Writing toward the end of his short life, the medieval theologian Boethius, most famous for his Consolation of Philosophy, observed of his reading audience that they "have forgotten [their] true nature."  They have forgotten, he claims, who they really are.  Although Boethius wanted his audience to pursue the good, the beatific vision of heaven and God, they had instead, he lamented, chosen to seek after the impermanent and transient, the evanescent things of this present world.  In short, they had missed the point of why they are here.  They were to live in the here and now, yes, but to live it for what it really is, the existence through which they would obtain, one day, eternal life.  They had forgotten their real destiny.
     Boethius' words beg the question:  who are we, really?  In an interesting new book called The Space Between, author Eric Jacobsen observes that, bottom line, we are creatures of community.  We are made to be in communion with other human beings.  But he also notes that we are more than that, for if we constitute ourselves solely on the basis of our social relations, we still do not know who we really are.  To know who we are, we need to be who we are as we are, as we are as individuals in community.  Communities without individuals are no more than cults.
     Yet Boethius is on the mark.  While it is true that we often find ourselves and individual completion in community, it is equally true that unless we participate in this community as people who are pursuing more than the evanescence of ourselves, we will find ourselves creating a spiral of fellowship and activity that, however fun it may be, in the end, misses the real point:  humanity is only fully complete in the God-filled eternity beyond it.