2014.08.24 Death and Hope

My dad would be 103 today. I think of him a lot. He was a taciturn guy, drop-dead handsome, as they say, quiet to excess, unless he held a martini in hand—or when he died. Dying, he made lots of noise. 

Phrases in Christian hymns, chants and prayers, and sermons, especially during the run-up to Easter, say things like, “They did not know what we know now,” or “We know how this story ends.” Do we?

Such self-assured smug Christianity does not appeal to me at all. I don’t trust it, which probably makes me a good Anglican.   

Is there a soul among us who embraces our death with sanguinity? Unless bio-life is simply not bearable, most of us really want to live and fight hard for that chance to live on. We do NOT know what will happen after we die, in the way we think of knowing. Faith knowing is a risk, not an assurance. I'll get honest and admit I'm a faithful agnostic when it comes to end times. I don't know, any more than the first Christians did.  

A woman in a Lenten reflection group last year commented with a chuckle: “I hope to hell that what they’re telling us is true.” Hers seemed to be a more truthful statement than many Christians would dare make about the promise of resurrection. There was an edge of worry in her humor and our laughter.

What’s important, I think, is not to try to push and shove some kind of faith into place, like last-minute soul-shaping, just in case. Some say that faith-knowing is a gift only God Holy Spirit gives, and that it is given in the context of knowing each soul quite well. Sounds good, but how come some people seem to have it, and some don't? It does come more easily to some than to others. I don't know why.

Still, the time of dying is a time when people often worry about having enough faith. For what? Most people die with the personalities they lived with.

My dad wrestled his “demons” to the pillow, accompanied by the chiming of the grandfather clock. He was not in physical pain; he was groaning in travail as if he were waiting to be birthed—like creation. At one point he came briefly out of his dying and boldly asked me: "What's the point?"  It was something he often said, almost rhetorically abut many things. I panicked. I thought that I, as a hot-shot seminarian— at Yale (Dad's alma mater) no less— ought to have the right theological answer, the soothing one. I didn't. So I just said, "I don't know, Dad. But when you find out, if you can, find a way to let me know." God, I felt inadequate. I should have said I love you or something personal, but the moment vanished as he sunk back into his dying.

My mother, au contraire, ordered a peanut butter sandwich as her last meal, and told her granddaughter: “This won’t take long, dear.”  She was 84, a widow, living in a nursing home; she had some kind of internal bleed and had refused hospitalization. Then she, not in physical pain, turned aside, and onto her side—away from the door to her room, the door to the world—and settled into her dying without a fuss, leaving the sandwich untouched. 
 


Do I think my mother had more faith than me or my dad? Perhaps at a very childish level, yes. She always told me she would put her head in God’s lap, and everything would be all right. (I think she meant her own father’s lap. He died when she was twelve.)

Do I think my dad lacked faith? Not at all. He had esophageal cancer and couldn't eat or drink anything by mouth. He was only 71 and could have lived that way, waiting for medical science to come up with something, but I think he made a choice to die. It took a week. He had things to settle his soul about, and he didn’t talk about these things in death any more than he ever had in life. It is by faith that I "know" he has discovered "the point."

*  *  *  *

My own feeling is that when we come to our death there comes a time of almost uncanny repose. I saw that a lot when I was a hospital chaplain. I don’t know if it is acceptance, although that word works, but it looked and sounded to me like embracing death almost as a friend or setting one's face in a new direction, as Jesus did toward Jerusalem. Or, like Jesus’ remembered sighs on the cross: It is finished. I commend my spirit. To what? To faith, hope and love, but not to certainty. To God, the giver of those seminal spiritual gifts.

Dying is our last life task/accomplishment. We do it with as much grace and faith as we can muster, each according to each one’s way. It is like commendation, not forced or giving up, but free: I will follow; it's time; I'm ready. But after death is God’s business and god keeps it to Herself. Some have returned to tell beautiful stories. They help my faith, not my knowledge. Like a kid for Christmas morning, I will have to wait and see.

Saint Francis called Death a Sister— a term of endearment, not enmity. I wonder if that is why many people die when their anxious grieving loved ones are gone from their bedside, and only a solo chaplain-stranger may stay on in the dark?

