a mustard seed.

When a seed unfolds into a flower, the seed does not merely ‘grow’ or become a bigger seed. If development were simply growth or expansion, then there would be no flowers at all, just gargantuan seeds swaying in the fields. Instead, something dramatic occurs within the logic of the seed; something within the seed’s very structure allows it to differentiate into a new, more elaborate form. The seed gradually gives way to the flower not merely by expanding but by differentiating into an ever more complex organism. This dialectical process of becoming moves from the first thread-like root of the seedling to the upward rising of the stem through the gradual maturation and emergence of the blossom itself. Through this development, the seed is not destroyed; rather, it unfolds within the logical progression of its own internal structure. In this way, we could say that there was something distinctive about the seed’s structure which allowed it to engage in this process of ‘becoming’, undergoing a series of phases in which it was able to become ‘more of itself’. We could say that the flower represents the differentiated expression of the seed’s potential for becoming a flower.

January musing: