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Living Single

Sunday Service - March 29, 10:00am
Rev. Julie Stoneberg

Music: Mark Parnis

Marital status is a “prohibited ground for discrimination” under the Canadian Human Rights Act.  What is wonderful and terrible about living single in a society that celebrates partnering?  

Opening Words

The Body Is Humankind                #651  
These words, written by Norman Cousins, are found in our hymnal. I have abridged and edited them a bit...
I am a single cell in a body of 6.7 billion cells. The body is humankind. 
I am a single cell. My needs are individual but they are not unique. 
I am interlocked, I am partnered, with other human beings in the consequences of our actions, thoughts, and feelings. 
Together, we share the quest for a society of the whole equal to our needs. 
We are single cells in a body of 6.7 billion cells. The body is humankind.
Come, let us, each individual cell, gather our spirits and bodies in worship together.
 

Story for All Ages

Fox Walked Alone     - Barbara Reid
 

Responsive Reading

Make Not a Bond of Love   #730
This reading from Kahlil Gibran that is in a section in our hymnal titled “Weddings and Services of Union.” It was chosen because even as it affirms a partnership, it speaks of our singleness. 
 

Message

So, I read this story, a blog actually, about an article in the Boston papers that told of three good Samaritans who saved a man’s life when he went into cardiac arrest at a train station...a story which the blogger, who happens to be a single male, found inspiring until near the end of the article. There, one of the good Samaritans, a nurse at a city hospital, told the press, “One thing that stood out for me was he was wearing a wedding ring so I knew that somebody... out there ... loved him and was expecting him to come home.”  
 
Ahhh. Sweet. But, think about it for a minute. The implication is that if he wasn’t wearing a wedding band he was someone that no one loved....that no one would be waiting at home for him. Or, more alarmingly, a wedding ring meant he was somehow a bit more worthy of saving. 
 
This is a classic example of singlism, a discriminatory practice that assumes that being single is less desirable than being partnered. Granted it’s usually less vicious than other ‘isms,’ but Bella DePaulo, who has written a book called “Singled Out”, asks, “how extreme or hurtful does an unfair behaviour have to be before it would be considered appropriate to address it?”
 
As a person who has been single for most of my adult life, singlism is something that I’ve often confronted and experienced. I have been both hurt and shamed by singlism, and have often pondered how, and if, I am called to gather up my courage and name this experience...to prophesy against it, if you will. But it wasn’t until I began my research for today’s sermon that I was able to see it as a ‘real’ form of discrimination. I was way more than pleasantly surprised to discover that there is work going on all over the place on this topic, by people who are able to name it, and speak it, and claim it, in ways that I have as yet been unable to do. And so, right up front, I want to say that I am relying heavily today on the work of others, and I want to honour that work and express my deep appreciation for it...
 
...for people like Dr. DePaulo who I already mentioned, E. Kay Trimberger, who wrote “The New Single Woman”, Jaclyn Geller and her work in “Here Comes the Bride”, as well as Sasha Cagen who wrote an article for the Utne Reader called “The Quirkyalone” which has exploded into a website and a movement. 
 
All of that work has provided way more information and ideas than I can share with you today...I find I’m just bursting with thoughts and feelings on this topic, and needed to settle on a ‘couple’ of aspects of this issue to speak with you about today... first, to bring the reality of singlism into view, and to talk a bit about what this reality means for us, for this faith community.
 
Many of us here are unpartnered, at least in a conventional sense. Let me acknowledge that being single is not a monolithic experience. There are those who like being single and those who do not. There are those who have intentionally chosen to be single and those who have not. There are those who have been made single by circumstances which they lament. There are those who are unpartnered who may have never experienced singlism and would deny its existence, or at least its affect on them. All of these realities, and more, exist in this room. I cannot speak for everyone here. Still, I believe that singlism is a reality that we do well to be aware of.
 
Like I said, this has been brewing in me, and nagging at me for some time. My youngest sister and I have often spoken of it, but in whispered ways that contain a combination of the shame and anger imbedded in the topic.   We have experienced the loss of good friends when they get into relationships. (She happens to be in a relationship now and it has meant that we talk much less often.) We have experienced the expectation that we would subsidize our friends’ lives through weddings and showers, without any recognition in return of momentous events in our single lives. We have been asked all of the questions...you know the ones...that inevitably enter all ‘catching up’ conversations...the ones that caw like the ravens who called the single fox crazy. ”So, have you met anyone?” or “How’s your love life?” (neither being questions a partnered person gets asked too often) or worse, “How come you’re not married?” where the implication is that there is something deeply, even fatally, wrong with us single folks.  
 
