Communities Built on Mite

Of all the places a treasure did lie, The mite of the Widow did catch God’s eye;     

Those hands made fragile of life’s pain, Did pitch it all without the feign                         

Of glorious materialistic living;  A simple act of the greatest giving,               

Upon a pot of eased placed wealth; She heard a call for communal health,

To reach into her deepest dell, And give of it so all were well;

Of all the places a treasure could be, The mite of the Widow resides in thee. – Dr. Johnnie C. Larrie (Esq.,)

Let Us Do It Ourselves - Let Us Cast Our Lot Among Us -- A Statement of Community

And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury….and many that were rich cast in much. And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites....And [Jesus] called unto him his disciples, and saith….this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury….For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living. – (Mark 12:41–44, KJV)

To take all of your living and make it a part of communal wealth is likely the greatest form of giving. Yet, in a social environment that promotes individualistic consumerism over all else, this is a strange form of giving. The taint of consumerism is to glorify philanthropic forms of giving that rest easily on great riches, while shunning more sacrificial forms of giving – born of an internal will to diminish the self in favor of something far greater.

MacKenzie Scott - ex-spouse to billionaire Jeff Bezos - was lauded publicly for her philanthropy of billions of dollars to social justice nonprofit organizations and other institutions bristling under the weight of shrinking financial support. The resulting benefits of a generous donation Ms. Scott made to my former legal services employer remained a mystery to me -- yet, the murmurings of how she gave quietly to a number of nonprofit legal services organizations reverberated quietly until they became a loud chorus. Only recently, we learned Ms. Scott had given over $150M to Historically Black Colleges and Universities. This is the gesture of giving that dominates public minds. And while it should be applauded for the evidence of its good – measured in the lives made whole -- it does nothing to convince a community of people that “giving its living” represents the greatest form of communal wealth building and preservation.   Let’s face it….Ms. Scott ain’t going broke over her giving, nor does her institutionalized place of financial privilege place her in danger of facing such a prospect.  But it is for Ms. Scott to determine the nature of her sacrifice in each of her moments of giving.

My point is simple: Financial philanthropy from positions of affluence paints a magic dust over giving that can muddy meaningful sacrifice. We measure contribution by the weight of what finances get placed into the treasury without consideration for what it really means to “cast in what we have….”  But the prophetic calling of the Widow’s Mite is that the greatest giving comes from an internal will to sacrifice – even at the risk of experiencing great pain. 

Did giving those mites ensure the Widow had a place at the table to determine the just distribution of those resources? Did giving those mites provide the Widow with heightened access to resources useful in her time of need? Did the Widow’s giving put a dent in the arrangements of resources to the benefit of those experiencing the most need?  Did the Widow’s proximity to the community’s treasury afford her the opportunity of benefit from that same treasury? No to all of the above. This is sacrificial giving – even at the risk of experiencing great pain. Nothing in return is promised and the act of giving itself may be missed in its seeming unimportance.

This form of giving requires movement towards risks on things uncertain and unseen, because we don’t know if it can return in-kind or make public someone's great giving. It requires a willingness to descend, delve deeply and become proximate with the things that lie below the public radar. It demands faith while running down dark societal alleys to exist and bump against the sharp edges of life with the most vulnerable people and the organizations that serve them.  It is a form of giving that generally eludes people and organizations of great material riches. Why else would the call to “go and sell what you have and give it to the poor” cause great sadness among those experiencing great material wealth?  The call to relinquish great material wealth caused sorrow, because of the abundance of those material possessions. It is not easy to give at the expense of losing financial wealth not certain to be replenished.

Yet, the Widow moved forward with quiet grace, dignifying her right to walk in between spaces of materialism. She demonstrated an act of the most meaningful giving, as she placed all that was her living into the communal treasury. It was this act that propelled pulpit discussions around the not-so-evident abundance in sacrificial giving. It is an abundance that remains misunderstood in a society that lauds “philanthropy from swells of material wealth” as the highest order of giving.

Aspects of philanthropy have been formed around this type of giving. If you listen closely enough, you can hear the ancestral drumbeats of this philanthropic giving:  Now that we have gained many riches from tearing up vulnerable social fabrics and may need to reconcile with our God, let us be generous towards the progeny of those whom we have abused. Even that much they have not gotten right.  Institutional philanthropies do harmed communities no favors by selectively giving back that which has been robbed from them. And these communities do not want favors – they want what belongs to them and the space to build and live from those belongings.

But what of these same communities? Casting “all of one’s living” can be done at the community level – especially if community members believe in seeding from the soil. Take what you own, that which is all you, and place it into communal soils. It is that thinking that gives the Widow’s Mite so much power. It does not take much, but it does take for community members to do much with the resources they hold within – their time commitments, their troves of expertise and abilities, their treasury of financial resources, their tenacity of ancestral spirit and their talented progeny. Imagine just how richly a community gives of its resources – even when denied monetary support from philanthropic organizations that purport to understand what is required by the act of giving? The good philanthropies think they do, measured against the good that is done daily by these communities, holds no comparison.

So how can communities turn gently towards a different type of giving – often flying under the radar – that can help strengthen civic muscle? How can communities learn to turn away from traditional forms of giving to appreciate the giving of quiet gifts from within -- the giving of time, space, thoughts, social capital and resource energies?  Are they not the most powerful forms of giving?  Does this all seem too small compared to the most visible forms of philanthropic giving? The Widow’s Mite is a powerful gesture of strength, faith, and self-sacrifice. And it is the “mitey-est” of giving that reflects the greatest of sacrifices – for a community marking collective commitments to things larger than individual selves.  Now let's talk about "seeding from soil." (working blog subject to edits)

© 2025 Dr. Johnnie C. Larrie (Esq.)/Legacy Bridge NC. All rights reserved.

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