Being in one place doesn’t actually separate you from other places. It connects you to all places on the same good earth.

The only way to be separated from other places is to be dis-placed in abstraction from any concrete place (online worlds, commuter cities, back-patio neighborhoods, etc.).

Similarly, being in one time doesn’t actually separate you from other times. It connects you to all times in the same eschatological continuum.

The only way to be separated from other times is to be un-timed in abstraction from any determinate time (casting aside tradition, appealing to timeless principles, embracing a carpe diem hedonism).

Applying these thoughts to ecclesiology, the church is connected to the universal and the eternal precisely by being local and present.

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel (Hebrews 12:22-24).