Anna, daughter of Phanuel

I have been reading up on Candlemas (Feb 2) today, a feast I particularly love because one of the blessing prayers mentions the bees.  I am a bit afraid of bees, actually, but I think it is great fun when they are mentioned in church, especially in a solemn way, in Latin.

The Gospel reading is about the purification of Our Lady (after childbirth) and the presentation of Our Lord. It mentions an elderly man and an elderly widow, and although the elderly man composed the Nunc Dimittis on the spot, it is Anna who interests me today.

According to Luke, Anna lived with her husband for seven years before she was widowed.  I don't know why Anna was living in the temple; maybe her husband or her father  had some kind of important temple connection. (Off the top of my head, I would guess it was her father, as Anna is known as the Daughter of Phanuel, not the Widow of Somebody Else.) But at any rate, Anna lived there, praying and fasting, until at least the age of 84.

Now, if Anna married at 14, which would have been perfectly normal for those days, this means she was widowed at 21 and stayed a widow for at least the next fifty-nine years. Presumably she could have married again, but presumably she didn't want to. She was happy in the temple, praying and fasting and doing whatever it may have been that women who lived in the temple were expected to do, and after fifty-nine years of temple living, met Baby Jesus.

That's pretty neat, if you ask me. It's amazing how little space Anna's story has in the Gospel, given its hold on our imaginations. Anna, daughter of Phanuel, tribe of Asher. Widow, aged 87. Married 7 years. Never left temple, worshiped, prayed, fasted. Came to Presentation/Purification ceremony. Recognized Jesus for who He was. Praised and preached. The end--or the beginning, really. Now Anna is one of the most famous women who ever was, for the Bible is the most widely read book there ever has been. More importantly, of course, she got to see Jesus before she died, as an actual baby. Maybe she was allowed to hold him and bounce him up and down. Wouldn't you love to do that?

Anna seems like a serious and single-hearted woman, not given to mourning over what-could-have-been and feeling sorry for herself or envying women with children or any of the temptations adult women give into every day. Those fifty-nine years of  life, though pious, couldn't have been dull. They must have been lived in joyful expectation of something great to come, and lo and behold, He did!

Bad at Relationships?

I had a letter the other day from a reader who claimed she was bad at relationships. The rest of her email suggested she had many healthy relationships. But of course what she meant was "man & woman & sexual spark" relationships.

A lot of my readers do that--you talk about being bad "at relationships" when in fact you have many healthy relationships: with parents, siblings, work colleagues, students, professors, priests, the waitress who serves you coffee every day, female friends and even male friends. I think, therefore, that you are psyching yourselves out when you claim that you are bad at "relationships."

One of the enduring problems of our age is that we privilege "man & woman & sexual spark" relationships above absolutely every other relationship. But I think they should just take their place humbly among our well-established relationships with family members and our old friends.

A husband, interestingly enough, is a family member; it is another problem of our age that we do not recognize this and that "man & woman & sexual spark" is no longer (in English-speaking communities) put in the appropriate context of expanding a family. When I met my husband, I soon realized how much my family would like him and enjoy having him as a family member. And I was quite right.

"Okay then," I hear various voices pipe up, "we're good at most relationships. We're just bad at dating relationships."

But again I don't buy it. What does it mean to be good at a dating relationship? Ideally a dating relationship is a man and a woman who like each other, and get a bit wobbly and excited by just seeing the other, getting together to share interests, like a film or the museum or a marathon or a hockey game, and also meals and conversations. And out of these experiences, they singly and then together decide if they should make some kind of formal commitment or cease to go about so much together.

Very often they decide that they shouldn't commit and they shouldn't go about so much together. One or the other just isn't feeling it. And that is not being bad at dating relationships. No-one is to blame if you or the guy just doesn't feel a lasting attachment. Yes, it's disappointing, but it's also disappointing when your ticket doesn't win the lottery. You can't hurry love, as the song says. You just have to wait.

Meanwhile, another problem is not you but the current culture of dating relationships. To make a grand generalization, many men are rather messed up right now, and therefore are not so much on the hunt for wives, per se, but for girlfriends/bedmates. The courtship process for getting a girlfriend is not the same thing as the process for getting a wife, and so it is very difficult for the Catholic woman who does not want to have sex before marriage to navigate male attention. Fortunately, around the age of thirty men (particularly men from traditional cultures or who have returned to the practice of their faith) are often tired of messing around and just want to find a nice girl with whom to settle down.

And the only way I can think of to put up with this state of affairs is to keep the bonds strong with the real relationships in your life--with God, family, friends, colleagues, the waitress in the coffee shop, et alia--so that you have a lot of emotional support while you carry on with your life, all the while with a beautiful little hope (and it is beautiful, if kept small and in proportion) for the right man to come along one day.

Meanwhile, the one thing I can see many women being bad at is being rooted in reality when it comes to "man + woman + spark" relationships. We meet a handsome guy who seems nice and our minds race to months or even years ahead. We think "handsome=good" and "friendly=into me". And then when we are confronted with reality, we too often sweep it under the carpet because facing it would be too painful. ("No, no, no. Anyone that handsome must be a good guy.") We mentally write out a little history of how the future will go and we write a character description for a man we barely know, and then we defend our little mental compositions from the reality of NOW and the reality of HIM, the real guy, a man invented by God, not Jane Austen, and conditioned by his masculinity and his experiences in life, experiences you know almost nothing about yet. And this is simply crazy behaviour. It's like deliberately setting out on a journey with the wrong map.

It would, then, behoove everyone to approach "man + woman + spark" relationships in the same spirit adult women make new adult women friends: with friendliness, with caution, with much thought, with slowly growing emotional intimacy, and in appropriate proportion to relationships with family and old friends.

Suddenly Over Online Romances

My poll was even less scientific as usual, for I forgot to leave room for control groups. Alas. Well, anyway, 40 people (not a big slice of my daily readership) responded to the "Online Romance Suddenly Over Without Explanation" poll, 36 of them women and 4 of them men. Of the women, 28 have suddenly discovered internet silence where a man used to be, and 8 have done disappearing acts themselves. Of the 4 men, 3 have been abandoned, and one did the abandoning.

For readers' take on internet dating, see most of the comments here.

I am not sure what to say other than that unless you are actually frightened of a person, it is very disrespectful behaviour to abandon a friendly relationship--even an online friendly relationship--without an explanation. "I'm just not feeling a spark" counts as an explanation. "I'm not comfortable with your anger" does, too, if that's the problem.

If a very embarrassing situation has cropped up, like you have discovered that Mr Perfect was your little sister's hapless prom date, well, this is the sort of thing that separates the women from the flibbertigibbets. You should explain the situation, being straight to the point. Men tell me that they'd rather be told the truth then left hanging. So tell them the truth.

But don't tell them everything about yourself online. A lot of women have the bad habit of telling strangers our business, and online it strikes me as the equivalent of telling a man the end of a thriller just while he is absorbed in Chapter 2. If he really wants to get to know you, and if you really want to get to know him, you can darn well meet down at the doughnut shop. If you live in South Bend, and he lives in Boston, well, you're going to have to compromise on which doughnut shop.

There was a comment that worried about leading a man on by accepting three dates with him. I don't think that is leading a man on. Making a man think you might go out with him when you know you won't is leading a man on. Making him think you might sleep with him when you know you won't is leading him on. Making him think you might marry him when you know you won't is leading him on. Everything else is just you saying "Yes" to stuff you actually want to do. As long as whatever it is (e.g. going to a film) is morally licit, there's no problem.

