Maxie's Mite

Just about every week, the kids and I go to our local library and check out about thirty books. And we love it all: mystery audiobooks, anatomy, Biscuit easy-to-read, dinosaurs, farm stories, space themes.
All of it.
Everything.

But while our home life has not changed all that much since the pandemic started, our lack of weekly visits to library has been a big transition. Plus, I finally let the kids check out “Henry and the Purple Crayon” on our last visit. And now we are going on four weeks with it.
Mistake.

Knowing we were on the brink of disaster, a kind lady from church dropped off a sack of books dated back to when she was mothering her kids at home. One of the books she included for us was called “Maxie.”
Here’s how it goes:

Maxie is an older woman who lives alone with her cat and canary. And Maxie lives a very rhythmic— dare we say, liturgical— life. Every morning she wakes up at the same time, opens the front three windows, and then creeps down the hall in her leather slippers. She checks the mail and gets locked out while gathering the milk bottles. But Maxie’s favorite morning ritual is making her tea. The long, loud whistle of the kettle brings her immense pleasure (much to the chagrin of her neighbors).

And then one day, Maxie turns to her cat and says,

“You’re perfectly happy just lying there, day after day… All you ever want to do is move from one windowsill to the other and watch the world go by. You don’t need anyone, and no one really needs you. But you don’t seem to care… I care,”
she said sadly.
“I’m not a cat. But I might as well be.”

I’ve read the Maxie book several times now, and I am struck each time with its relevance.

Over the last several years, I’ve been recovering from “bigger is better” syndrome. Somehow, along the way, I’ve embodied the perspective that a life truly worth living is highly influential, flashy, public, and overtly consequential. A well-lived life should be impressive, productive. We should make something of ourselves— and that “something” better be important.
Or at least feel important.
Or seem important.
Or appear important.

In times of isolation or distancing or sickness, we are again confronted by our “inner Maxie.” All of the hustle, the busyness, the dazzling enthusiasm that once proved we were really something has slowed.
We don’t need to be anywhere but here.
Our pace really can slow down.
We face our kids, our partners, our roommates for more than a few minutes.
We face our loneliness.
We face ourselves.

We can no longer run from the fear that our lives will not (or do not) matter. And so we are left with the question: Am I just a cat?

Or maybe, rather: Without all this productivity and hustle, do I matter?

Last night, we read about Maxie again, and Olivia asked me if Maxie was a widow.

I was perplexed (and maybe a little concerned) as to how she knew about widows in the first place. Olivia proceeded to tell me the entire Bible story about the widow’s mite. She told me about the wealthy, flashy, “important” folk who gave a lot of money and demanded public attention.

And then there was a widow.
A culturally marginalized woman
who experienced tremendous loss
and was left utterly impoverished.

I guess I had never hung on that reality before.
To be a widow— to lose everything, to be forgotten, to be left behind and alone.
If there was anyone who deserved to hold on to something, to try to maintain dignity.

Olivia continued to remind me over and over that this woman only had “two cents" to give.
(We didn’t get into exchange rates, but the point remains.)

But she gave it.
In trust, in small faithfulness, in meek submission, the widow gave the little she had to a God who appeared to have forgotten her, along with everyone else.

But Olivia reminded me:
Jesus saw her.

For thousands of years, we have told the story of this unnamed widow— a relatively anonymous woman addressed by a word that only emphasizes her poverty and loss. And yet, as the church, we honor her. We celebrate her faithfulness, her humility, her trust. We praise her ability to give, to see needs outside of her own— even when her needs were great. We tell her story to our children and then to our grandchildren.

How ironic.
This woman, a widow.
Her small, poor, insignificant life suddenly becomes the standard for us all.

Why?
Because Jesus saw her.

I recently was introduced to the Latin phrase “Coram Deo” — meaning that our given, ordinary, small lives are lived out under the gracious and watchful gaze of the Father. Everything is “in the presence of God.” And when our insignificant giving and our name-changing grief and our repetitive days are seen—and seen by God— they miraculously begin to matter.

Our actual lives are the means for our salvation.
Those in our actual lives are those we are called to love.
Our children, laundry, budgeting (with fingers crossed!)— all of this done faithfully under the loving gaze of the Father may be a story worth telling and retelling.
Maybe even by five year olds waving tacos around in excitement.

And what about Maxie?
Of course.

Discouraged by the smallness of her life, Maxie stays in bed the next morning neglecting the seven o’clock wake-up and the window shades and the mail and the milk bottles and all the rest. Even her tea.

Without her presence and her small noises, bus drivers don’t wake up and children miss school and more “important” people miss their trains. The mail man grows worried, and the superintendent who normally unlocks the door for Maxie and her milk bottles each day lets the growing crowd of neighbors, children, cats and dogs into Maxie’s small apartment.

And they tell her how her absence left them stranded, how they need her, how they’ve noticed all along. They reveal how they’ve built their lives around her small, faithful, liturgical life.

And so…

“Maxie listened and thought about how many people were being touched by these sounds—
her sounds.
And so at 9:45 that morning, Maxie had served tea to everybody, and she was so pleased.”