It’s one thing to be amazed by the beauty of a flower, but quite another to stand before something like this and wonder. Obviously it’s a bloom, but how does it work? Or is it a thousand blooms all in one? I was stunned. I’m still a bit stunned. It’s from the garden on the side of St. Timothy’s Catholic Church. A ramshackle garden, built, I suspect, on the enthusiastic response of congregants. It is the nexus of good intentions, but its plan seems to go in all directions. It contains a bit here and there of everyone’s best intentions, everyone’s favorite things. It’s a hodgepodge where one can go and be surprised over and over again, but not terribly well maintained. Or maybe it’s perfectly maintained. How, exactly, does one properly maintain a hodgepodge? Or differently put, how does one maintain a congregation? Congregations aren’t armies of uniformed participants. Its members don’t think alike, act alike, but they nonetheless cohere. I, of course, want everything to be perfectly laid out and perfectly maintained. But is that what the garden wants? I think the garden is quite happy as it is.