“There are some incredible citizens in the Northfield community.”

On the Great Conversation

by Becky Elder

When I look at Northfield, I see an extraordinary array of people—not just the people that come in the doors every day, each one so providentially paced in our midst, but people from throughout history and representing every discipline of life.

There are some incredible citizens in the Northfield community. Start with Adam and Eve, move through Abraham and Moses. Sit down with Plato and Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, Shakespeare, Rasputin, Robert E. Lee, Douglas MacArthur, T.S. Eliot, Albert Einstein, Copernicus, Archimedes, Winston Churchill, even Robin Hood. What an incredible scene! Look at all those famous people willing to spend their lives teaching us at Northfield. I can barely stand still. I want to wander around from person to person, asking all the questions I can, because I'm worried these incredible friends will have to leave. But they don't. They are here every morning, just waiting to speak to us. They are here to make certain that, as we discuss in discourse, we are all focused on finding, at the end of our questions and dilemmas, the Truth. All these many voices harmonize into one truth, the one out of the many.