One of the odder things about women, I have noticed, is that we tend to feel guilty about stuff we shouldn't feel guilty about and then not guilty about stuff for which we should feel guilty. If a man flies to your city to meet you, and then you don't fall in love with him, you shouldn't feel guilty about that. If a man flies to your city to meet you, takes you to dinner, you are smitten, he regretfully confesses he isn't smitten back, and in your hurt you tell everyone he led you on, you should feel guilty for that.

Auntie Seraphic's Intention

Listen, poppets. Your Auntie Seraphic has a very big prayer intention.

It is not about babies. I had a conversation with the Lord on Sunday about babies.

"How come you never send me a baby?" I asked.

Eventually He got around to answering.

"I want you to take care of other people's babies right now," He said. "Okay, some of them are six feet tall, but they need your help and I want you to give it to them."

"Oh," I said. "But can't I have a baby AND take care of other people's babies?"

But He had said all He wanted to say for the time being, so that was it.

No, this prayer intention has to do with my career. And I think the very best thing I can do, since I feel more-or-less powerless in this situation, is to ask you to pray for my intention. I ask particularly those who have written me letters because, whereas although obviously the Lord doesn't forget stuff, prayers that begin "Lord, could you help Auntie Seraphic because she helped me" sound kind of convincing---to my ear, at least.

Games in Preparation for Thanksgiving

Okay, tomorrow is American Thanksgiving, so it is time to batter down the hatches and talk frankly about emotional survival plans on behalf of the American readership. (Strangely, some British people have adopted American Thanksgiving themselves which, as a Canadian, I find very strange, yet another example of the bizarre British fascination with the USA. You should see BBC4 this week--absolutely mental.)

The essence of being rooted in reality is looking unpleasant facts in the eye and standing up to them instead of cowering behind a wall of dreamy-dreaminess. Therefore, if Great-Aunt Tilly has asked you every Thanksgiving for the past ten years if you are a Lesbian, don't think she won't ask you again this year. Turn it into a game. Make a bet with your friends when she will ask. In fact, run a pool. Your friends all give you a quarter, and whoever guesses right gets the pot. If she DOESN'T ask, the pot goes to the poor box in thanksgiving. I guarantee that, this way, when Great-Aunt Tilly asks the dreaded question, you will not want to die but to cheer and write down the time she asked.

Great-Aunt Tilly: Tell me, dear, are you a Lesbian?

You: Yay! OMG! What time is it?

The game can apply to any prediction based on past family Thanksgivings. Another game would be to agree beforehand with Single friends to write down the hour and minute you are first asked about your Single status. ("Any boyfriend yet, dear? Well, never mind.") Then when you can meet up, you all produce your pieces of paper.

And then there's simply collecting points for every time your Single state gets mentioned. I suggested this last year, and much hilarity ensued.

Obviously you need a quirky sense of humour for these games, although come to think of it, if you read this blog, you probably do have a quirky sense of humour. And the games also assume your families are functional enough that Thanksgiving Dinner does not mean a slide into dysfunction and depression. If Thanksgiving Dinner has for the past ten years meant a slide into dysfunction and depression, I heartily urge you not to go. And if you do go anyway, I urge you to have some lovely treat waiting for you as soon as you can escape. Do not exchange this lovely treat for the questionable joys of feeling like a martyr.

I also urge you not to compare yourself to your little sister, who has brought her boyfriend this year, or to your cousin, who married a millionaire, or to anybody else. I usually found it salutary, when envying a pal her girlfriend status or diamond ring, to ask myself if I would want her man. The answer has always been NO, although I did have to admit that one pal (one pal in 35 years of having pals) did have a very fetching fiance. Now he is her very fetching husband, and I really should stop mentioning how fetching he is. Fortunately, my own husband is pretty fetching in his own right, B.A.

Sorry to mention B.A. at a time like this, but if married women write about the beauties of other men, we sort of have to mention our own beautiful husbands in the next breath. And I suppose that this is a good opportunity to remind the majority of my Single readers who will actually marry (according to American statistics) that I didn't meet B.A. until I was 37. This may not cheer you if you are 27 or 47, but the point is that just because you haven't found Mr Right by this Thanksgiving doesn't mean you won't ever find him. Maybe you won't, but maybe you will. The ways of God--and of Mr Right, if he exists--are very mysterious.

By the way, if any of my readers thinks the way to cope with the holiday is to curl up with a bottle of vodka, I am here to scold you and tell you that it isn't. If it even crosses your mind, I will be very mad, and if I ever find out, I will block you. So don't. Choose friends and fun instead. If you can't be with your own friends or make your own fun, then pop down to the nearest shelter and spend Thanksgiving serving the homeless.

Drop the "All Mothers Stand" Ritual

It's June, not May, so it's a little late in the year to be writing about this. However, it came up in the combox yesterday, and it occurred to me that I haven't done my massive denunciation recently.

When the Christian community gathers in churches on Sunday, she is there to worship God. She is not there to be entertained. She is not there to be applauded. She is not there to affirm the choir, or the children, or the priest in their musical, ontological or homiletic talents, such as they are. She is there to worship.

The world is a noisy place. The Eastern traditions, the Roman Catholic tradition, and the Anglo-Catholic tradition draw a line around the space where the world is left behind. The visual art, the gestures, the music, the silence all aid in creating the meditative atmosphere in which we worship. We bring our prayers locked within us, and we release them in the holy temple.

Some of those prayers are sad. If you read the Psalms attentively, you see that the Psalmist expresses a myriad of human emotions, not just joy. There is so much suffering in the world, not just in "the Global South" but in our own lives, however privileged they may seem.

The world is uncomfortable with suffering, and either exploits it for its own ends or covers it up. In Catholic churches, the crucifix and stations of the cross present suffering as something truly terrible yet something that can be healed and that is even potentially redemptive. Above all, we are not alone in our suffering; God through the Son suffered, too. So did Our Lady, and there is comfort in that because, as they say, misery loves company.

I will never forget one homily in which the priest, an enthusiastic speaker, declared that he wanted to take the parish statue of Our Lady of Sorrows and paint a smile on her face. For him there was no place for a doleful Mary; she didn't reflect the joy of the Resurrection.

I was horrified. Not too far from that church was a contemporary sculpture honouring men who had been badly hurt or killed in the steel trade; it was the figure of a man whose head had been caved in. It was a powerful, sorrowful and apt reminder of the hardships the townspeople had lived through and still lived through. Paint a smile on Our Lady of Sorrows, and of whom would widows, orphans and bereaved parents of fallen steelworkers ask intercession?

Unfortunately, our prayerful environments are often interrupted by worldly customs. I will mention only the habit of applauding people, as if Mass were a performance or a meeting in the town hall. I have no problem with "affirming the community", but I think this is better done afterwards in the parish hall. Mass is a time when the grieving seek solace, and worldly applause falls harshly on grieving ears.

Motherhood is not given as much respect as it was in the Victorian era. It is argued that motherhood was not given as much respect as it was in the Victorian era BEFORE the Victorian era. The Victorians were obsessed with motherhood, and one might argue that the first half of the 20th century was in rebellion against this. The 1950s interest in domesticity is often put down to servicemen returning to their professions, consumerism and, perhaps, replacing the millions who were lost in the war. And there was, again, a reaction against this, which turned into a frank devaluation of motherhood, thanks to widespread contraception and abortion. How many people do not give up their seats on the bus to expectant mothers now, inwardly sneering, "Well, that was her choice"?

