ode to 1812.

i realized today that i haven't yet shared my new home with friends and family... i do apologize.

the photo above is the bike rack at 1812 e. lloyd st. here in pensacola. i've uploaded a very small handful of photos from the inside of the house here. none of these photos were taken by me, but were taken by residents or then-residents of 1812 over the last few months. as you can see, we have a porch (magni boni), which is complete with rocking chairs and a porch swing (which you may or may not be able to see behind the birch trees on the right). i live with two good friends: casey, and clint, who actually owns the house. the house was pretty dilapidated when he bought the place a year ago, but he has transformed it into a magnificent home. in the first couple pictures you can see clint's parents' maltese, sam, and our beloved house cat lou (more blogging on lou is certain to come in the not-so-distant future). the fourth to last one is my room, and the third to last one is the dock at bayou texar (teh-HAR for those unaccustomed to español) that you can see from our house and is just two blocks away.

1812 is a wonderful house. i've been here since june-ish, and i've loved living with two guys as great as casey and clint. casey, despite mild insecurities tied to the intersection of his social and professional lives, leads a beautiful existence as a marine and is in flight school here in pensacola. casey is extremely normal, and in a sense very anti-military for typical midshipmen (goats, if you will) here. casey and i have become fast friends over the last half-year or so, often enjoying good food, good beer, good scotch, and pente' together. i must attribute the bike photo to casey. clint is a man i admire in many ways: he's extremely modest, though he knows how to do everything, and simultaneously the hardest working and most thoughtful person i know. i'm extremely blessed to be living with such fine people. and brent, we certainly miss you and talk of you often.

today was a lovely day. i woke up early and read the second half of monastic gardens on the porch with a quiet cup of coffee. i then rode frank (one of the cruiser bikes we affectionately refer to as frankenstein, for it was pieced together as such) downtown to church through delightfully silent neighborhoods, drinking in the crisp autumn air. i wouldn't ordinarily consider myself a morning person, but i do love a beautiful morning. the sermon today was about shalom, and how the true jewish meaning for the word meant much more than just relational peace in the 'have a good day' sense that some use today. the priest went on to talk about how, in the fall, we lost much more than just our relationship with our heavenly Father. we lost health and physical wholeness, genuine love for our fellow men and women, and ideals of social justice and equality, among others. in our lives we aim to recover what was lost in a holistic sense: both preaching the Gospel and also reaching out to the sick and lonely, the poor and disenfranchised. dad has preached for years on the jewish roots of Christianity, and he loves the concept of shalom. often i wish i'd have paid his teaching more attention growing up.

just one brief story and i'll leave you be. at the end of the service this morning, i was playing a game with anna, the four year old daughter of my friends glen and jennifer (i really, really need a camera). i found some notecards on my seat, and i would fan them out like a deck of cards as she would draw one at a time and delight at whatever children's scribbles were penciled on that card. it was fun. so after the service, i unlocked frank and began riding away from the church when i heard anna call my name. i looked over and she was running towards me so i screeched to a halt to see what she wanted. she simply, and beautifully, wrapped her arms around my legs and squeezed. we exchanged goodbyes and i rode off untroubled by life.

i've always been struck by how little grown-up people understand children, how little parents even understand their own children. nothing should be concealed from children on the pretext that they are little and it is too early for them to understand. what a miserable and unfortunate idea! and how readily the children detect that their fathers consider them too little to understand anything, though they understand everything. grown-up people do not know that a child can give exceedingly good advice even in the most difficult case. oh dear! when that pretty little bird looks at you, happy and confiding, it's a shame for you to deceive it. i call them birds because there's nothing better than a bird in the world...

at first he used to shake his head and wonder how it was the children understood everything from me and scarcely anything from him; and then he began laughing at me when i told him that neither of us could teach them anything, but that they can teach us ...

(for) the soul is healed by being with children.

- prince myshkin in dostoyevsky's the idiot.