Leticia's Oven

 Free oven! Free oven! The ad on social media offered our free wall oven to the first family who responded. 

Leticia was first in the virtual line.  As we loaded the oven into Leticia’s car, we chatted about life and family. Leticia was from the south of Texas, living in Wisconsin because of a temporary job her husband found. They would soon be going home, oven in tow.  As we talked about Leticia’s family and life, I thought about how a simple thing like giving away an oven became the one way in all of the universe for Jill and I to meet this lovely Texan, a woman I would be thankful to call my friend and neighbor.

As she was preparing to leave, Leticia looking at the new oven in the back of her car, said, ‘beautiful.’ To us it had been an oven we didn’t need. To Leticia it was a treasure found. I imagined Thanksgiving morning, Leticia waking up early, turning on the oven and counting the hours until her turkey, prepared in her beautiful oven, would be ready to parade in front of her thankful family.

On Thanksgiving morning I gave thanks to God for the blessing of Leticia, for making this big country seem just a little bit smaller. 

It doesn’t take a lot to tear down the fences that divide us, to remove bricks from the walls that separate people who might look or sound different from you, whose politics or religion might be different than yours. Meeting a stranger in your driveway and talking kids has always been a way to make friends, right?  Maybe the long journey to unity in this country begins in your driveway.

If you want to be an agent for change in this crazy, mixed-up world, you could do worse than finding something you don’t need which someone else will find beautiful, and then take the time to meet, to talk, to become friends.  Jesus said, “Whatever you did for my brothers and sisters, you did to me.”

Thanksgiving blessings are found when we learn anew how to give and receive with grace toward each other.

I don’t know if Jesus had free ovens in mind, but it seems like a good place to start.

 

A 'Civil Body Politic'

Before the Pilgrims got off of the Mayflower they had to agree upon how they would live together in the land they were about to enter.

‘How can we live together?’ is basic question which underlies every community’s government. The answer which the people agree upon becomes the fabric which holds a society together, that which allows it to endure over time.

Before the group of over one hundred people we now know as the Pilgrims departed the Mayflower, on November 21, 1620, all of the men signed an agreement which we now know as the Mayflower Compact. This varied group of people had a variety of motives for crossing the ocean to establish a new England colony. When they arrived and were required to choose some way of governing themselves, they notably chose a government of the people, by the people.

The Pilgrims agreed to form a “civil body politic” which would “enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices…as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.”  It would be a community governed by laws, not by the preferences of one or a few men. That which was enacted into law by the community would govern everyone in the community. No one was to be above nor beyond the law.

Our social compact rests on this idea: that in order for us to live together we all must submit and obey to the agreed upon laws of the land, even, or especially when we do not like how those laws affect us. Those who disagree with the law do not disobey it. Rather, they seek to change it as the laws permit. Thus the fabric bends but does not break.

Thanksgiving 2020 celebrates that we are still able to live together because we remain a ‘civil body politic’, in which the idea of a government of laws is stronger than the idea of  ‘getting my own way.’ Maintaining a ‘civil body politic’ requires good Pilgrims to rise up against those who would tear the social fabric which binds us.  Be a good Pilgrim, Pilgrim.