Mothers, therefore, do need a renewal of respect and care. But I posit they need real respect and care throughout the year, not a round of applause during Mass on Mother's Day. Mother's Day is the one day mothers can expect a show of respect and care, normally from their own families. Meanwhile, it is a day fraught with pain and suffering for those who had or have terrible relationships with their own mothers and, of course, for women who have either never had, or who have lost, their children. We bring our pain with us to Mass, hoping to leave it at the foot of the Cross.

Most celibate priests said good-bye to any hope of biological fatherhood when they became priests. But there is a big, BIG difference between intentionally choosing to be childless and NOT choosing to be childless, but remaining childless anyway, just as there is a big, BIG difference between choosing to remain Single and finding yourself Single at 35. (I am always astonished by stories of elderly priests who muse over whether, if it were suddenly allowed, they'd choose to marry. They always assume someone would have them.) And, therefore, it never seems to occur to the priests who direct "the Mothers" to stand and be "affirmed" by "the community", that the women who must stay seated are crying inside.

It is a horrific pastoral blunder, and it is nowhere in the rubrics.

I was not happy with the parish priest for wanting to slap a fake painted smile on Our Lady of Sorrows. But I will give him this: every Mother's Day he directed the ushers to give flowers to every adult woman entering the church, he preached on "spiritual motherhood", and he had every woman stand to be applauded.

Well, you know what I think about applause in church. But at least this priest didn't separate the women into the fertile sheep and the barren goats. For that, whether they know it or not, is what the liturgically-innovative priests' "All Mothers Stand" ritual does.

Say the black, do the red, and nobody will get hurt.

Not Without a Ring

Getting a marriage proposal within two weeks of meeting Mr McRight is fantastic, but it does carry a small burden of social embarrassment. Since I have a foreign accent, dinner party guests at home and abroad ask how B.A. and I met. We tell them the story, and then guffaw nostalgically over the marriage-proposal-after-ten-days bit. The married people and the partner-free Singles laugh too, and the not-yet-married-but-living-with-their-boyfriends-since-heaven-knows-when women go ashen.

I hate that part.

The last time that happened I didn't notice until the boyfriend got up from his place at the table, ambled behind his girlfriend and began to give her a shoulder massage, as if to say, "I'm sorry you are stressed out that we're not even engaged when this strange and churchy couple got engaged after 10 days."

Listen, I'm forty years old, and I live in a cosmopolitan city, and I run around with different of sets of people, so I'm not naive about folks who live in sin. Some folks who live together without marriage actually stay do together. Sometimes they even get married, have kids, and dodge the statistical bullet that says people who live together before marriage are more likely to divorce. I know one woman who hung in there for ten long years and then got the rings, the dress and the baby. God bless her. I would have died a thousand deaths--at least two a week, so that's 1040.

This is something that I think a lot of men don't get. If a woman loves a man, really loves a man, she wants him for the rest of her life. And she wants him to want her for the rest of her life, more than she wants her own liver. Since I was sixteen years old (EEEK!) part of me wanted some man somewhere some day to say "YOU are the woman for me forever." Of course, when that actually happened, I revised this to wanting the RIGHT man to say it. And thus when I fell in love with B.A., I wanted him to say it, and thank goodness he did.

Therefore, it blows my mind that so many women, even Catholic women, will consent to "let's live together for awhile and see how it goes." No. I just don't believe in that. I believe in "I love you, and I want you so bad, I'd lose half my toes to frostbite to keep you, since you love me, too."

The problem is that women are afraid to say No to men they love--that or they think they are "strong", "sophisticated," "modern" women who can "do the sensible thing" and "move slowly to a commitment" when deep down they are interdependent, passionate, timeless women who want rings on their fingers, babies in the pram, and the same men in their beds for the next forty-five years. I mean, hello! We are not all totally screwed up/ rendered tough as nails by the divorce revolution.

Many women cry when their boyfriends propose. I think there's sometimes as much relief in those tears as there is joy. Thank God, thank God, he hasn't been lying all this time about loving me! Thank God, he isn't going to just pack up and leave one day after all! Me, I giggled. There were tourists everywhere, pretending nothing was going on. I had met the man in person, like, ten days before. It was hilarious.

Not so hilarious are women who wait month after month, year after year, for their live-in lovers to propose. "What's wrong?" they wonder. "What's wrong with 'Us'? What's wrong with him? What's wrong with me?" It is particularly terrible when the women come from traditional religious backgrounds and they are with men with traditional religious backgrounds. If you're a fourth-generation Communist and your parents never bothered to marry but are still together, than I guess it might not be such a big deal. But Jewish girls? Catholic girls? Brrr-rrr-rrrr!

"But how do I make him propose?" demands the live-in lover--oh, sorry, partner*--secretly and in agony for fear someone might discover that she is not "strong", "sophisticated" and "modern" but a human female like most human females.

One advice book I know says to kick him out and not let him back in without a ring. If he comes back with a ring, take him back. If he doesn't come back, he was never yours in the first place, which sucks, but at least now you're eligible to meet someone serious. This is not something to say to a woman whose heart has been shattered into a thousand pieces, but it is true--or will be true once she can laugh again.

It makes me supremely angry when I hear a man dither over whether or not he should marry his devoted long-term girlfriend. I wonder where the man's mother and sisters are, and why they are not giving him hell. If one of my brothers announced he was moving in with a woman and there was no ring in sight, I would go mediaeval on his you-know-what. MEDIAEVAL. Why? Because I love my brothers, and I want them to be good men, and I want them to be happy, and to make other women who love them happy. That's what sisterhood really means.

But where other men are concerned, I bite my tongue and scram when I can because unless they're family or my very best friends, it's not my business. I long for this girlfriend or that to consult me, though. I sit at home willing her to call me up, which of course she would never do. But if she did, I would tell her to kick him out of their space, and not let him back in without a ring.

Unless they had kids. Once you have kids, your happiness doesn't come first anymore. Theirs does. And once you've made their bed as well as yours, poppets, you have to lie in it. And I'm really sorry. Be as happy as you can. Royal mistresses often lived happy, dignified lives, and now society doesn't treat ordinary bidie-in women and their kids like pariahs. It's almost like being married, I guess. Almost.

Have I mentioned there are situations way worse then being entirely Single? There are. There's being neither Single nor Married with your heart beating to the silent sound of its wailing.

*Scene: Edinburgh Airport, Friday, June 12, 1:30 PM

UK Border Agent: And is your partner in the UK right now?

Seraphic: My husband is, yes.

Another Thought Experiment

What I hated most, when trying to discern my vocation and discerning that my vocation was to wait, was not knowing my marital fate. It was so annoying that something like that was beyond my control. So annoying. And readers occasionally email me with the same frustration, because they want to take a job in another country, but think it will mess up their marital chances, or live in a small town with a great job but no eligible men.

So I have a new thought experiment today. My question is, "What if an angel appeared before you and told you you would marry the perfect man for you, guaranteed?"

You: Yay!

Angel: When you're 51.

You: Fifty-one?!

Angel: Yes, behold.

You: But what about babies?

Angel: The perfect man for you will have really bad mumps at 27, so babies were never part of the plan.

You: Can't I meet him now, before he has mumps?

Angel: No, because he's not ready for you yet. He's living in a commune with a New Age instructor named Starflower.

You: Are you sure this is the perfect man for me?

Angel: I should inform you that not only is every angel his own species, every angel, having immediate knowledge of everything, is deficient in a sense of humour.

You: Okay, okay. But what am I supposed to do in the meantime?

Angel: What would you like to do?

So, poppets, imagine you are for sure getting married at 51. It will be a blow-out wedding. Your spouse will be the handsomest man you have ever clapped eyes on, etc. How are you going to spend your Single life?

Young? Popular? Overwhelmed? Run Away!

