Perpetual Becoming
Some scattered thoughts on our individual and collective becoming
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“They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.” (Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha)
The other day my husband, daughter and I went to our allotment. We’d only been a few days before, but in the interval, flowers had arrived on the apple, pear, and plum trees. It felt like a benediction, a blessing in blossom of the becoming of things — season, fruit, pieces of me. My daughter looked at the butterfly in her book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and I looked at her. We are both becoming and I can feel the loveliness of it, and the uncertainty too.
Later that day, I read this from John Steinbeck’s exquisite non-fiction book The Log from the Sea of Cortez: “Man might be described fairly adequately, if simply, as a two-legged paradox. He has never become accustomed to the tragic miracle of consciousness. Perhaps…his species is not set, has not jelled, but is still in a state of becoming…”
I’ve been wondering how we live in that often unsettling state of becoming — as individuals, as community.
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A few weeks ago, I watched my friend Jeff Chu’s ordination online. Jeff and I met on a rural writing retreat a few years back. He’s a writer, author of the Substack Notes of a Make Believe Farmer, and the book Does Jesus Really Love Me? A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America. He’s currently working on another book which involves soil (which I’m very into these days).
Though I don’t know Jeff well, and though I was online rather than in Brooklyn for the service, the wholeness of the event was soul-stirring. It reminded me of the most beautiful things about the Christian story — like its insistence on, in Jeff’s words, “restoration to community”. It was “…about community - communities, really, that have testified to love… the participants told a rich and beautiful story…” The service pointed to the world that we could choose, beyond division, learning to become whole together whilst upholding each person’s uniqueness. If you’re interested, this is the full recording of the event — the sermon by Nadia Bolz-Weber is from 48:30, and Jeff posted a transcript of it here).
The day after his ordination, Jeff preached about Thomas — the disciple who doubted he’d encountered the risen Jesus. Doubting Thomas needed to touch the crucifixion piercings in order to believe. Jesus says to him: “Do not doubt but believe.” In Jeff’s words, which I read in his newsletter, he says: “The Greek here can be literally translated: “Be not unbelieving but believing.” What’s lost to us, reading in English, is that there’s more than one word for “be” in ancient Greek. And the one used here isn’t the word that simply means “be,” as if “being” were a fixed state or an unchanging position. Instead, this version of the word “be” hints at a process of transformation, an ongoing experience of change. It is the “be” that could describe ice melting into water, winter surrendering to spring, adolescence blossoming into adulthood. Really, it’s more about “becoming”—or even more specifically “beginning to be”—than simply “being.” […] He essentially says: I really am here, with you and for you. Can you begin to believe it?”
Jeff’s words stuck with me — the idea that beginning to be is enough; it’s a state as natural as water, and the only way to approach being.
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Each day I watch my daughter becoming. There are developmental milestones we’ve been aware of since she was born: smiling, eating, walking, talking. Babies and toddlers are given grace in their becoming, in their tripping and dropping and breaking things. We are patient while they learn these things, we even delight in them. We photograph them, remember them, recount them to others. Why do I feel uncomfortable when I do these things for my own becoming? Do I sometimes hide my becoming, do I try to present myself as someone who’s already arrived?
Becoming feels like an orientation towards something I might never arrive at, perhaps facing the direction of my soul and wanting to better live in alignment with it. It feels countercultural to live in a state of becoming, because a large part of the world likes labels and fixed identity, and has little grace for mistakes, little patience for not knowing. And becoming necessarily involves not knowing, not labelling. It involves grace and patience, even delight.
A person is, and at the same time is not yet, and at the same time once was, and we carry all this. When I’m living most truthfully I feel as if I draw on all of it, I offer all of it, I don’t calcify into one particular version of me. I am always me, but I am also beginning to be me, responding to the way my shape fits the world, responding to the whisper at my ear that says, this way. I want to delight in that, not hide it.
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When I was an elected District Councillor, I rarely heard other Councillors respond to a challenging question with “I don’t know.” It seemed preferential to distract, to answer a question that had not been asked, to lie, than to say “I don’t know.” This bothered me. We were elected not to defend our egos but to represent communities, to find things out, to work together to be able to ask and answer hard questions. It will be difficult to build a future in which people can flourish if we are not first honest about who we are and where we are and the help we need, if we do not recognise that we have not arrived but that we are becoming, and — like my daughter — we need guidance and grace, curiosity and compassion to do so.
After Jeff’s ordination, I thought about the words shared during the service, and the words he shares in his writing. I am often struck by his willingness to share his need, his doubt, his becomingness. He doesn’t tell me he has arrived and ask me to follow him — instead, he voices his desire to live truthfully, to live aligned with who he wants to be, and he invites me to enter into that sometimes-messiness with him. Increasingly, I find myself being drawn to people who do this — who offer their becoming more than their arrival.
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The experience of beginning to be, of becoming who we are and becoming fully alive, asks trust and patience, it asks that we be people who are tender and responsive and open as spring blossom to the world and to our selves. But individual buds become blossom together, and in their togetherness on the tree they are rooted to this earth and it can be beautiful. I can be bolder in my becoming because I know others are ever-becoming too, I can feel steadier in my becoming as I root more deeply into the soil of soul and place. And if I show up in all my beginning to be-ness — perhaps in motherhood, in neighbourliness, in citizenship, in craft, in love, or just in being me — then perhaps it encourages others to do so too; to begin to be fully themselves, fully alive.
All this to say, I am watching the blossom become itself, and my daughter become herself, and in their becoming they are beautiful. As the world weeps and groans, I think it asks that we collectively find a way to do the same — to blossom and root and stumble and develop, to be open in our not knowing and delighted in our steps forward, to find the soul we want to orientate towards and to be honest. To begin to be what we could. It will be hard, and we will doubt, but I think it will be beautiful.
A few things linked to becoming:
John O’Donohue and Krista Tippett’s conversation for On Being - listen or read here
A piece I wrote in Resurgence Magazine about the threshold motherhood has brought me to
Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times, a book by Elizabeth Oldfield (forthcoming, 24th May 2024, more here and her own Substack is here)
The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams (my favourite book as a child, still one of my favourites as an adult too)
With love,
Elizabeth
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“A two legged paradox. He has never become accustomed to the tragic miracle of consciousness”
John Steinbeck loved contemplating men’s shortcomings: ‘Tortilla Flat’ with Danny and his friends was a favourite book of a fabulous vicar we had in our valley called Bob Thorn.
May the fourth continue to be with you Elizabeth! - always searching writing, especially and so correctly coruscating the unwise councillors and their lack of “I don’t knows”.
Beautiful words to start my day... I too, am becoming. I shared your words because they expressed the process perfectly. I am also in love with your friend Jeff's description of 'be'. So much is lost in translation and it's always the nuances.