What I Learned from the Widow's Mite
December 5th, 2021 by admin
AS SOME OF YOU KNOW, I have been privileged to write a monthly column on North Carolina law for the Winston-Salem Journal for many years. Its purpose in part is to simplify and explain key laws and legal concepts that affect people’s lives, and from time to time to distill into plain English as may be appropriate many of the whys, wherefores and often confusing Latin phrases lawyers still seem intent on using. (Per stirpes, ipse dixit and pro hac vice, for example, whomever and whatever they may really be.)
The columns address from time to time the importance of giving our financial resources to those in need, and how one can do that in legal documents. But the legal column I wrote recently touches on a personal experience I had as a young lawyer about giving that is likely important to you, too.
The last Courthouse piece was about the importance of gratitude, ingrained in some of our memories of people and our personal experiences which strengthen us for our journey. A close relative of gratitude is that we can be grateful for what we do for others, and our corresponding happiness for our ability to grow our personal sense of gratitude when we give to others.The piece below includes a portion of that column. It is a story about a real-life widow’s mite which taught me as a young lawyer how even a small monetary gift can have a large positive impact on another’s life. And how giving to others gives us a pathway to that sense of gratitude we all seek.
So, I offer this story, which extends in real-life ways an old, old story, but with a new teacher of it in a very real way. The teacher of which can be you and me when we provide for our neighbors in need, who have names, faces, families and stories, stories which can be made better when we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.
5 DECEMBER 2021 LEGAL COLUMN (with some edits), by Mike Wells, printed in the Winston-Salem Journal. (Here is the link to the entire article, copyrighted by the Winston-Salem Journal.)
WS Journal Article from 12.5.2021
One of the encouraging trends in our society today is more people are considering charitable gifts during their lifetimes or at their deaths.
Interestingly, however, while 70% of Americans give to charities during their lifetime, less than 6 % give to charities at their death, although the trends for giving more to charities for both times are growing.
To the surprise of many, you do not have to have much money to make an impact. All gifts count, and even a gift the giver may think is modest can provide a profound benefit to the recipients.
Years ago a widow, Ida Tilson, a life-long teacher in one of our local public high schools, left her small life savings to a trust for small educational scholarships to any students in need. As a young lawyer, I served on the committee to choose the scholarship recipients. Since the distributions were limited to the income generated by the fund, I wondered privately at the time, not long out of college and very much aware of the significant costs of it, what real impact distributions of a few hundred dollars for a few recipients each could have on the recipients.
What I did not know, however, was that the recipients would cobble together the money from this fund with other funds, grants, and scholarships to get their education.
Our committee received letters from recipients noting that money from our fund was the last bit of money necessary for them to go to college, to go to the college of choice for their intended career, or to stay in school after their parents' divorce.
This humble schoolteacher knew more about giving than I did. And many years after her death, that teacher, dedicated to helping young people during her 42-year teaching career, is still helping students, a few hundred dollars at a time.
Here is the point: anyone who gives to a charitable/faith organization that promotes values dear to our heart or our personal life experience, whatever the size of the gift, makes an impact. In one of life’s sweetest stories, it really is the widow’s mite that teaches us the deepest insights about what matters most.
In addition to providing for your family, we can also provide for organizations and institutions that foster the values and principles which shaped our lives in meaningful ways: bodies of faith, educational institutions, and organizations that extend the collective community hand to people in need.
THE IMPORTANCE OF GIVING in this broader Courthouse venue is less about the legal how of it than the why of it all. The power of gratitude in all facets of our lives is fueled not only by our memories of past events and people, but also by our proactive steps to give to causes that get it to the streets to help others.
Because gratitude for the past and of giving going forward are joined, one to another. Each is twice blessed, as the poet observed; sisters of a different mother, a bond in all the ways that matter.
Over 175 years ago Charles Dickens, in his defining story of the season, A Christmas Carol, centered in a powerful dream to the miserly Scrooge on the challenging needs of ignorance and want. The moniker “Scrooge” travels to us to this day. And sadly, so do the needs which came to Scrooge in his life-changing dream.
I think those pressing needs, still with us, are what Ida Tilson saw all those years ago. As a lifelong educator, she chose to address the need which comes through the schoolhouse door. It takes all of us, through various other charitable and faith-based organizations, to get our community’s children there. And in a very real sense, when we give of our time and resources, we help to get them there and to a productive and financially stable career.
Education and other tangible needs of life, of course, travel a wide path. And when we harness our ability to give to them in our own life’s journey, they take us to that place worth going where we find life’s real-life treasure: that sense of gratitude we all seek. A real connection of the good in us all to a meaningful purpose beyond ourselves.
What I’ve Learned about life on the way to the courthouse is this: You do not have to be rich to be rich in spirit and to offer a helping hand. As the old, old story teaches us, no gift is too small, as this humble schoolteacher, Ida Tilson, shows us, one small gift at a time.
But give to others because it is a gift to yourself, too. The blessing of gratitude is filled out to the full when we are grateful for those who gave us a better way, and when we give to others a better way.
Giving and gratitude. Those sisters of another mother, bound one to another at the ready, waiting to be found.
Because when you provide a path for giving and gratitude to meet in your own dream in the flesh of destinations ahead, it’s going to be a good day for you, as Scrooge, in time, came to see.
But you do not have to be Charles Dickens to see this.
Do you?
Happy Holidays
Mike Wells
Posted in: On the Way to the Courthouse