I had an interesting letter the other day, too bursting in personal detail to print, but in a nutshell it involves a recent university graduate in a small community who has discovered that multiple men are interested in her as a potential spouse.

Now some of you are yelling, "Cry me a river!", but I am waving away your yells because this is not always a very comfortable situation in which to be. When I was 23-24, I was in a similar position. (I never was again, and thank goodness.)

Although on paper it looks thrilling to have three men scheming and plotting against each other and you, in real life it can be very uncomfortable indeed. I recall a lot of screaming and yelling, and at the time I was interested in somebody else who, of course, went into the seminary, only to drop out a few years later.

It is very uncomfortable to discover, too soon, that men want to marry you. If you have spent your youth feeling either invisible or clumsy next to your sparkling, more popular-with-boys girlfriends, it can be staggering to find yourself the object of attentions you're not sure you want. It is particularly staggering if you are under 25 and scarier if your suitors are much older than you. You may be pretty sure you want to get married, but you are not sure you want to marry one of these guys.

What to do?

Well, the first thing to do is to be very careful to whom you go for advice. I tried telling a priest about how overwhelmed I felt by my three suitors, and he laughed at me. It was obvious that he thought I bragging. Hmm... Maybe it wasn't such a pastoral tragedy when his own personal life became overwhelming and he abandoned his post to get married. Not that I am still bitter. No.

Unless you know a priest very well, and he knows you very well, I think in this circumstance you should talk to an older married woman, especially one who was the belle of her family, and/or who married later in life.

Secondly, you should try to remove yourself from the stressful situation as much as you can, so as to get some perspective. I know first hand how difficult this is if you and all your suitors are at the same school. Limit how much time you see them. Create a hiding place in a little-used library in which to do your work, or work in your room and let your phone take all messages. Go to Mass earlier or later. Go home for weekends, if you can.

If you like your suitors, tell them that, but tell them you're feeling overwhelmed if you're feeling overwhelmed. Try not to have intimate conversations with them as if they were your girl friends. It is terribly painful when you value a man as a trusted and witty friend, and no more than that, and he persists in seeing you as his next girlfriend or future wife. So cultivate some detachment and exercise some reserve. Yes, this is hard.

And for heaven's sake, don't think you are Anne of Green Gables pursued by Gilbert or Harriet Vane pursued by Lord Peter Wimsey and that the script says you have to give in eventually. You don't. You do exactly what you want to do, and you'll know when you've done it because your heart will be full of joy--not relief, joy.

Thirdly, if you can afford it, go on holiday abroad. There is nothing like an airplane for getting a rest from your troubles. You leave the ground and your love life at the same time. But don't go to a holiday resort like a Club Med. No, no, no. You must go somewhere where the language or at least the culture are so different, you will be constantly challenged by your new environment. Go to Florence and look down at the city from the Piazza di Michaelangelo. Go to Berlin and try to find your way to Unter den Linden. Go to Montreal and walk through the francophone streets until you find Schwartz's Deli and are struck by the sudden blast of almost-forbidden English, shocking in its minority status.*

Travelling does many things. It furnishes your mind with imagines and experiences that you will be able to draw upon for the rest of your life. It challenges your resourcefulness, and forces you to make snap decisions and to make yourself understood to strangers and to make sense of their replies. It gives you some important distance from your ordinary life so that you can get some much-needed persepective and take stock. It helps you grow up.

There was a philosophy professor at the Edith Stein conference--I've forgotten his name--who was all for early marriage. Well, I don't have a problem with early marriage, per se. But I believe marriage is for grown-ups, and it takes longer for some of us to get to grownuphood. This is not necessarily our fault, just as it isn't our fault if we don't reach our full adult height until we're 25. But we can encourage our own growth in maturity if we travel to foreign cities and make our way around.

If you want to get married, but you're not ready to get married, and you're feeling overwhelmed by pressure to get married--travel. Don't, in heaven's name, travel with one or more of your suitors. Find a girlfriend or--shocker--go on your own. If you can't take being alone with yourself 24/7, sign up with a tour group, or a language school, or stay with a friend or trusted friend-of-a-friend who lives in the foreign city, or at least arrange to meet up with one. Consult at least two travel guides, and be safe.

Meanwhile, I say, keeping an eye on the fuel situation, international travel may never be so cheap again.

*Order a medium smoked meat sandwich, fries, and a black cherry soda. Get there by 11 AM or after 2 PM to find a table.

Update: Blogger has erased some of my votes. I do not know why. The self-described anti-Catholic troll is gone, and I don't know if I should feel sad or relieved!

Auntie Seraphic & Weathering a Break-up

Dear Auntie Seraphic,

I have recently come across your blog and it has brought much wisdom and hope, and, you will be glad to know, has prompted me to order your book. :-) I have been reading a lot of back posts which have helped a lot, but am wondering if you have written on handling break-ups and/or broken hearts. If so, could you refer me to them; if not, would you care to?

My story is not all that unique. I was in love with an NCB who I was sure was "the One." My friends approved and I truly thought God did as well, but NCB disagreed and has moved on to a new, younger NCG. (I am not sure whether to be flattered or appalled that according to my friends "she is just like/another version of" me.)

While I could fault him for a few minor things, e.g. communication, he's basically a good guy. There was a reason why I loved him in the first place. The fact that he loves someone else is painful but not a character flaw, so I am having difficulty mustering enough anger to overcome what is simple but profound grief at my loss both of the person who I hoped to marry and someone who was close to a best friend. I feel an acute sense of loss both of the reality that we had and the dream (unreality) that I thought we had and had hoped for.

It does not help things that I am 3-, and less seraphic than I would like to be re: the prospect of prolonged or even permanent single life.* I have tried to be for many years, but the deep desire for marriage and babies has never been something I have been able to overcome (other than at brief moments of spiritual high in church, when I also thought I could be martyred :-)). You and your readers are well acquainted with this particular cross so I needn't spell out more details. Statistics re: marriage "over 35" (particularly in a city in which NCGs are said to outnumber NCBs 4:1) and babies "at advanced maternal age" don't help in the hope department--the "oh well you'll find someone new/better" is not a given and has even been replaced by some well-meaning(?) friends with "are you sure you aren't called to religious/single life?"

(*My heart ache is definitely over this specific NCB, who I was convinced was the Perfect One for Me, but is compounded by the loss of a One in general. I had thought, like the couple in When Harry Met Sally, that I would never have to go through [the dating life] again--and yet here I am. Sigh.)

Your blog addresses finding acceptance and happiness in the single life in general, but I am hoping you can offer some advice for some practical ways to pull myself out of this pain in the meantime. I know the right things to tell myself, and on good days I believe them: that God's plan is perfect; that God desires my happiness and has a different/ better plan for it; that if I wasn't right for him, he was not right for me, and I am undoubtedly better off in the long run. Etc., etc., etc.

I have brought my grief to daily Mass (not a new practice, but a helpful one) and tried to unite it with the Cross. I know also, when I think about it for even a moment, that others suffer more severe pain than mine (abandoned and divorced after years of marriage, widowed, etc). I can even acknowledge, intellectually and theologically, that I have grown and that though I can't see it, this is probably a "good thing for me." I have tried to fill my time with other good things and good people.

But I still feel a huge concrete block in my chest where my heart was and would love some good advice and/or encouragement to help me heal and move forward, and/or be joyful in the meantime. Thanks!

