The widow Irvin dressed in strange clothes. She had only one visible front tooth and a large wart on the side of her nose, and she smoked a corncob pipe. Now, I ask you: what would you have thought if you were a kid in the days when everybody knew all about the witches in Snow White and The Wizard of Oz, and an old lady who looked like that lived across the road from your grandmother?

One thing for sure, if I wanted to take a shortcut to the river through her yard, I was not gonna do it if she was home.

I didn’t think she was home one day when I tried to sneak through her yard. I had just about made it when I heard a deep, raspy voice, like an old man who had smoked too much for too long, "You’re Faye’s boy, ain’t cha?"

Faye was my mother’s name, but that old lady might as well have said, "Abracadabra," because all I saw was a 20-foot tall witch with a broom in her hand in the doorway of her house.

She said, "Would you like to come in for some milk and cookies?"

(Milk and cookies? I ain’t Snow White! You can’t pull that poisoned apple trick on me! I’m outta here!)

I jumped into the weeds in the cornfield next door and was gone, gone, gone.

I think it was the next summer or so when I was coming back to grandma’s from the little grocery store up the road; and there she was, right in front of me.

Widow Irvin was struggling with two full buckets of water she had gotten from the communal well. She stopped on the road, put the buckets down, moaned, picked them up, walked a bit and then repeated the same scenario.

I made the Sign of the Cross. I guess I thought she would scream and melt away like the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz. I don’t know. But she didn’t.

She just moaned some more, bent over to pick up the buckets again, and suddenly I knew. This old lady was no witch.

I moved right in between her and the buckets, picked them up, and walked on in silence toward her house.

That was the beginning of the end. It went from carrying her water, to mowing her grass, to milk and cookies—lots of milk and cookies—to looking at her family photos, reading from her Bible, and eating popcorn on Sunday evenings out behind her house on the river.

By the time I was fifteen, Mrs. Irvin had become one of my favourite "little ole ladies." And because of her, I found a whole new meaning to the story of the widow’s mite in Mark’s Gospel.

One thing I’ve often wondered about in this gospel story is: how did Jesus know that she put in everything she possessed, all she had to live on (Mk 12:44)? Did he know her personally?

Of course, Jesus often said things he could only have known as God, and this may have been the case in the story about the widow. But I prefer, whenever it is plausible, to visualize a gospel event starting out in a very ordinary way—like between me and the widow Irvin, and that Christ’s extraordinary response to them is part of "the divine."

And so I fancy that this poor widow in Mark’s Gospel had lived in Jerusalem across the street from Joachim and Ann, his grandparents, and that Jesus came in touch with her when Mary and Joseph brought him to Jerusalem to visit his grandparents when he was still a young lad.

I imagined a whole story about it.

Jesus had lost touch with her over the years. Then one day, during his public ministry in Jerusalem, he took a short cut to the temple, and there she was coming from the well with her buckets of water.

Their eyes met and she said, "You’re Mary’s boy, ain’t cha?"

That was his cue: the Father’s will made evident in the present moment. I imagine him simply nodding, taking the buckets from her, and walking to her house.

There he saw, with his own human eyes, how terribly poor she was. I imagine she told him about her husband’s death, and then offered him the ancient Jewish equivalent of milk and cookies.

Perhaps they embraced as he left, and perhaps she held on to him and wept a little. Then he was gone.

He somehow communicated to her that her burden was now a part of his and his was part of hers.

She didn’t know quite what had happened, but after that she had a powerful urge to give God everything.

I believe Jesus often did these very "natural" things because he was so in touch with the present moment, so in tune with his Father’s will for that moment.

I fancy that Jesus felt the presence of the widow, also, as she passed him that day on her way to give alms in the temple. And I fancy that she suddenly had that same sense of the presence of Jesus which she had felt that day in her house over "milk and cookies."

I imagine she stopped and turned to look for the source of that presence, and that their eyes met again, just for a moment. She nodded, smiled as he nodded back, and then she knew.

When she got to the temple box, she made her mite-y gift. She gave God everything!

Yes, Jesus worked miracles both in what he did and in what he knew of those for whom he "did."

But I believe that much of his life was also about an extraordinary alertness to the present moment. And I believe that this divine gift of an extraordinary presence to the present moment is meant for all the baptized, if we would only stop being hopelessly caught up in our own situation, which often seems to us to be the only important thing happening in the whole universe.

For me, one of the most astounding and consoling things about the real gospel event, the one in St. Mark, is not the widow’s mite, but that in the midst of everything going on inside him and around him, the Son of God noticed the widow at all. That’s how present he was.

That’s how much he notices you and me. And that’s how much we have to notice each other, if we are to respond to the needs of our brothers and sisters, and if we want to live in his presence moment by moment.

"You’re Faye’s boy, ain’t cha?" "You’re Mary’s boy, ain’t cha?

P.S. Don’t be surprised if now and then they ask you in for milk and cookies.