Joyful Tidings

Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius. ~Pietro Aretino

The cat is my cat, Oreo. She was born in Dubai.
The tree and roses are in my garden. The flowers are still blooming although it's almost January! It's a warm winter this year, which is comfortable but causes a problem for local farmers as drought settles in--this might also mean a dry spring. The other pictures were taken in my neighborhood and at the Baptism Site at the Jordan River, the place where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist thousands of years ago. At that time the Jordan was roaring and rushing and 10 times the width it is now. Sadly, its waters are now diverted for cultivation purposes by Jordan, Israel, and Syria. The rest flows into the Dead Sea. The people you see are pilgrims on the opposite bank, in Israel.

Shine

Photo shoot with Claire :)

Autumn, the year’s last, loveliest smile.

*Note: I snapped the rainbows accidentally using ISO 800 from the night before, so the shots are somewhat grainy. Therefore, I'm only posting the pictures as a record.

The trip my family and I took to Ajloun Forest Reserve about an hour away from Amman, over Eid Al Adha 2010. The rocks in the pictures are likely to be ancient fossilized coral, which means that the region was underwater millions of years ago. The building is Ajloun Castle, a fortress built from stone that still held cannonballs in a storeroom. The vendor selling hot tea with fresh mint and coffee with cardamom was kind enough to let me take pictures of him; to thank him, I bought a cup of tea.
We set out on "'The Soap Makers'" dirt trail in midafternoon. It was an easy and enjoyable stroll down the hill and then back up. I captured the refulgent sunset on the return journey. That night, lying in bed in our wood cabin, we heard the pitter-patter of rain against the windowpane. We woke up to the sight of two mesmerizingly beautiful rainbows against the waterlogged morning sky. I'd never seen a double rainbow before and it seemed like the perfect start to the day--a reminder of God's eternal promise to us in darker times. Somewhere among the treetops, a bird soared high on wings of hope.

Golden

These photos were taken in King Hussein Park in Amman, Jordan.

"Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all."--Stanley Horowitz

Stillness

The Dead Sea, which I visited during Eid, the celebration after the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. It was a calm, sunny day without a breath of wind---the sea was shimmering and still...everything was still, but the hush spoke a thousand words.