Weathering a Break-up

P.S. I do find hope in your story, especially since you were my age when you met BA, and also the story by KimP. I believe I am not alone among your readers in wishing for more such stories from those whose hope was fulfilled albeit after long waiting. I know in reality God might not have a similar gift for me, but hope is helpful at times... :-)


Dear Weathering a Break-up,

I just got your email, and the first thing to say is that I am sorry that happened to you. Breaking up is hard to do, and although the pain might not be as over-the-top and acute when it happens to us in our thirties (as it does in our teens or early twenties when it makes it seem life is over), the ache is certainly compounded by the sense that the years are slipping away.

I go through a break-up in my book (at age 36), so there is a lot on breaking up there. In fact, the whole section "Loneliness Happens" addresses it. However, I have some things to say in the meantime.

The first is that pain is a part of life. It is absolutely natural and normal for you to feel the concrete on your chest---or the cross on your back. "Take up your cross and follow Me," said the Lord. He didn't say that our crosses were illusions or that we just had to get over it. He acknowledged that we carry pain--and He invited us to bring that pain with us as we follow Him. He doesn't expect us to be joyful 24/7.

One meditation I have found helpful is to imagine myself at the foot of the Cross, and I lay down my cross before it and say, "Lord, I can't carry this by myself today. Could You help me?" Because, sometimes, only He can help me.

Don't try to escape the pain. Sit with it. Pray with it. Cry with it. Especially cry with it, if you can. The occasionally fit of weeping is very healthy. Don't encourage it artificially with sad music or whatever. But acknowledge your pain, feel it and make peace with it. After one particularly horrible break-up, I used to go to the same cafe night after night and pour my feelings out into a notebook as rock music blasted around me. And I used to think "By March I will feel better...By April I will feel much better..." I acknowledged that right then I felt terrible, but also that this would not always be so.

Pain takes as long as it takes to go away. Your pain over the break-up will indeed go away. But I don't know when.

The second is that God has a plan for you and all of us. We only get to see it as it unfolds although sometimes we do get hints. We have to trust that He knows best and that if we start setting plans in motion without any reference to Him, we will mess things up for ourselves. He is asking of us a profound trust: "Though He slay me, so will I trust in him"--I think that's in the Psalms, and I have certainly said it through gritted teeth!

The third is if God has planned from Eternity for you to get married, you will get married.

You know, I say this all the time, and I never realized how annoying it could be until readers started telling me that if God wants me to have a baby, I will have a baby. Both statements are true, though. I think the problem with these statements is that taken alone they don't acknowledge the pain and disappointment we feel if God does not give us what we want so badly. However, (A) pain is a part of life and (B) we must trust that God knows best.

You will never be too old to get married. Amongst my older-than-me readers who were recently married or engaged, one is about 50. Not any man is going to marry you, but I don't think you want just any man. You want the right man. The right man will marry you, no matter what age you are. Is he out there? Only God knows.

I am very glad to read that you are going to daily Mass and uniting your sorrows to the Cross. I honestly cannot think of anything better than that. The only thing I really have to add is that you must allow yourself to feel the pain and not to be ashamed of your sorrow and sense of loss. Look at Our Lady of Sorrows. She is our model of respect for pain and sadness. When an otherwise wonderful priest suggested we paint smiles on every statue of Our Lady of Sorrows, I was horrified. To whom would we go when we were sad, I wondered. It is so important to us that Our Lady knows what it is to lose someone we dearly love, and so very, very important that Our Crucified Lord knows what it is to be lonely.

I hope your pain processes itself out sooner rather than later. And of course there is always blessed hope that God has something prepared for us beyond our fondest imaginings.

Grace and peace,
Seraphic

Teeny-Weeny Rejection

Sigh. As long-time readers know, I show solidarity with Singles, who face a lot of rejection ("It's not you; it's me"), by sharing my rejection letters.

I just got a rejection letter.

As rejection letters go, it was really a nice one. In fact, it could be summed up as, "It's not your story; it's our form of media, and I'm sure it'll be snapped up soon!" The editor said she really enjoyed it, and since she is an amazingly talented writer, I felt rather pleased.

The rejection part still made me sigh, though. Ay, me. That bit's never easy.

Off I go to look in the British Writer's Guide. The great law of writing is that you never, ever give up. If you give up, you never get paid.

Update (Feb 2): I'm sending out two submissions today.

Looking a Fact in the Eye

If I could write only one thing on this blog it would be "Stay rooted in reality."

Now, staying rooted in reality can be very tough, and sometimes it is much easier to hide from reality, when it is unpleasant, than to grapple with it and figure out what is best to do. The Canadian philosopher-theologian Bernard Lonergan, S.J. called this tendency "the flight from understanding."

The greatest example of this from my own life was math class. Although I got through Grade 9 math, thanks to a very good teacher, Grade 10 math was hell. It was hell because I couldn't grasp the concepts from the beginning and instead of turning to other books or teachers for help, I took refuge in daydreams until the teacher started screaming abuse or philosophy from the blackboard. Sadly, some of the messages that she banged into our heads were that boys were better than we were at math, and that her husband was a better math teacher than she was, and that we spent too much time crying over boys, whereas boys didn't care about us.

Today I can't dial my husband's mobile phone number without carefully following it on a sheet of paper. Nothing frightens me more than long strings of numbers. And for a long time I asked male friends if they had, in high school, cared about girls.

It will not be a surprise to you that I failed Grade 10 math. But what is astonishing is that, when I repeated it, I got the same teacher and I made no protest. I didn't even tell my parents the things she said, not even when they furiously scolded me for not doing my math homework, which by then I was as incapable of doing as a four year old child is of translating Thucydides. I took refuge in stories and daydreams, living in a semi-fog it took me a long time to escape. Not once did I go to an adult and say "I have a serious problem. I write A+ papers on Shakespeare, but I can't understand polynomial equations. What is wrong with me? Surely it cannot be, as our teacher seems to think, because I am white/a girl/incurably lazy. Help me."

Why do we not tell our parents these things? This is a serious question. If there are any child psychologists who know why children do not tell their parents about the really messed up things that happen at school, please tell me.

In adult life, we still stay silent on some very messed up things. As Searching Singles, we hear and read all about "red flags" and how to recognize "red flags." So far I haven't read anything about how to recognize a red flag and then force yourself to DO something about it.

I was delighted one day when the man I was then in love with drove me to his hometown to visit his parents. In my private universe, driving a girl home to visit your parents meant that a man was serious about her. (This, of course, is not always true.) In reality, it is certainly a good way to find out if a man comes from a "good family" or if his family is entirely messed up and best avoided.

Well, into the house we went, and it was a nice house, the house of a successful research scientist and his wife, and the one thing I remember clearly is that my boyfriend's parents were both terrified of him. They seemed to walk on eggshells around him. They were amazed to see him. They were amazed to see me. They spoke carefully, almost pleadingly, and hoped we'd stay for dinner, which we didn't, despite the two-hour drive. It was clear there was something very, very wrong going on, but I was in love with this man (absolutely head over heels), so I ignored my insights. Later he told me that his biggest kick in life was hurting those who loved him.

So it is not enough to see the red flags. One must understand that they are red flags and take appropriate action. In my own case, I think my mistake was becoming so completely infatuated before I knew the man at all well. On our first date, he drank and told me he had a drinking problem. I thought he was exaggerating. On a subsequent date, he told me he had attempted to seduce his girlfriend's gay friend because she had always had a crush on him. I thought he had repented and would never do something like that again. Why, I wonder, did I so badly want things to work out with this guy that I ignored so much horror?

"You should try to find a man from church," sighed an elderly man I consulted.

"I met him at church," I said, through gritted teeth.

