Lent, Days 29-34: Wheat seeds & Telios
“It’s not dead—it’s just not born yet.”
My daughter spoke this phrase over the wheat seed we were examining yesterday during our time in the Montpelier Atrium. We were doing a work called “The Mystery of Life and Death” and pondering Christ’s words in John 12: “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds” (v. 24).
I am clinging to her definition of “death” today:
“not born yet.”
At the risk of appearing to have shifted gears…
I’ve been pondering “perfection”—the stone I’ve been carrying the past few days. I had originally written the word in relation to my body and in regards to my parenting. If you consider that I was referring to the Oxford definition (“the condition, state, or quality of being free from all flaws or defects; the action or process of improving something until it is faultless”), you might see why it feels like a Lenten burden.
I want a perfect body—and though I try over and over again not to define it this way, when I say that, I mean the “flawless” standard I’m measured against by current culture. The blemish-free skin, faultless hair, and slender figure, unmarred by folds or fat or wrinkles. I want to be the perfect parent—perpetually understanding; meeting my kids’ needs from an endless well of patience and energy; never losing my temper; and giving them the best that this world has to offer, even if it requires cloth-diapering. This concept of perfection in parenting has come to mean eliminating personal need: which is really to say, not being so human—yeah, I want to achieve that, too.
The more I contemplated the word, the more I saw that my desire for perfection permeates all areas of my life. From the friendship I offer to the art I create to the work I do in the world—not just parenting, but gardening and social activism and being a daughter and serving my community and homeschool teaching and cooking for my family and being a partner to my spouse.
I often hear other parents say—and I echo this myself with frequency—“I failed at parenting today.” This has somehow become an acceptable way to verbalize the recognition that we have not lived up to expectations for how to fulfill this role. (Don’t even get me started talking about whose expectations those are.) In truth, if we’re defining “perfection” as flawlessness, we could say that we’ve failed every day at every part of our lives. This concept of perfection as the base of our self-expectation can only have two outcomes, as far as I can see: either being utterly defeated by an honest look at the impossible gap between our performance and the goal, or making ourselves the new definition of the word, developing dangerous blinders that convince us that we have achieved perfection, can learn nothing more, and can do no wrong.
In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron defines “perfectionism” as “a refusal to let yourself move ahead.” She is speaking about the act of creating, but I think there is further-reaching application for her words on perfectionism. She goes on to say “Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be enough—that we should try again.”
Because of the dangers in pursuing perfectionism, and because Jesus says in Matthew 5:48 “Therefore, be perfect, even as your Heavenly Father is perfect,” I thought it prudent to more closely inspect that word. Apparently the Greek word, from which we get “perfect” in the Matthew passage, is telios, and more comprehensively denotes “wholeness, completeness” or “something fulfilling its purpose or achieving its goal.” Even the etymology of our English word “perfect” hints at the same meaning: the Latin origin, perficere means “to complete.”
This is the part where you are subjected to the study I’ve been doing of late for an Anglican Studies Course. While reading a book called Participation in God, I was struck by the language of a passage that incorporates the work of St. Bonaventure in expressing the relationship between God and man: “God is the creature’s source (ortus), manner (modus), and fulfillment (fructus)…On this view, God is our morn, measure, and maturity; our sunrise, shape, and summit; our first light, form, and fruition; our dawn, dimension, and destiny” (p. 58).
I follow my spiritual tradition in confessing the belief that I was never designed to be, nor ever will become, God himself. If I am never going to achieve what God embodies, then to what end is Jesus commending us when he says “as your Heavenly Father is perfect”? What if part of the answer is that “perfect” means to be completely and wholly myself the way that God is wholly themself? “Perfection” is a whip-rearing task-master driving us into a communal cage, but maybe “telios” is a path under our feet leading us to a safe (if unseen) destination ahead.
I wonder if my daughter’s phrase about the wheat seed struck me so because it resonates with these contemplations, perfectly describing the difference between the telios of the “now” and telios in the “not-yet.” Am I getting a glimpse of my eventual wholeness when I allow myself to be broken open in order to release and expand the life within? Jesus was saying those words in John 12 just prior to his own death–and he was saying them in the company of both Jews and Gentiles. He knew, and we later realized, that it was by submission to his death that new life—for our spirits for all time—could grow to encompass all people, including me. I think I can believe that I will step into “my telios” at the end of all things; that the ever-renewing cycle of death-to-life-to-death-to-life-again will finally reach fulfillment in the New Creation. But what if our current experience of this constant cycle, which often leaves me weary and longing for an end, is a merciful foretaste of that perfection? A glimpse of the indescribable relief and beauty to come to spur us on until it is time to journey there.
In the Atrium, we were marveling over wheat seeds that had been recently planted–some a month ago, with growth so tall, they were bending under their own weight. More recently planted kernels boasted bright green, living shoots pushing through cracks made in their tiny brown shells. I had purchased all of these wildly-growing seeds more than a year ago from the bulk bin of a grocery store, and they had been stored with minimal care in a jar on an open shelf. I merely soaked them in water, pushed them under a bit of soil, and life emerged. May the same be possible for even the most dead-seeming of us. Today, I thank God for the time given for more of us seeds to choose to lose our lives in order to gain them.
There’s an old Chris Rice song called “Naive” that once brought this doubting-daughter comfort as a melancholy teenager wondering about our world’s rhythms. It comes to mind again now.
“I hear that a God who’s good would never let the evil run so long
But I say it’s because You’re good You’re giving us more time,
’Cause I believe that You love to show us mercy ”
Don’t hear me projecting theological confidence about any of this. To quote another of my course texts: “The modesty that theology needs is the recognition that we cannot rationally comprehend God. Theology is based on mystery and enters into mystery…Modern theology’s problem is its rational confidence—and thus, ultimately, its pride” (Heavenly Participation, Boersma, pp. 26-27). All of this is me “whistling in the dark” mystery of being, trying to examine the conscious and subconscious things affecting my being and the road I am traveling.
There’s far more to learn, consider, and ponder, but this is where I will rest today. Today (and forgive any misuse of the Greek), I choose to make my goal being telios, as the Father is telios. I believe there’s only One who truly knows what that means for me, and that there’s only one to whom They are fully communicating it: me (as your telios is yours, being communicated to you). As beings-made-to-be-communal, instead of setting the standard for one another, let’s make our goal encouraging one another in listening to the Voice guiding us towards our telios.
Father, I want to be perfect as you are perfect. May that perfection be a beacon guiding me further and further into fullness of life, not a siren’s song pulling me deeper and deeper into waters that crush air from my lungs and life from my soul. You have made me, and the path I uniquely trod: Keep my eyes on the step before me just now, today, by the allure of Your brilliant light; hone my ears to the sound of Your precious voice, directing me towards truth and revealing lies; and when my actions are incongruent with and in opposition to my telios, forgive the destruction of my hands or voice, and bring healing where these offenses cause harm. The uncovering of this mystery of my wholeness is a wild and gorgeous thing. Thank you for my story, that its telios is available to me in part even as it continues to unfold, and for pouring over me Your endless grace in the process of its telling.