Such a strategic attitude and language, I think, would be more helpful to the ways we talk about life-threatening illness, physical and mental. We threaten it back, saying we will battle you, we will fight you, we will reject you, win over you. You are enemy and hateful. We make illness and death sound like condemnation or punishment. What if we, like addicts, befriended disease as a part of our humanity? They speak of being IN recovery, not cured. They will always be addicts.

We must seek treatment and cures, of course, and, at the same time, pray and have faith and courage. Fight FOR life, but don't make whatever we have into our enemy.

I suppose I could say that I hope my death is transition to a new kind of life. I am always IN God, just as I'm always IN recovery from sin, into some form of which I daily fall. But after I die, leave for good, I hope to fall into the soul of Godde more deeply—leave for good, to newer be.

The poet says it best: "we turn not older with years
                                    but newer everyday."

Thanks, Emily. And Happy Birthday, Dad.

2014.08.17 Memorial Tribute

I loved Robin Williams. He made me laugh till I cried and cry till I laughed. He showed me true humanity, with all quirks and foibles, and perhaps a glimpse of true divinity as well. I also knew some of Williams's troubles with addictions and depression. With all this, he managed to share his gift of wise humor with the world. I mourn him. He died too young—63.

There's no sense, however, in making Williams an idol. He can't have been easy to live with (three wives.) The emotional climate he created rivaled biblical signs of any proper apocalypse, I'm sure. No idol, but an icon of grace, yes.

Charles Marsh, biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian and pastor, writes in Strange Glory about Bonhoeffer's choice to give his blessing to the conspiracy to murder Hitler, a choice for which Bonhoeffer was executed.  "Bonhoeffer realized finally that genuine humanness would forever wander into abstraction if it were not anchored in the history, suffering and religion of the Jews."

Bonhoeffer didn't bother to unravel the moral paradox of his action. Neither did Williams when he chose death. 

Recently, Williams was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. It was, I imagine, one too many diagnoses to bear, so he chose death—a sad but wise and moral choice. By faith, I believe that he finally has the peace that passes all understanding. To Robin Williams, I say, Alleluia, anyhow.

Here is one of the most beautiful spiritual tributes I've ever seen, written in a letter  by Jape Shattuck of Newport, R.I and published in the Boston Globe, on August 14, 2014:

"Each time we dream we create worlds of astonishing depth and detail that function perfectly according to their own strange logic A sound in the dreamer's environment can sometimes trigger the instantaneous creation of a new world, with new logic, in which that sound fits seamlessly into a vast unfolding scenario. Robin Williams was the only person I've known who could perform that same feat while awake, in front of an audience, and in such convincing detail that it felt like I was sharing his exquisite dream, a dream whose code revealed punch line after punch line while gently proving that the goodness of his troubled soul was the same as mine."

To Robin Williams, I say thanks. I will remember the life you gave my soul.  Will I ever forget Euphegenia Doubtfire?

Perhaps it is so that the plumbline cast by Spirituality plunges deeper than the one cast by Morality; thus, choices made from Soul-depth can be quite preposterously immoral. Sometimes, I do think that God is not essentially Moral Being, but simply Beloved Being.

2014.08.10 The Politics and Spirituality of Music

Music is the language of the soul—of all art, really. This winter we went to Symphony Hall for a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert—so good for the soul that we trudged through rain on walkways that were often blocked by melting snow puddles that had turned into small “lakes.” What we do for Beethoven!

We treat ourselves to four concerts a year on Friday afternoons. We go with the white-haired crowd, a condition from which we are not exempt. I must say that this senior audience is by far the most appreciative crowd I’ve ever seen at a concert, excluding perhaps a hard-rock/pop one, to which I’ve never been. We oldies don’t screech, but our ears are still working, and we’ve not  forgotten how to clap and rise to our feet for brilliance, and shout out, Bravo! Brava!

I’ve learned from reading program notes that great music, though it may transcend the machinations of politics, is not immune to political passion. 

We heard Anne-Sophie Mutter play a Dvorák violin concerto. Her virtuosity was beyond my imagining. I never thought I’d hear myself say such a thing, but I wondered if her physical beauty as a woman detracted at all from her musical performance? Mutter is blonde, slender and shapely. She wore an electric blue gown—strapless, body-hugging, and with a train. I did hear some intakes of breath as she swished onto the stage, one from my beloved husband, before she played a single note. She is shaped like her instrument, only better, and it was hard to tell which was the more breath-taking—altogether pleasing to ear and eye.

I had a familiar nagging question: How much does the appearance of a woman (dress, hair, body-shape and weight) enhance or detract from the gift she is giving, and should it? I don’t know the answer but all art, especially performing art, is relational, therefore I imagine anyone's looks play a role in the pleasure an audience derives. Of course an artist is judged chiefly on a performance. It can’t be schlock. But appearances matter, and Mutter was a wow on both counts.

Beethoven’s Third Symphony, Eroica, by contrast, was performed by musicians, all dressed in basic black, as tradition demands. The effect, nevertheless, was every bit as stunning as the electric Mutter.

All of it was soul food.

I’m not a professional music critic, yet I felt Beethoven’s passion—spiritual and political in every note. (He was not bad looking either:)

Beethoven originally wrote the symphony for Napoleon Bonaparte when he was First Consul. Beethoven was impressed by Bonaparte and likened him to the Roman consuls. Beethoven’s friend, Ferdinand Ries, saw a copy of the score’s title page on which Beethoven had written at the very top Buonaparte and at the extreme bottom Luigi van Beethoven. What would have gone in between Ries didn’t know.

When Bonaparte declared himself emperor in 1804, Beethoven flew into a rage. “Is he then, too, nothing more than an ordinary human being? Now, he too, will trample on all the rights of man  and indulge only his ambition. He will exalt himself above all others, become a tyrant!” He tore the first page in two and threw it on the floor. When the symphony was rewritten, it was published with the title, Sinfonia Eroica.

Beethoven was considering a move to Paris. The Bonaparte name on his symphony might have helped. He wrote to his publisher: “the title of the symphony is really Bonapart.” But realistic concerns of the time prevailed, given the strained relations between Austria and France, and Eroica prevailed. 

In the end, Beethoven’s politics, like his music, transcended the particular. The Eroica Symphony is heroic. It stands for all heroes of any time who take offense at power politics, oppression, injustice, and dedicate their lives and their art to compassion and goodness for all. Music gives life.

Conclusion: soul has not just to do with inner mysteries, but with outer appearances, individual temperament, and the politics of the time.  Mysticism expanded.

2014.08.03 What Is A "First?"

I was the first child my parents ever had. Actually that’s not quite true. There were three before me who never made it. I set no precedents, yet I felt first-ish, and so, I'm sure, did my parents. As a "first" I was a cause célèbre and a bête noir.

“There is nothing new under the sun.” So says Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes). So how can there by any true firsts under the sun—or the moon?

There can't of course, yet we earthlings need to categorize, rank, and order things, and whoever says we don’t do that is probably a liar, because we all do it. Even so, it is good to remember that, spiritually, you are never first or last or new. You are only precious.

The first group of women, in collaboration with a few good men, to defy Episcopal church canon law in 1974 and be ordained priests, were historic "firsts." They were icons to some and iconoclasts to others.

To honor these women, I offer this “first”: the Rev. Elizabeth Alfred, the first woman priest to celebrate Holy Communion on her 100th birthday, January, 10, 2014, in Melbourne, Australia.

According to Muriel Porter, reporting for the diocese of Melbourne, Alfred was the first woman ordained priest in Melbourne December 13, 1992, when Archbishop Keith Rayner ordained 12 women in a long-awaited historic ceremony. She was 78, well beyond retirement age, but Archbishop Rayner had promised this significant pioneer that age would not prevent her ordination—when it finally became possible. She waited in the wings for some time.
       1944, ordained deaconess at 30
       1944-1986, in-waiting, 30-72
       1986, ordained deacon at the first diaconal ordination of women in 1986, age 72
       1986-1992, in-waiting as deacon, age 72-78
       1992, ordained priest with twelve other women, at 78
       2014, celebrated her birthday Eucharist, at 100

Alfred's centenary birthday Eucharist was, most appropriately, back at St James’, Dandenong, where she had ministered as a deaconess, and where she did much of her waiting and dreaming of presiding on her 100th birthday. The church was packed. The preacher, former St James’ vicar the Rev'd Alan Baker, pondered whether this was another "first": has any other woman ministered in the same place as deaconess, deacon, and priest?

