Vox Lucens

It seems strange to be posting about yet another milestone - they have been coming fast and furious this year. It also seems strange that law school graduation - when I finished studies 10 months ago, passed the bar exam, and became a lawyer in the meantime - should mean so much to me, but it did. Commencement was wonderful, superbly done, and the commissioning prayers will stay with me for a long time.

Receiving the purple hood.

Newly behooded.

So many friends…

I was humbled to present the student response.

Receiving my diploma.

Thanks to everyone who prayed for me throughout this long journey.

…that Delta is now too cheap to provide you with a paper folder to put your boarding passes in?

Or, as the ticket agent told me today, “We discontinued folders a number of months ago.”

Guess what frequent flyer doesn’t regret not flying Delta in the past few months?

But this I will say - they had excellent video on demand on my little Charleston to Atlanta hop. I wonder how many folders you have to scrimp on to buy a new tricked-out jet to fly your passengers around.

Hopefully some of the foregoing will explain why there has been a serious lack of bloggish infotainment on this venue of late. The last week (even the part I didn’t spend overnighting in O’Hare) has been crazy, but praise the Lord, I think everything got done! I finished my first freelance legal project (a brief in a securities case), did the slideshow for graduation, spoke at a homeschool conference Saturday, preached on Sunday, oh, and yeah, I worked my normal job. Now, ten months after finishing my studies, I am off to officially graduate from law school.

I just returned from a truly terrific weekend in CA. Sunsets, beautiful scenery, celebration, and the best company in the world gave me what was basically just a perfect time.

I am learning to love my camera’s manual settings. Getting the right shot takes me forever, with lots of practice shots, but when it works, the pictures are just…better.

But not all the trip was sunsets and seagulls…one morning, Katie and I were out picking oranges, when she almost stepped on a rattler. Such a cute little deadly snake…

I think it scared me worse than it scared her, but we couldn’t just let it sit there.

So we killed it. And kept the rattle as a trophy.

Yesterday I went through all of the trip’s pictures, and was again mind-boggled by thinking back on Petra. So I have a bunch more shots that I just can’t resist sharing…

[As always, click the pic for a fullsize version.]

Natural Beauty

Petra was not just about the incredible ancient facades - it was also set in one of the most ruggedly gorgeous locations in the world (which is one reason it was such a valuable city location - only one way in and out was easy to defend!).

Treasury Detail Shots

A Sense of Scale

Scale can be hard to see in pictures, but the sheer massiveness of Petra’s monuments was the most breathtaking thing about it. Hopefully this series of shots will help communicate that.

This is me by one of the small facades.

Here are the porticoes under the tallest facade (which I mentioned in my previous post).

The porticoes in context.

The upper portion of the facade.

The whole thing.

The large facade, on the right, in the context of the entire cliff and temple complex.

Ever since knowing that we would be heading for a full trip to Jordan, I hoped that we could take the trek to Petra, one of the new wonders of the world - and rightfully so. Anyone who has seen Indiana Jones knows of this ancient city, and let me tell you, seeing it in person was far more amazing than I had even guessed.

Petra has been a city since around 300 B.C., if you can imagine that, and remained prominent for hundreds of years. The Nabateans founded the city, conquering it from the Edomites, and it survived, and indeed thrived, through the Greek, Roman, Christian, and Islamic periods. It is filled with Nabatean, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine influences, combining incredible history with unique and fascinating beauty on an incredible scale.

If you’re interested in a full history, check out this site from Brown University, which is actively involved in excavating the ruins. But enough words - let’s try pictures. I only wish they could do the ruins justice.

The most famous facade in Petra, known as the Treasury.

Anyone else singing the theme song?

The team in front of the “poor people’s tombs” that catacombed the cliff walls just past the Treasury.

The tallest facade at Petra.

The view from inside the tallest facade.

History was everywhere.

For instance, this facade dating back almost seven decades before Christ.

I could show so many more pictures - these have been weeded out from the 400 or so that I took during this day alone. But you should just go yourself, sometime, and be blown away as I was…

It looks like my full Petra post is going to have to wait until I get back to the states.

Until then you get this…