Sofia Dale Clark was born on September 27, 2009, and with her birth came my first opportunity at being an uncle. From the start, I knew that I wanted to celebrate my first niece with a tradition that was hers, and hers alone; one which reflected my own values, and imparted on Sofia what I thought might be valuable for her to learn and understand.

So I started this annual Charity: Water drive in her honor, helping to bring clean water access to third world persons deprived of this most basic human right. It struck me as the perfect choice - a responsible and transparent organization which shows you exactly where and how your money is being spent, and then spends that money on something of such obvious good. Clean water can do more to transform the life and health of a human being, and a community of human beings, than just about anything else I can imagine. It is, or so it seems to me, a profoundly effective way to create positive change in the world on the most basic and fundamental level. It strikes me as self-evidently essential.

And essential in more ways than one. I want everyone to have clean water access, yes, but I also want to offer Sofia an essential experience of the gift of giving. I want to teach her something which many - perhaps most - people go their entire lives without learning: that the things of real value in this world are not given to us, but it is the things we give that end up mattering the most. That it is in the joy of giving of oneself, of sharing, of connection, of touching the deeper unity of life which is the primal happiness, and the primary fact. I want Sofia to have the opportunity to understand that living selflessly is more joyful and beneficial than the selfish living which is most readily accessible and accepted in the modern world. For while it may feel good to fulfill a desire for something you want, the fulfillment of that desire does not last, and only leaves you craving more. Whereas the joy of opening one’s heart to a more expansive and selfless way of living is fundamental and essential to our nature. It connects us with something unchanging, something united throughout all time, and outside of all time. Something eternal, in other words. Something we might call love.

Meher Baba, an Indian saint of the 20th century, very eloquently approaches the heart of what I am trying to convey when he talks about the way love spreads itself in the world. “Love is essentially self-communicative," he wrote, "Those who do not have it catch it from those who have it. True love is unconquerable and irresistible; and it goes on gathering power and spreading itself, until eventually it transforms everyone whom it touches."

It is this love that I want Sofia to know, as I want all people to know it; as I want to know it myself. This charity drive is my modest attempt at showing Sofia one of the ways this love might look in operation. Like all worthwhile things in life, it demands a sacrifice. The sacrifice of money on the part of the donor, and the sacrifice of a tangible keepsake - a material present - for Sofia herself.

Sofia is turning nine today, as of the writing and posting of this message, and so is just now coming to the age where I hope she can start to understand. To understand that by whole-heartedly giving, we receive back a full heart, and the joy that this brings is of infinitely greater value than any toy or doll.

I have ambitions someday of taking Sofia to Africa and visiting the towns where these wells she has helped bring into existence are in actual operation, funded in part and thereby brought into being as a celebration of her life, through the natural love that Sofia evokes in others by virtue of being herself, which is a beautiful, curious, strong, sensitive, luminously bright, wonderful child. Perhaps someday Sofia and I can set up a booth on a busy sidewalk and raise money together. Perhaps we can get creative with our fundraising efforts, and through that creativity witness positive change actualize in some distant village, on the other side of the world.

I do not know the course of the future, but I believe in the mission of Charity: Water, and I believe that love really can move mountains if we give ourselves to that love, and let down the defended barriers which we have all of us been carrying for far too long around our weary hearts. For this year, it is this online fundraiser which constitutes the totality of Sofia's present, and I hope that she learns to appreciate it, and appreciates all of the love within it, from all of us. It is in celebration of her, in honor of her, for the benefit of her, and for the benefit of all. Even and perhaps especially if you have never met Sofia, your donation succeeds in demonstrating love and compassion without any thought of reward, and I can think of no better present to offer a young girl at the cusp of her teenage years than to model this behavior.

Thank you for reading, and for donating if you feel so moved. Your generosity is much appreciated, and you are most emphatically encouraged to circulate this fundraising page liberally amongst your family, co-workers, and friends.

And Happy Birthday, Small Fry! Uncle Brian loves you very much!

(And I like you a heck of a lot, too!)