Family members, friends, parishioners and clergy colleagues, some of whom had traveled considerable distances, burst into sustained spontaneous applause as Alfred entered the church, vested in a chasuble. Frail after some weeks of illness that she had feared might abort her long-held dream of presiding on her 100th birthday, she needed the assistance of a wheeled walker to get to the altar. Parish clergy helped and stood by.

But when this centenarian "first" spoke – to absolve, consecrate and bless – her voice was clear and strong. There was no doubt who was presiding at this special Eucharist.

At the end of the service, after numbers of people had offered greetings, congratulations, and gifts,  Alfred spoke briefly. During her recent illness, she said, she had been upheld by the prayers of all her friends, and “the knowledge that Jesus was always beside me”.  And, she added, “at least I didn’t have to come today in a wheelchair!” (But you know she would have if necessary.)

There are no firsts in God's eyes; all souls are equal. But I bet if there are angels, they applauded and trumpeted alleluias anyway. They know we earthlings need to remember "firsts" so we can keep going—on earth as it is in heaven. 

2014.07.27 A Nun On The Bus

Last week we heard Simone Campbell, SSS (Sisters of Social Service) speak about her vision to work for dignity and justice for all people and her experience as a practical contemplative. Campbell is an attorney, lobbyist, executive director of Network, and the author of the book, A Nun On The Bus.



To say that she is a good speaker, would be to understate it. She is all flamed up with vision and praxis. The symbolic story in Exodus about the voice of God calling to Moses from a burning bush is her biblical metaphor for the voice of God: something quite ordinary that you see every day suddenly flares up. Moses' bush-voice begins with a statement of compassion: I hear your people’s cry and their needs. I’m aware of their suffering. I know. (The verb form of know in Greek used here is the same as the form for the intimate knowing that happens in sexual intercourse.) Whoa! There follow a suggestion, just when Moses is the most turned on, something like: “So now I am sending you to Pharaoh.”

What? Not me! I can't stand Pharaoh! I'm terrified of his power. I have no voice. Moses mightily resists.

Campbell said that transformation begins at the point of intersection between a vision of total compassion (through deep listening) and an equally forceful resistance to it. Head straight into the resistance to find the dangerous truth.

What do you resist the most? What do you eschew? Who gets the blame, self or other? Who or what would be on your “mistakes of God” list? (Campbell has a list. Some politicians are on it.) Who or what point of view would you have the most trouble dialoguing with?  What do you resist accepting, trying to listen deeply to?

Confession: I scorn Christians who think Jesus the Christ is the only Name, the only, authentic access to Godde. If I head into my resistance to this point of view I discover my impotence, my fear, my vulnerability, my anger, and my limited ability to change fixed mindsets, let alone accept or love those of such mindsets. BUT. . . I do think I could listen. Hang in til you find common ground, Campbell said, and from there build bridges. She was trying for common ground with Paul Ryan—not exactly her "type."  

About ten years ago or so, I tried to set up a dialogue between my liberal parish and a neighboring parish, which was rooted in exclusive Christian theology and politics. I framed the purpose as loving our neighbor’s and received assent for my proposal from the rectors of both parishes. I even recruited dialogue facilitators. It turned out that one of the rectors failed to help bring about the dialogue, causing it to collapse. Soon this rector left the parish to start his own ultra-conservative one, taking a lot of the moneyed with him. I can only assume he never intended to dialogue. All he wanted to do, he had said, was to preach Christ— his own point of view, his own Christ. (Is there such a thing?) We had common ground in our love for Christ; it just wasn't enough to build a bridge. 

As a pastoral counselor, I sometimes saw couples and families.  I would first invite and listen to each person’s story. I tried for experience, and usually got interpretation, according to each point of view. Usually everyone was doing the “Eden thing”— blaming everyone, including God and the snake, for their own pain, powerlessness, and anger at the unhappy dysfunction. Then I’d try to find a common ground—just one thing they all could agree upon so we could go from there. Sometimes we never got to the common ground. Sometimes deep listening was blocked and the vision of radical acceptance too much of a stumbling block.

If anyone wept, I knew there was room for the vision to begin. I would follow the tears. Tears would happen at the intersection of rugged resistance (fear) and deep listening that led to broken hearts, opened hearts, radical acceptance, and yes, good old love hidden underneath bushels of powerless resentment.

