It began with a seed (J.R.R. Tolkien)

  There is no resemblance between the mustard-seed and the full-grown tree.  For those living in the days of its branching growth, the Tree is the thing, for the history of a living thing is part of its life, and the history of a divine thing is sacred.  The wise may know that it began with a seed, but it is vain to try and dig it up, for it no longer exists, and the virtue and powers that it had now reside in the Tree. Very good:  but in husbandry, the authorities, the keepers of the Tree, must look after it, according to such wisdom as they possess, prune it, remove cankers, rid it of parasites and so forth.  (With trepidation, knowing how little their knowledge of growth is!). But they will certainly do harm if they are obsessed with the desire of going back to the seed or even to the first youth when it was (as they imagine) pretty and unafflicted by evils.

--J.R.R. Tolkien, 

letter to his son Michael, August 25, 1967, 

on the idea that the Church was not intended 

to be static or remain in perpetual childhood

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