Singles are seen, albeit subliminally most of the time, as losers. Being single is thought of as an unfortunate condition that everyone should avoid at all costs.   Single women are reminded that their work won’t love them back and that they should worry about their eggs drying up. Youn single man are told to settle down. Older single men, with jobs and homes, are said to be too set in their ways. And, while I’ll save talking about singles and sexuality for another time, just think about how single women are either seen as sluts or poor things who don’t get any. Single men are viewed as horny and irresponsible. And I don’t even know how to talk about the common presumption that long time singles must be either lesbian or gay... as if that has anything to do with being unpartnered. 
 
Thinking about people as being single or married, one or the other, is a polemic, a binary, that pits one against the other. And this particular distinction implies that being single is to be not quite whole and terribly lonely. To label someone as single completely ignores the presence of meaningful friendships and connections in that person’s life. In reality, being single is not synonymous with loneliness, nor does it increase one’s odds of being depressed and isolated...in fact, many overlooked statistics would suggest otherwise. 
 
Professor What If, an internet blog, asked, what if married people were treated like singles. Can you imagine making these comments to your partnered acquaintances?  
  • “Don’t worry, you’ll get a divorce someday!”
  • “You’re so great - how come you’re still married?”
  • “It’s okay to be married for a while, but eventually you need to grow up and become single.”
  • “When are you going to get a divorce?”
  • “It’s so sad having to go home to a house with someone in it all the time.”
  • “Well, I would’ve invited you to book group, except you’re married and I thought you wouldn’t want to be around all those happily single people.”
  • “What’s a gorgeous man, or woman, like you doing married?”

Are you beginning to understand this? Singlism, or its partner, matrimania, are relatively invisible discriminations in our society, but only because they are so imbedded, so ‘normal’ in our everyday experience, that we hardly see them. Most of us, or many of us, make the assumption that being partnered is a better way to live, even a more natural way to exist. It was so heartening for me to find so much research and discussion about singlism, and so see that the generations coming behind me are acting to make a change in these archaic societal presumptions. Yahoo!  

That said, I am personally guilty of singlism. For example, when on my facebook page, I asked about living single, and when several friends posted that they love being single, and that it offers them more freedom and opportunities than being partnered, I have to admit that my first thought was that they were being defensive...they were just saying that to counteract the inferiority complex imposed on them as unpartnered people. My reaction required me to do some soul-searching and to admit that this is my own singlism talking. I have ingested the cultural message and expectation that I would be more, be better, be more acceptable if I were partnered. And so now, having confronted my own discrimination, even against myself, I need to name it, root it out, and replace it with a deeper understanding of the many ways that human beings live full and rich lives, by choice or by circumstance, and to acknowledge the value in all the meaningful ways we connect with each other.
 
Let me say a little more about this ingested discrimination. Not long ago I had a conversation with someone...you know the kind...where you sit down with the intentional purpose of getting to know one another better. In that conversation, I was asked why it was that I was not in a relationship. (In fairness, I asked a similar question just the other day; my purpose was research for this sermon, but still...it wasn’t a fair question.) Now, I don’t know if the person who asked me why I wasn’t married had any ulterior intention. I can tell you that my response was not an open one. Rather, I felt that I had to carefully justify myself out of a feeling of shame and belittlement. Obviously there is something wrong with me! As one blogger who has been asked a similar question notes, “I was always tempted to say I had spent my entire adult life in an insane asylum but, now that I was out, I would start looking!” 
 
Thanks to the work of people more enlightened than me, I hope that I will answer that question differently when next asked, because most assuredly, I will be asked it again. I hope that I can answer, with full compassion for myself, that the truth of life is that some of us are in relationships and some aren’t, and that’s just how it is. I hope that I can answer, from a place of comfort with what is, that each path in life gives us something even as it requires us to give something up. I hope I can counter with an honest inquiry into whether the questioner defines who I am in terms of the presence of a partner. I hope I can joyfully express my reality, which is that my life is resplendent with meaningful, unconventional partnerships and passionate connections.
 
Several months ago, I asked Ian to put on his lawyer hat and tell me something about Canadian human rights law as it applies to single folks. In the United States, marital status is a ‘protected class’, which means that marital status is a category protected, by law, from discrimination. I suspect that this protection was intended for unpartnered parents, rather than single people in general. And, it apparently is not held up very often, as US singles pay higher taxes and make less money than married people in the same jobs.   Do you find it a bit shocking that the 9/11 Compensation Fund accorded the life of single people worth less than the life of marrieds?
 
