bye bye anna peipon

friday night we celebrated our mutual love for anna peipon and our mutual sadness to see her depart once again from the eastern shore. lucky nepalesians.

(yeah, i have no idea if that's what you call people from nepal. i feel so ignorant sometimes.)

to see the night documented in pictures, go to
www.flickr.com/photos/pinkhouser

p.s. i missed getting pics of some people. some of them didn't turn out, and others i just missed. sorry bout that. i'll do better next time.

the heavens declare the glory of God . . .

sunset at pemberton

overlooking the wicomico

death wish.

The following photographs were taken by photographer Hans van de Vorst at Grand Canyon, Arizona. The descriptions are his own. The identity of the photographer IN the photos is unknown.

I was simply stunned seeing this guy standing on a solitary rock IN the Grand Canyon. The canyon's depth is 900 meters here. The rock on the right is next to the canyon and safe.

Watching this guy wearing thong sandals, with a camera and a tripod I asked myself 3 questions:

1. How did he get on that rock?
2. Why not take that sunset picture on the rock to his right,

which is perfectly safe?
3. How will he get back?

This is the point of no return.

After the sun set behind the canyon's horizon he packed his things (having only one hand available) and prepared himself for the jump. This took about 2 minutes.At that point he had the full attention of the crowd.

After that, he jumped on his thong sandals...
The canyon's depth is 900 meters here.

Now you can see that the adjacent rock is higher so he tried to land lower, which is quite steep and tried to use his one hand to grab the rock.

We've come to the end of this little story. Look carefully at the photographer. He has a camera, a tripod and also a plastic bag, all on his shoulder or in his left hand. Only his right hand is available to grab the rock and the weight of his stuff is a problem.

He lands low on this rock. Both his right hand and right foot slips away... At that moment I take this shot.

He pushes his body against the rock. He waits for a few seconds, throws his stuff on the rock, climbs up and walks away.

alive.

i shared this story with a friend recently and she said she was encouraged by it. i was glad. the lesson encourage me too. so i thought, perhaps, you might want to read it too. :-)

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i was remembering a day when i was in grad school.
it was winter. the day was bleak - cloudy, grey.

i was driving back from my internship and was noticing the trees. how dead they looked. no leaves, no color, dark, empty-looking. and how a lot of times i feel just like the trees looked.

dead, dark, empty.

but then it struck me that even though the trees LOOK dead in the winter,
they actually aren't.

for some reason it was one of those, "huh, i've never really thought about that" moments. like something in me thought that the trees died in the winter and came back to life in the spring. but they don't. they are always alive, even when they don't look it.

i was encouraged that day by the revelation. and i have been encouraged by it recently. that even at the times when i may look dead and grey on the outside or even feel that way, that i'm not. i am very much alive because i have another Life that is living in me. One that cannot die. One that, in fact, has beat death.

and it is that Life that drives my own. that will change my own. that guides my moves, understands and directs my heart and is my sustenance.

even when you feel like you are losing your battle over there, the One within you is alive and active.
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get your game on.

LOST night at matts.

New Years at the townsends.