Sign up for local news and alerts; we will not sell your email, who does that? August 31, 2023 Dr. Alina Beary, professor of Torrey Honors College at Biola University, died after a tragic pedestrian-vehicle accident, university leaders announced Thursday, August 31, 2023. The beloved professor, who devoted more than 20 years of her life…
by
Matthew D. Wright
“I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord forever! With my mouth will I make known your faithfulness to all generations!” (Psalm 89:1). These words of the Psalmist express the heart of what I want to say here and, indeed, contain the essence of the title I’ve given these remarks: “The Habit of Community
.” Before we unpack the Psalmist’s words, however, I want to back up a bit to get a few ideas on the table.
T. S. Eliot has made me more sensitive lately to noticing the patterns of life. His
Four Quartets is primarily concerned with being able to see something he calls “the still point” those moments in which we get a flash of insight into the intersection between the eternal and the temporal. In these moments we can see how we are called in the midst of our human frailty into fellowship in the life of God. Some of us are called to contemplative vocations devoted to attending to such insights, but for most of us, Eliot observes, the d