And that's probably why I shut out reality. I wanted to marry a Nice Catholic Boy so badly that I was willing to sacrifice the "Nice" part. And no doubt this is part of the reason why I blog every day to invite Singles to find the good and the purpose in their Single lives and to stay rooted in reality.

Solidarity Again

As you know, I'm married now. But it just so happens that marriage does not scare away all rejection forever. Married people still face rejection in buckets although Single people don't always realize this. And for this reason, I drag myself to the computer to tell you whenever I've had a manuscript rejected.

Today I had a manuscript rejected.

This morning's rejection was a particularly ill-timed one, I must say, although that isn't anybody's fault. And the reasons for the rejection were understandable, although by the moral criteria of the editors, almost everything by Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark, plus a good chunk of Morley Callaghan and Piers Paul Read also would have been rejected. This makes me feel better and worse by turns.

Anyway, I carried a printed copy of manuscript to Mass in a yellow bag with "Papal Visit to the UK Pilgrim Pack" (a yellow bag) written on it and sent it off to the next name on my list.

The only way to deal with rejection is to keep on going.

When Love Comes Late

Today we have a guest blog from the wonderful Kim P! Kim P has been reading my blogs for three years or so. And recently Kim P, who is 46, began talking marriage with a nice man, and I was surprised by this news, even though the statistics show that almost everybody (in the USA, at least) gets married. It's just that I was so used to Kim P being Single!

When I found out that almost everybody gets married, my thinking about the Single Life changed a little. Given that the divorce rate is so high, and that the stakes are so high, it seemed to me that one really important reason for glorifying the Single life is to encourage men and women not to settle for less than mature, adult married love. It is much better to marry the right person at 47 and be happy than to marry the wrong person at 25 and be miserable.

But enough from me! Here's Kim P:

Hi all, Auntie Seraphic has asked me to write to you, dear singles, as a 46 year old life long single and a faithful reader of this blog now that I have finally met the right man for me. It is my great hope that my experience, along with my ancient age, will give you encouragement to do what Auntie always advises: wait for the right man!

I had no idea that my first kiss at age 14 would be the start of 31 years of dating. I don’t know when my teenaged brain thought I would get married but I am certain I never thought it would be well into my forties.

At age 45 (gasp!) I still had not met The One despite doing all the things I should: I went to Mass every week; I joined the local Catholic singles group; I exercised; I remained close friends with my former single girlfriends; I started reading Seraphic’s Singles blog about two incarnations ago.

I did a lot of things wrong too. Like seriously dating a guy for way too long who not only announced that he would never marry, but was actually hostile to my faith. (If this is happening to you, dump him immediately and replace him with a good spiritual director – I did and I’m glad!) And I got bitter at times. Weddings became teeth clenching affairs, and I gave up on baby showers completely. I started to lose patience with young women who complained about still being single at age twenty-eight. I won’t even describe how un-seraphic I became when well-meaning people told me that I’d find the right man if I just “quit looking”.

But lo and behold, I finally met the right man for me! I won’t bore you with all the details of what brought us together (those stories are really only interesting to the couple involved and their smug friends), but I will say I wasn’t smitten right away. While Jamie was clearly taken with me from nearly the first moment, it took me about a month to go from “probably just friends” to “there might be something to this man”. And then we fell in love. That was eight months ago and the biggest surprise has been how my life has changed.

How I spend my time has changed.

There is far less sewing, reading, blogging, knitting, and emailing than before I met Jamie. Obviously, that’s no surprise but the reason is: it’s not just that I spend time with him, it’s that when I am with him, I am really with him. We are totally present to each other, or as present as two flawed human beings can be. And this being present to each other not only takes up my time, but is an intense emotional experience which leaves me with less energy to give to these pursuits which used to fill my life.

My relationships have changed.

When I fell in love with Jamie an amazing thing happened. All my other relationships seemed to magically shift into their proper places. Unhealthy relationships naturally died on their own (are you still talking to that old boyfriend from time to time just to feel a connection?), and other relationships that I perhaps put too much emphasis on were put into proper context.

I think the biggest challenge of singleness is the loneliness; oftentimes there is no one in your life just to hear about your day and listen to your impressions of life. I relied (not improperly) on my girlfriends for a lot of this interaction, but I found myself wishing my girlfriends and I were even closer. Frankly, they couldn’t give the attention that I needed and wanted due to the emotional demands of their own families. I hope I wasn’t a burden to them, but I suspect I took more of their time than they may have been able to give.

Once I met Jamie, and my emotional needs were being fulfilled, I was actually able to give more to my girlfriends. The love I receive from him has energized me to the extent that I have been able to expand my service to others who weren’t previously in my life – for example, taking on additional ministries at my parish.

I’m more grateful.

Being alone all those years, or worse, dating men who were wrong for me was not fun, but then I don’t need to tell you that. But the upside to finding the right man at my age is that I don’t take it for granted. I am pretty certain that had we met in my twenties, I would have viewed our relationship with a nod of the head and an “of course” - this was all how it was supposed to be. I probably would not have seen the hand of God in it at all. We expect to met our husbands in our twenties, have babies, and then settle in for a lifetime of picking up after everyone and making macaroni and cheese.

I suspected, even before I met Jamie, that God was using that time to get me ready for him; I was hoping that when I did meet the right man, it would be all the sweeter. My deep insecurity was that it was taking so long because there was something wrong with me: maybe I was more horribly selfish, immature, and emotionally stunted than I ever thought. But that turned out not to be the case at all.

What I have learned is that God was using that time to not only get me ready, but to get Jamie ready too. That really never occurred to me. “I wouldn’t have appreciated you had I even met you just a few years earlier,” he admitted several months after we met. Not only was Jamie being prepared for me, but his conversion to Catholicism was in the works as well. I discovered a more important aspect to all of God’s timing: Jamie’s salvation was at stake, and these things can’t be rushed. I am deeply humbled by God’s perfect gift of salvation to us both, and how His plan for me – with a loving, Catholic husband - is even better than I could have ever dreamed for myself. God has blessed us both.

Finally, I have learned that I did not earn this gift. I have done nothing to deserve this love. It is a gift that God, in all His wisdom, has decided to bestow upon me now. I have received it despite my imperfections, my lapses into selfishness, and my failings when I attempt to love. Conversely, I have realized that the 45 years without Jamie were not a punishment or a commentary on my worth as a human being. Those years were simply “life” and all we can do is live it in obedience to God. Dear readers, Auntie Seraphic has consistently told us that we are single because it is God’s will that we be single. And we will be married when He decides otherwise. I now know this to be absolutely true.

"Kim P"

Teenage Dances, Grown-up Dances

I ignored a lot of my mother's old-fashioned, time-tested advice when I was in high school. In hindsight, this was a bad idea because most of it was sound. Mum was very popular with boys in high school and college, so I ought to have taken notes. Unfortunately, though, my mother had no sense of saleswomanship. Instead of explaining why it was pointless to ask boys out on dates, she squawked, "Is that a BOY you're telephoning, you brazen hussy!"

Calling girls brazen hussies is no way to win hearts and minds. If you do that, don't be surprised when they decide your ideas must be completely out of date.

But there was one opinion that, pace Mum, was well and truly out of date and simply not applicable to teenage life. The morning after a high school dance, still gleeful from all the excitement, I listed off all the boys I had danced with.

"So Victor asked me, and Albert asked me, and then I asked Sean..."

"That doesn't count," said my mother.

(Cue Alisha to faint dead away in horror.)

I felt completely deflated. At dances, sometimes boys asked me to dance, and sometimes I asked them to dance, and it was all very fun, no matter who did the asking. Being asked to dance is good for the ego (and for impressing my mother), but sometimes you'd rather dance with the man of your own choice, just for the fun of it. Back when girls could almost NEVER ask a man to dance, the special "Ladies' Choice" was a big deal.

