Today is Maria’s  57th birthday, and I have chosen a Rumi poem in her honor. I also have an idea about celebrating it.

She’ll kill me, but I’m the only person who sees how hard she works to write on the blog and take her videos and photographs. She goes out in the cold and rain every day and spends long cold wet hours focusing on bits of plants and water moving in a stream and the light on a lamb.

She loves her readers and the people who have been sending her messages, some for some years now.

I see how much pleasure she gets in coming into the house and showing her works to me, and putting them up on her blog, and reading the messages of thanks and responses she gets. Sometimes, she reads them aloud.

She does this for free, and out of love.

Maria does nothing for herself and buys nothing for herself.  She is all about giving and loving.  If any of you are so inclined, you can send her a gift of your own for her birthday easily, and in any amount that is comfortable for you (or not at all of it isn’t.)

I know she would appreciate it once she stopped yelling at me. Those pictures and videos cost money. She is happy to do it. She sees herself as part of a wondrous new family.

She takes Venmo on her blog now, and Paypal: You can make a one-time or monthly birthday donation right here.

Thanks for considering it.

Here’s my birthday poem to her:

____

Happy Birthday, wonderful human, and thanks for the light you have brought into my life, and the lives of so many others:

The Sunrise Ruby

“In the early morning hour, just before daw, lover and beloved wake and take a drink of water.

She asks. Do you love me or yourself more? Really, tell the absolute truth.

He says, There is nothing left of me. I am like a ruby held up to the sunrise.

Is it sill a stone, or a world made of redness? It has no resistance to sunlight. The ruby and the sunrise are one. Be courageous and discipline yourself.

Work. Keep digging your well. Don’t think about getting off from work. Submit to a daily practice. Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door.

Keep knocking, and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who’s there.”

—Rumi