Campbell proclaimed that we are all in this project called life together! 100% of us in church and society. When she and others decided on a road trip to spread the vision and help the poor, no one later remembered who thought of that idea. No one remembered, but the flame came upon them from somewhere.

The practice of justice for all is, Campbell believes, the vision and story of the corpus of Holy Scriptures. She's not a contemplative, although she has a daily meditation. Contemplative meditation stills her (like when you stop shaking a snow globe, the snow settles, and suddenly everything in the globe gets clear.) The practice daily places her on the path of compassion, and fuels her for the immediate task of, in her case most recently, meeting with Congressman, Paul Ryan, about his budget and to lobby for immigration reform.

Their common ground? All they could agree on was that they shared a passion for their country—such as the passion shared by me and the rector had for Christ.  

Campbell spoke with vibrancy and humor. She told poignant stories, saying that ideas were important but that ideas alone could keep us talking and debating forever—while people starved and children died in poverty. Congressman, Pete Gallegos from San Antonio, TX. was ready to address a group of reformers about immigration policies when suddenly his small son waved vociferously and shouted, “Hi Daddy.” Then he ran up and into Gallegos’s arms—like a veritable burning bush.

Gallegos canned his prepared speech and shared instead how he came to change his attitudes about immigration reform: in the delivery room when his son was born and he suddenly knew he would give his life for this little child and fight FOR his freedom to live a stable life, not by fighting against another child's freedom. In that moment, Gallegos knew that he was every parent. He knew the hope and the hunger and love of every parent.

Children and parents flee across borders to the US and other countries. They run from violence, economic and physical. They run for a vision. They run for their lives. US border guards found the dead body of a woman under a bush. When they unfurled her body they discovered that it had been curled around the body of a little child. (Think Hagar in the desert with Ishmael. Then think of a God who provided them a well.) The story made me weep, broke my heart. Oh Godde!

Immigration reform is not THEIR issue; it is OUR issue. Nuns rode the bus for "faith, family, and fairness"—for ALL people everywhere, the 100%.

Do you remember when the Church added an alternative to the Nicene Creed?  We used to say: “I believe . . .”  Now we say, or should say, “WE believe . . .”

“We are all called to be a burning bush in a hungry nation,” Campbell declared.

And I would add: we are all called to be a burning bush in a hungry church, starving for wholeness, unity, deep listening, and radical acceptance.

What bus will you take to see “pharaoh”?

2014.07.24 BOOK REVIEW: This Is How It Feels, Craig MIller

This is a book of truth, It is not pretty; the whole truth about human life rarely is. It is beautiful;  beauty can change the world.

I have just finished this terrorizing yet redemptive read. It’s a memoir written by Craig Miller, a man who suffered from OCD and depression, made a suicide attempt at 20, spent three days in a coma, and experienced an amazing inner shift of perspective—while technically dead. Life won, he says.

This memoir is so emotionally authentic it’s hard to read. Miller writes as if his soul spills out onto the page. Yes, he spares no details about the horrors of what happened to him and of his mental illness, but he does so with no remove. We are in it with him.

At first I thought: This can’t be true! and So how come I believe every word? Then I realized that I had heard such horror stories from clients and in the addictions treatment center where I worked as a chaplain/counselor.  But when you are functioning as the therapist, or the spiritual companion, you can’t plunge into the emotional murk yourself or you won’t be helpful. In fact, you’ll drown. But reading alone in my room allowed me to dive right in with Miller and swim with him. My heart beat for this boy, this teen, this young man. It ached, broke, wept, no sobbed. He prayed, and I did too.
 
Miller writes graphically about his suicide attempt and his courageous jihad against his mental illness. No one along the way of treatments asked him about what happened!!  His family and friends did not know how to help him. Social attitudes twenty years ago toward bullying, especially for males, were: Get out there and defend yourself, wimp! Rape, suicide, mental illness?—forget it!  Miller’s loneliness was profound, palpable, yet he pursues his search for kindness relentlessly. He is  a fighter. 
 
I knew that he survived and that he is now married with kids, but I had to find out exactly how he got there. This is a suspense-filled story fueled by hope, grit, and grace.

The book is structured around the three days Miller spent in a coma. During those days every single repressed memory reeled by. He came out just enough to know he was in a hospital, but sank back again into a comatose state.
 