Now, at Singles Dances as eligible grown-ups, with the possible exception of swing-dancing, if swing-dancing is basically your life's blood (as it is for Alisha), I don't recommend women ask strangers to dance unless it is completely sanctioned by the DJ announcing that it is "Lady's Choice". (And even then I might suggest strategically asking, not the cute man who looked at you, but his buddy.) Unless you are really the Dancing Queen (like Alisha), you're not there as much to dance as much as you are to meet nice men.

HOWEVER, in high school, where there is no marriage or giving in marriage, I think girls may and should ask boys to dance and simply dance up a storm, just for the fun of it. And I think I will extend this to freshman year at college, too. ANYTHING is better, in the psychologically crucial high school and freshman year, than to hide in the bathroom, crying from loneliness and pre-emptory despair.

I love to make up rules, for nature abhors a vacuum. My rule is that if you are under 21, you can ask boys to dance. But if you are over 21, it is time to lengthen your skirts and put up your hair (so to speak) and wait for men to ask you. Hopefully you will have developed such a reserve of confidence and fun from your high school and freshman year asking-boys-to-dance days, that your face will exude a glow of fun and friendliness irresistable to at least one or two of the men around.

Incidentally, at the last big dance I was at (Newman Centre Pre-Advent), I mostly danced with a female friend. There we were--she 27 or so, and I 36 or so--in full evening dress swing-dancing all over the wooden floor to "Sing, Sing, Sing with a Swing." It was hilarious and much more fun than crying in the bathroom because we were 27 (or so) and 36 (or so) with no man in sight.

She's married, too, now. Most of us do get married in the end, so any time at a dance spent crying that it hasn't happened yet is time wasted. If you really can't have fun, home you go to your comfort snack, your specially-selected DVD and your blankie.

Update: That is me at the Newman Dance, Single at 36 (or so). I'm relatively sure one of those beers was for someone else.

Update 2: Oh, as for Prom. I must talk about Prom, which for my year at the all-girl's school was called "The Formal." The social event of the year, when I was a teenager, was called "The Semi-Formal." Tickets were offered to girls in Grades 11 to 13, and if there were any leftover they were offered to the envious Grade 10s. It being a girls' school, obviously you had to invite your own guest. Some girls gamely went with each other, which simply never occured to me. For three years, I agonized over who I could ask, since I didn't know many boys, and both times I did, I got turned down. Eee! Fortunately, I knew lots of boys by Grade 13, and so I had a Formal Date. Some amazing sense of self-preservation prompted me to ask the friendly boy I was good friends with and not the nasty boy I had had a crush on all year. The nasty boy was extremely annoyed that I had not asked him, for he had very much wanted to go to our Formal. ROFL.

Update 3: My most fun dance ever was two weeks ago in an Edinburgh flat when suddenly a friend struck up a waltz medley, I danced a few steps, and B.A. grabbed my hands. Singing "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do" we whirled around the room. The medley ended with "Edelweiss," and then that was it. Three minutes of dancing, tops, but it was the best ever. Come to think of it, it was our first dance as a married couple. Aw. Have I mentioned that we're old and squishy? We're comparatively totally old and squishy.

The Goodness of Gratitude

Most days I go for a walk from the Historical House along the sea to the grocery store and back. The sandy shore looks out towards Holland, and I often get a queer sense that this is wrong and I ought to be looking the other way, towards Canada. But then I think of my sister who loves the Atlantic provinces, and reflect that when she looks across her sea, she is also looking towards Holland. We are both facing ad orientem.

It never ceases to be a surprise that I am here, going for almost daily walks along the sea, earning very little and doing all the laundry, going to Mass in Latin, bedding down under a 17th century roof, far from the tyrannous rumble of urban traffic. Occasionally I am awoken by hooting owls; more often I am woken by northern sun. I was offered this life when I was almost 38 years old, and I said, "Yes, thank you."

Of course it is not a perfect life. I have many dreams and wishes that have not been fulfilled and some will never be fulfilled. Time is starting to make itself felt; the clock started ringing years ago and the bell is running down. Startled by the contrast between my face and the faces of 20 year old women, I've recommitted to eating fresh fruits and vegetables. But I think the prospect of the creasing and sagging ahead would be easier if I had fresh-faced progeny to look at.

I was very moved by the online account of one anonymous woman who wept when, single, she saw happy couples at Mass and now, married, weeps when she sees happy couples at Mass with babies. That is just too much weeping, in my humble opinion. It can't be nice for her husband, either there or on the way home.

It turns out that it is bad for teenage girls to talk and talk and talk about their problems. Going over them doesn't help; it makes the girls depressed. And I think the same may be true of adult women and men: once a week at the therapist's or in spiritual direction should be enough--twice or thrice a week in a crisis. People do need to get things off their chest, and to ask for advice, and to find comfort. Sometimes writing a letter--even to Auntie Seraphic--makes order out of a confused situation and helps the writer forward. However, I think a person should contemplate the joys of her life much more often than she considers her sorrows.

Melodie Beattie, the author of Co-Dependent Once More, once described moving into a run-down house. She was very depressed at how battered it was. Feeling herself falling into a depression, she tried gratitude. She thanked God for the battered house, having a roof over her head and the head of her son. Her mood lifted, and as as she continued to thank God for this house, she worked on it until it became a nice little house.

Gratitude is not only what is owed to our Creator, it is bread, water and cake to our psyches. We all have many things to be grateful for, even if we won them ourselves with hard work or suffering. When I dropped out of my PhD program, I was grateful that I had a caring brother and sister-in-law to take me home and, indeed, that I had homes to go to. I was grateful that I could write. I was grateful for my family and for my friends at home. I was grateful for ordinary, everyday, reserved, Canadian civility, however hypocritical foreigners find it. I was grateful for Aelianus, who gave me his unvarnished opinion of the theological modernism that had so angered and depressed me. I was grateful for Trish, who said the most important, soul-saving thing.

My list of beatitudes has changed since I married, but my stance of gratitude has not. To choose to live in gratitude is to vote for happiness. It is not the province of married people. There are thousands of married people who have chosen to be miserable. If I set my mind to it, I could make myself miserable by blowing up my husband's occasional cross moods into monstrous injustices, by worrying endlessly about money, and by wailing over my lost academic career, about which I don't usually give a damn. (Better a dish of herbs where love is than a stalled ox where hatred abounds.) Instead of smiling at the little children I see on the beach, I could weep and wail because they're not mine. But I don't choose to. I don't choose to be miserable. I choose to be happy. Happy rocks my world.

What are the five things for which you are most grateful?

Update: In case you need more convincing, here is "The Badness of Bitterness" again.

Knocked Down Again

Being married, I don't have break-ups anymore. Neither do I get The Speech or turned down on dates. But being a writer, I do get a fair amount of that which all Singles hate: rejection.

So as part of my ongoing solidarity with Singles, I've decided to tell you all when a book gets rejected.

I've just had a book rejected.

That makes five rejections, I believe, for this particular MS, and a second "She's good; let's see her next novel", which is the writerly equivalent of your mom saying "You're so pretty, I'm sure you'll find somebody one day."

I think Seraphic Singles got turned down five times, too.

So after I finish the day's housework, I'm going to go through the MS with gritted teeth, cut where the intrigued but regretful publisher said cut, save the file, print it out and send it to a different publisher in the USA.

Sigh not so, but let them go, and be you blithe and bonny, converting all your sounds of woe into hey nonny nonny!

