Birthday letter to my daughter Raine on her second birthday

My precious little Raine,

I can hardly begin this letter without tears coming to my eyes.  I could say the things that a father would say in a letter to his little girl – like you are the most perfect little soul I have ever met.  Your very smile, your sweet voice, your hugs and kisses are like the most brilliant lights inside of me, and they remind me of my finer nature, the nobler home my spirit is born from and for.  I could fill a book with these things and no doubt will fill your ears with them as you grow and I grow with you in the years to come.

Instead in this birthday letter, I want to share my wishes for you and also what I have seen of you up to this second year of your birth.

I have seen you from very early on filled with physical strength, stamina and health.  You have been in love with climbing since you first figured it out, you have been using your fingers and hands so articulately from early on.  I have been so impressed with who you are as a physical being.

I have seen your beauty transform the most stoic of faces.  You are so beautiful – your fine skin and sweet face and your kind and gentle eyes.  I feel like when you look at people you see how beautiful they are.  I hope you can always share your beauty and also remain open to others’.  I think this exchange I have seen between you and people is remarkable and transformative.

Your intelligence is remarkable to all of us who see it.  I said to someone the other day, that I felt certain that you would be so much smarter than I am.  After saying it, I was so happy at the idea that someday you would come to me with ideas that were stimulating and new and I would learn from you about the world.  Until then, I will do what I can to stimulate your mind and show you the world I have seen.

You love others so well already.  I love how affectionate and kind you are to other people and animals.  You have a spirit that is connected to others.  Even at this young age you are talking about how you feel about people.  You are telling us that you are “happy – sad same time” when we leave your little friends Zoe or Violet.  I love that already your love for others is shaping your emotional landscape.  I look forward to that rich world unfolding along your path.  I know you will feel deeply and that sometimes that will be hard, but I know you will be able to use that deep emotional texture to inform your way of being and your creativity.

I see it.  I see the fire of a creator in you.  I assign no expectation to that, only that I see in you an exchange with the world that is sometimes labeled as “creative” or “artistic”.  I hope that this remains in you, because I have found even in my half efforts of expression that there is such richness in this exchange with the world.  I will do my best to share what little I know about this spirit, should it be something that you continue to embrace.

My wishes for you my daughter…

I wish above all that you have deep love in any shape it may come in.  Love is the thing that makes us who we are.  It shapes us more than any other experience – one who is well loved and who loves well is a center that is crowded around and that warms the world.  It is the sun of the human experience.  Above all else, I will always work to give you love and to help you notice it when it arrives in your life.  If I were to design a curriculum for your life it would be grounded in love and through love we would look at all things.

I believe that seed of love is a connection with life itself, and when we love we see more fully the impact we have on the life around us.  When we love, we honor all living things.  When we see a life through love, we see it connected to all other living things.  When we love ourselves we know the worth of all living things.  When we know that worth, we know right action.

I wish for you a value system rooted in life, and that you grow into a woman who has a clarity that makes right action simple, even when it is not easy.

I will do my best to share my blundering efforts to be upright and good, and I will see my life as an expression of elevating your own moral character.

I wish for you a life filled with rich experience, and that whether you chose to wander wide and far or to search deep inside yourself, that you find the vastness of your life experience to be a source of great content.  Like the ecosystem we are a part of, the stuff of life composts and nurtures our life with cyclical processes that create, destroy and heal. I wish for you an abundance of time and energy to touch and relate to these cycles and feel them as much a guide as an idea.

My sweet baby woman – I love you so much.  When all other reasons fall away you are my best reminder for why I press on.  That life is sacred.  My life.  Your life.  All life.  That I must press on as I am called to honor that sanctity.  Happy birthday Raine.

Peace, Love and Good Things,

Papa