are still. The wind has blown off the snow that coated them. Their architecture reveals itself so clearly and in such variety. Their color palette is subtle, browns and greys giving way to muted pinks and yellows at the tips of the branches. I haven’t seen it yet today, but I know that down at the end of our driveway and running under Gulf to the west side, the little unnamed stream that comes out of our neighbor’s pond is a winding line of black between the frozen white banks. It has been completely frozen over many days this cold winter, the ice usually buried under snow. But yesterday the ice had drawn back from the middle, and we could see the moving water. So much is hidden, covered in ice and snow during the winter. Spring will be full of surprises.

Tonight we’ll cross the little stream on our way to Oneonta for dinner with Rabbi Molly Karp and services at Temple Beth El. I have learned that people don’t refer to it as Beth El, (as we referred to Beth Am) but always as Temple Beth El or TBE. Maybe it’s a Conservative norm. I’m learning more and more about the congregation and the people it serves and doesn’t serve: the unaffiliated Jews, the people who didn’t like the former rabbi or the current one, the people in mixed marriages whose partners cannot be members and who don’t feel entirely welcome, the people who live too far away, and others for their own unique reasons. Who comes, who belongs to TBE, matters a great deal. The congregation sits on a knife edge of fiscal sustainability, with the unplanned expense or the unexpected drop in membership or in dues collection easily upsetting the fragile balance. At Rabbi Karp’s suggestion, I’ve formed a strategic planning team to see if we can lay a course that will ensure that there will still be a thriving Jewish home for us here in ten years. I had sworn off any activities that require attending meetings, but I’ve made this big exception. A very fine team has volunteered for this work, a dozen of us out of a congregation of 60 households, which seems very hopeful in itself. The work is already personally satisfying, giving me a chance to learn about the community, to get to know people, and to feel that my presence matters. Whether we will be able to use this process to energize the congregation and to put it on a more stable path remains to be seen, as the challenges are daunting. But the assets are there too, perhaps needing a little kick in the asset, but still, considerable. There’s history, there are social bonds, there are deeply felt needs, and there are no reasonable alternatives, nothing you could begin to call competition. So we’ve rolled up our sleeves, and the first two meetings and the work between them have been very promising. Perhaps Temple Beth El, too, is at the end of winter and on the verge of spring.