This is not a traditional near-death experience. Although Miller’s brain is dead, he doesn’t experience heavenly peace; nor does he travel anywhere— except backwards into his past. Something functions without his brain. This kind of healing from trauma and mental illness would take years and years of good therapy, plus medications and a community of recovery. For him it takes three days to begin the process toward full healing. All I could think of was the New Testament phrase, predicting resurrection: “. . . and after three days he will rise . . .” God’s time is not our time.

It's true: God makes us whole as we rise, whether before or after biological death.

I will not reveal more about the transformation that happens. I will only say that this is the most profoundly spiritual book I’ve read in some time—uniquely so.

Craig Miller writes and speaks his whole truth, and nothing but, about depression, OCD, suicide, addiction, violence and abuse. His work is indispensable to treatment professionals and those with mental illness, but even more so it contributes to the mending of the world, tikum olam, according to Jewish tradition. We need more broken hearts. And we need to eliminate the fear and shame that go with stigmatization, religious and secular, attached to mental illness and suicide. Start by calling survival accomplishment.

Miller has his own saving mantra.  

I leave you with mine: The glory of God is the human person fully alive.  Irenaeus of Lyons.

2014.07.20 Amazing Grit

Often I sign my emails, “grit and grace.” It seems to have more pep than more common words, like blessings, peace, etc. Anyway, it came to me as some kind of spiritual holism.

I recently listened to a talk by Angela Lee Duckworth, a  psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been grappling with the age-old familiar question of: What is the Key to Success?

Now just how many how-to and self-help books have been written about success, as if it were marketable? It’s not on St. Paul’s list of spiritual gifts, nor does Jesus mention it, yet success has been associated with religious faith, and so has prayer. And there is the so-called prosperity gospecertain habits, purpose-driven lives, etc. etc. make for divinely sponsored success.

Jesus failed, so let’s get over it. (That’s sassy, but you know what I mean. If it hadn’t been for Paul and the gospel writers, would he even be remembered, let alone his gospel?) Followers often mess up the founder's dreams. It could be that one of Jesus' gifts was his ability to attract followers who were really good at social media.

Success is a quintessentially American cultural value, and quest. Can-do mentality is our gift and our curse. We are effective and accomplished, yes, but so prone to compulsion and self-deceit. We don't fail graciously. Instead, we sue.

The Church too has been exploring its own success in the face of what looks like failure but probably is not, e.g. how many people come, how young are they, etc. Whoever thought of praying and asking Christ about all this? 

Dr. Duckworth has no easy answers, but she has amassed lots of statistics and studies on the question. Passion, perseverance toward one’s goals, hard work, belief in the future, being a marathoner not a sprinter—all present and accounted for. Unexpectedly, the strongest success predictors, talent, intelligence, personality, were not at all consistently correlative with regular success.

Duckworth isolated on factor that was more consistently present: GRIT.

GRIT.

How do you assure grit, even blessedly? Duckworth called it a mystery. We don't know why one person has grit and another doesn't. She offered an educated guess: get a growth mindset. It's possible to teach a child to believe that the ability to learn can change with effort. 

The most spiritual thing I heard Duckworth say was: Failure is not a permanent condition. Now that’s gospel! In fact, the Bible has more failure in it than success. Oh, it's depressing! Consistent, however, is human faith-grit and God's gritty grace. Neither give up on goodness nor on each other—plain idiotic, but true grit.

Once a therapist of mine asked me who my hero was. She was trying to give me an image of power my mind could call on, because I was a wimp.  Here it is. Hard to believe.

 

I am adding GRIT to my list of words that describe resurrection—that transformative movement from death to life—not a one-time event, but an ongoing many-times-over dynamic. 

Grit is gritty. It’s a gut thing. It’s true and truth. God must have tons of it, lest why would Godde create such a mess, and never abandon it or give up hope for its growth? 

The other word that means resurrection to me is resilience—one of the latest and greatest word thrown about in the mental health field. It is almost as mysterious as grit but not quite as instinctive. The Latin root of the word is resile, to leap back. Sprong!  

Hell, Jesus called Peter a stumbling block and both men bounced back, one to face a trial with courage the other to start a church, God help him. Both had grit, resilience and resurrection.

So in fact do these superb, determined little petunias on our brick doorstep—starting their own little garden no less. What gritty praise!