We cleaned out our piggy bank a couple of weeks ago to pay for motel reservations at a New Hampshire morel for four days at the end of April. The coins covered the motel bill, they went to the bank; we’ll save up for the food.

Some were left behind.

Yesterday, I saw that Maria had put aside the left behind coins.  She didn’t put them back in the bank.

I asked her what she was doing.

She looked slightly embarrassed and then, being honest, explained that she couldn’t bear the thought of putting these coins back into the piggy bank where they had been for four or five years.

She thought they deserved a chance to get out in the world and be useful.

Knowing Maria, I was only mildly surprised.

She said she knew I was making fun of her, but she couldn’t bear to lock them up again. She knows they aren’t human but still has this feeling for them.

Of course, I did make fun of her, at least for a few minutes. I am a flawed human male. But then a different feeling came over me.

This is the purest kind of empathy, I thought, the kind that the world and our country most desperately needs.

Maria, like some Buddhists, believes that everything in the world is sacred and needs our love, respect, and attention.

This empathy, this love of all things, human or material, this ability to put herself in the shoes and bodies of all beings, is one of the things I most love about her.

It deserves to be honored, not ridiculed.

She re-homes spiders and moths; she rushes out in a storm to get suet for the songbirds arriving on the farm; she makes sure the barn cats have a warm bed to sleep on,  she asks the plants if they are okay on the coldest nights.

And she can’t bear to see coins put back into the darkness of a piggy bank, where they have languished for years. There is something to smile about; it does lend itself to humor and irony, but underneath, something extraordinary about it and very pure.

When she gets these coins all rolled up – she is just about done – she will take them to the bank and give them a chance to get out in the world again and be helpful.

It isn’t that they have human emotions and feelings – we both know better; instead, it speaks to the best in the human spirit. To me, empathy is the highest calling of human beings, the best and most important thing that we can ascribe to.

The lack of empathy -for people, for the earth – is slowly destroying our life on earth.

I hope we never take ourselves so seriously that we can’t laugh, but I hope I can always see beyond that and recognize the best of us when I see it.

And I am fortunate to live with it and sleep with it and love it very much.

When I look at the news in Ukraine and our country, the coins evolve into a symbol.

If people like Maria were ruling the world, there would be no Ukraine, no hateful politicians, no politics of persecution and rage.

We need every bit of empathy that we can find, and it deserves to be celebrated, not ridiculed.

I think we both understand – we talked about it – that she is sensitive to this because she knows what it feels like to be ignored and disregarded, and emotionally imprisoned.

She can’t bear to do it to anything else, human or not, plant or donkey, bird or spider.

Maria has an enormous heart. We talked about this at lunch, and she began to cry when she thought of the coins being exiled back into the dark piggy bank.

She laughed at herself a bit.

We joked about this coin rescue for a while, and then I told her that she should never be embarrassed about her empathy, no matter where it comes from. It is the purest thing.

I can’t promise never to poke fun at it once in a while, but I know enough and feel enough to look beyond that and see it for what it is – the light.

Empathy is a rare and precious gift and affects and shapes her art in many ways.

When I walk by the rescue coin basket, I can’t help it. I smile and nod and wish them well on their next adventure.