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Throughout the month of November we’re looking at civility – how trusting God can help us cultivate a disposition of the mind and heart that has the potential to revolutionize our culture and ourselves.
If you’re a devotee of The Andy Griffith Show, which ran on CBS from 1960 to 1968, you’ll probably remember “The Pickle Story.”
Fans of the sitcom – set in the fictional town of Mayberry, North Carolina – have consistently voted it their favorite of all 249 episodes. It’s one of only two shows that CBS decided to colorize.
Aunt Bee, who is Sheriff Andy Taylor’s maiden aunt and housekeeper, is a superlative cook. But she is clueless when it comes to pickles.
For 11 consecutive years she’s seen her culinary rival, Clara Johnson, win the blue ribbon for homemade pickles at the fair. This is the year she aims to turn the tables.
But Aunt Bee’s efforts are once again disastrous.
When she provides samples for Andy and his deputy buddy Barney Fife, they can barely choke them down. They taste as if they’ve been soaked in kerosene.
A fly lands on one of the pickles. And promptly dies.
Mayberry is a town filled with good-hearted people. Barney, Andy, and Andy’s son Opie cannot bear to let Aunt Bee suffer the humiliation of submitting her pickles to the fair. Nor can they imagine telling her that her latest kitchen project is a clear and present danger to living things.
So they engage in a bit of fraud.
They secretly throw away all eight quarts of Aunt Bee’s “kerosene cucumbers” and refill her jars with a store-bought variety from Myers’ Pickle Factory. But then it dawns on them: What if the store-bought pickles end up winning the blue ribbon? That would be unfair to all the other contestants – especially Clara Johnson.
Andy, Barney, and Opie make the ultimate sacrifice.
They gulp down all eight quarts of the commercial pickles so that Aunt Bee will have to make another batch of her own for the contest (which of course she loses).
What charmed audiences back in 1961, and which still delights those who look in on Mayberry via syndication, is the fact that these characters express empathy – one of the essential components of a culture of civility. They imagine how other people might feel. And they take those feelings into account – even the feelings of Clara Johnson, who might be perceived as “the enemy.”
Towards the end of “The Pickle Story,” Andy makes this remarkable statement: “Well, there’s only one thing to do. That’s what we should have done in the first place: learn to love ’em.”
In today’s atmosphere of incivility and relational toxicity, that option seems unimaginable.
You mean I should (almost literally) swallow my pride and learn to swallow a few pickles, rather than blast the cook for her gross incompetence?
In a word, yes. Being tender-hearted about someone else’s feelings is more important than my “right” to express how they have unintentionally compromised my happiness.
What are you hoping to receive this holiday season?
Ask God for a heart transplant.
And specifically request that your new one will be brimming with empathy.