Valuable by Stevie Smith

(After reading two paragraphs in a newspaper)

Alll these illegitimate babies...
Oh girls, girls
Silly little cheap things,
Why do you not put some value on yourselves,
Learn to say, No?
Did nobody teach you?
Nobody teaches anybody to say No nowadays,
People should teach people to say No.

....

Oh these illegitimate babies!
Oh girls, girls,
Silly little valuable things,
You should have said, No, I am valuable,
And again, It is because I am valuable
I say, No.

Nobody teaches anybody they are valuable nowadays.

Girls, you are valuable,
And you, Panther, you are valuable,
But the girls say: I shall be alone
If I say 'I am valuable' and other people do not say it of me,
I shall be alone, there is no comfort there.
No, it is not comforting but it is valuable,
And if everybody says it in the end
It will be comforting. And for the panther too,
If everybody says he is valuable
It will be comforting for him.

From "Valuable" by Stevie Smith (1902-1971)

Baby Dreams

If you are called to marry, you might be called to marry at any age. There is no age limit to marriage. You might fall in love in the sandbox and marry your lifelong love at 18. You might squander your youth on completely unsuitable characters and then marry a pious millionaire when you're 42. You might live a life of blissful solitude until 70 when you marry your best friend's widower. There is no age limit to marriage and there's no saying what can happen in this crazy world.

Not so having babies, not so. Sadly, there is an age limit to having babies.

Now, I know what you're going to say. I too studied the Bible in school from the age of six. I too know that both Sarah, wife of Abraham, and Elizabeth, wife of Zechariah, had babies when they were well past their prime. In addition, I sneak peeks at the headlines of the Daily Mail when my husband isn't looking, so I know that from time to time, in China, Uzbekistan and rural parts of Italy, a sixty-something gives birth to a bouncing baby. It ain't over until it's over, and sometimes it ain't over when you think it's over. So again there's no saying what can happen in this crazy world.

However, let's face facts: in general, it's harder to get pregnant after forty than before forty. So if you get married in the 35-45 year old region, you know that, barring miracles, you are in Last Chance for Baby territory.

I'm 39.

So anyway, I have had three baby dreams in the past two weeks. This is not bizarre in itself since I am given to lurid, colourful dreams with plots and zany characters and love affairs.

I once dreamed I went back in time and met Gilbert and Frances Chesterton, and Uncle Gilbert was very excited that I had come from the future, and he wondered where he would be in the 1940s, and I was sad because, of course, he would die before then.

I once dreamed I was in a beautiful, chaste and doomed love affair with HRH the Prince Edward, and the Queen tried to bribe me to end it. She actually wrote out the cheque before me, and I was sad because I revere the Queen and, besides that, it is terrible to be bought off by the mother of one's beloved.

And last night I dreamed I had made B.A. late for Latin Mass, and when we finally got to church, it was a different church and there was some high-minded lecture going on in a hall that had a big environmentalist poster warning us against "The Ten Ton Holiday". The Ten Tons represented our carbon footprint after vacationing somewhere warm, sunny and poor. (I blame the current virulent mural outside St. John's on Princes Street, Edinburgh for this dream.)

But I am not given to anxiety dreams about babies, so I find it significant that I am having them now.

The first baby dream was set in my parent's Toronto home, and I had been handed a baby. I was worried about this baby because he hadn't been baptized yet, and I felt he ought to be baptized, and maybe I should do it. However, this wasn't my baby, and so I didn't have the authority. Anyway, I put this baby down to sleep in a handy laundry basket in my mother's room, and he disappeared.

The second baby dream was even more stressful. I was sitting in a minivan that was careening down the highway. Somebody handed me a baby. I was worried about just holding a baby in my arms while on the highway because in cars babies are supposed to be in car seats. Then I noticed that the baby was gone. I looked around frantically. Where was the baby? He had to be somewhere. On the seat? No. On the floor? No. And then I saw that there was a great hole in the side of the minivan under the window, and I realized that the baby must have fallen through it.

The third baby dream was less stressful, but more personal since in this dream I was actually pregnant. But I think I was only a few weeks pregnant because I dithered over whether I should actually tell anybody. And then I woke up, so I stopped worrying.

So there you go. Although I cannot be in perfect solidarity with the Single, being Married, I can still be in perfect solidarity with those who have no children and feel anxious about it. We are in the same minivan, careening down the highway, wondering where the baby has gone.

Shackin' Up

You probably know this already, but it doesn't hurt to read it again, and it's that living together is not the same thing as marriage.

The American Centres for Disease Control have done a study of who gets to their 10th wedding anniversary, and people who lived together before marriage were at a slight disadvantage. And fewer than 30% of bidie-in relationships last 5 years. However, this is in part because 51% of bidie-ins make honest men and women of each other within three years. I suppose the rest simply break up and move on.

I was excited to see that 76% of marriages between people over 26 last ten years, although I am perturbed to see that the standard is now ten years, not, you know, twenty-five years, or "until death." And I was vastly amused to see that people who have babies "at least eight months after" their wedding stay together for ten years. Of all my Catholic friends, I know only one couple who had their first baby fewer than nine months after the wedding, and I'm not even hinting who that was. (When I was dumb enough to blurt, "What, already?", the beaming grandmother said, "We work fast in our family!")

Anyway, weddings and marriage and babies are a messy jury-rigged business, but at least they are real. What do not strike me as real are common law arrangements or living together, except among out-and-out communists. By communists I mean people who have deep-seated, tightly held, agonized ideological DOUBTS about matrimony as a legal institution. I recognize that this is not the correct use of the word communist. The biggest communist in Edinburgh has been married for at least 60 years. But you know who I mean. Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins types, only now Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins have broken up, which made me sad, actually.

My friend Fishie, who isn't married, once said, "If a man loves a woman, he marries her." I think this is sound, but I would stress the word "man" to show we are talking about a grown-up here. And I'd have to throw in "of certain traditional beliefs". If a man of certain traditional beliefs loves a woman, he marries her. (A boy might love but dither until it's too late.) At best, the man marries the beloved woman before she (or he) moves in. At least, he marries her eventually. But I feel a bit weird about that. The pressure to marry the girl you're living with must be intense, especially if your family really likes her and thinks it's time for you to have children. If you moved in with a girl just because it saved on rent and it's nice to share a bed, marriage is an entirely different ball of wax. Heaven help the woman whose boyfriend likes living with her, but harbours secret dreams of the Perfect Woman.

Fortunately, I know perfectly happy married people who lived together before they got married. Even years and years together cannot wreck the love between some bidie-ins. But for reasons obvious to devoutly religious folk, I still don't think it a good idea. And what I think a perfect destestable idea is settling for living with a man when really you are madly in love with him and want to marry him instead.

Of course, there are women who will settle for much less than this. It makes me very sad, what little women will settle for, and how much they will give to get it. I think it is much better to sleep alone and with dignity than to put up with anything from a man other than 100% fidelity and commitment. And this, of course, is what he promises in marriage.

Update: Here is a memory of bidie-ins that haunts me to this day. I was visiting an unmarried couple in England some years ago. A census-taker or someone like that came to the door and asked for my host. The woman of the house said she was his wife. And then came his voice from the sitting-room, "I'm not married to you, Paula!" It sounded again, slightly louder. "I'm not married to you, Paula!" Blah. It makes me shudder with embarrassment, imagining that ever happening to me.

Update 2: Have you considered joining the Seraphic Singles Fan Page? It was founded by two loyal Single readers. There may be discussions and things... And it will update any Seraphic Singles the Book events as they are arranged!