Canada doesn’t use this term, protected class, but still, Ian tells me that the Ontario human rights code states that every person has a right to equal treatment without discrimination, based on marital status, at least with respect to employment. Yet, neither the Canadian Bill of Rights nor the Charter of Rights and Freedoms seem to mention marital status at all. I’ll love for you to let me know more about whether singlism is alive and well in Canada. Do you think that singles need or deserve to be protected from discrimination? 
 
Assuming that singlism exists, I’d like to talk for just a bit about what this means for our faith and our congregation. Bella DePaulo, the psychologist I mentioned earlier and who writes a regular blog called “Living Single” (and coincidentally, I titled my sermon before finding her blog), wrote of her experience growing up Catholic. She says she is mad at religion for creating places where singles feel either shut out or put down. She wondered if it was possible for religions to be welcoming of singles and still be true to their beliefs. DePaulo posts two responses to her query...one from a Jewish professor who says that in traditional Judaism, the ideal and only thinkable state for a Jew is to be married. She also mentioned the struggle, especially within the Orthodox tradition, and particularly in urban synagogues, with how to welcome singles while also pressuring them to marry. The other response was from a progressive Christian theological student who spoke of how her church was responding to the changing demographics by offering more programming to help singles, and especially women, to come to terms with their sexuality and their spiritual walk with God.   I’m not sure I know what that means. 
 
I used the Noah’s Ark story this morning as an awareness building exercise in seeing the subtle ways in which ‘coupling’ is shown to be the normal way. In my upbringing, I’m quite certain that this story contained the lesson that going ‘two by two’ is God’s way. Members of my family believe that part of our purpose on earth, an expression of our obedience to God, is to procreate. My parents’ church had programming for singles even way back then, but my experience of it was as a way to find partners for all the lonely single people. 
 
So, what about us? We are this inclusive, diverse tradition without a stated position on marriage, but with an emphasis on personal freedom, of religion and choice. Judging by the number of single people in our midst, I suspect that we are not unwelcoming to those who are unpartnered. But I wonder if we can be more proactive in this anti-singlism movement, in this embrace of living single as an equally acceptable and fulfilling way to live? I wonder if we can be more intentional about examining our own singlism and in so doing, to create an environment where there are no divisions between single persons and partnered persons.   I wonder if we could be on the leading edge of talking about the inherent worth of a single life.
 
Just as an example...do any of you remember taking part in the “Beyond Categorical Thinking” workshop as you prepared to go into search for a minister? Not having been here, I can’t speak to your experience, but I do understand that one of its goals is to expand a congregation’s picture of who the ideal minister might be. I don’t know if you found this to be true for you, but I do know that for many people, the ideal minister is a young, energetic, married male, hopefully with a couple of kids. This is a pretty traditional ideal, and it is rarely spoken of, but I believe that it exists. In the alternative, UU congregations might hope for a partnered GLBT person who will make a name for them as a welcoming, liberal community. Either way, the ideal minister is someone who is partnered, and I can tell you that I experienced some of the accompanying discrimination in my search process (not here, of course!) 
 
Perhaps we are not as liberal and enlightened as we think we are. We all carry our discriminations and our challenges, our isms and our bigotry. The good news, and this is good news, is that we’re willing to look at these things, to challenge ourselves, on the road to being ever more inclusive and welcoming, here in this community, and also in our personal relationships. For in truth, loving, inclusive, affirming relationships...with all...single or married...partnered conventionally or unconventionally...gay or straight...old or young...these relationships are what build beloved community. 
 
There is a popular poem by Oriah Mountain Dreamer called “The Invitation” which I’d like to paraphrase in closing:
It doesn’t interest me if you are partnered or single. I want to know if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. 
It doesn’t interest me if you live alone or with many. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments. 
 
For empty moments come to us all; and for such a reason, we come together in this beloved relationship. May we continue to embrace a bigger and broader meaning of our inherent worth. 
Amen. 
 

Closing Words

We are single cells in a body of 6.7 billion cells. The body is humankind. Within that body exists the full expression of love and interconnection, reflected through the diversity of choice and life. It doesn’t matter if you are partnered or not, married or single.   What matters is that you are allowed to dream and follow your heart’s longing. What matters is that we are here to sustain one another when all else falls away. May we ever delight in this life together. And may it ever be so.