The positive aspects of being single

Elizabeth Rees reflects on of those who cho the Christian inspiration ose to live alone
I AM 43 and a single woman. As I grow older, year by year, it is important for me to keep on trying to make sense of my singleness. I have to ask myself: "Do you want to stay single? And if so, why?"
For singleness is not the norm in our world. We are each born into a family and need a family. We need to be mothered and fathered, loved and held. Sexuality is central to our being, and as we mature we need an other, a partner with whom we can be intimate as our parents were with us.
God told Adam: It is not good for Man to be alone, and so I will make him a mate. But we are each unique, humans and tremendously varied, and some of us choose a single life.
When St Paul weighed up the pros and cons of singleness, he concluded that "everybody has his own particular gifts from God, one with a gift for one thing and another with a gift for the opposite" (1 Cor.7:7).
Although Paul chose singleness, he was careful not to present celibacy as God's teaching: "About remaining celibate, I have no directions from the Lord, but give my own opinion" (1 Cor.7:26).
Jesus apparently chose a single life because of the freedom it gave him: freedom to move around the countryside preaching, freedom to live with a group of friends, and freedom to spend nights in prayer to his Father. You might say he chose a single lifestyle for the sake of his career, as do many many people today.
Some choose to stay single so they can be free to preach or pray, like Jesus did. Others choose single life if they are artists or composers, so they can become immersed in their art and then share it with the rest of us. Some choose single life so they can devote themselves to a career to caring — say, running a hospital or a school. Others choose single life because they are disabled and put an their energy into their struggle to live.
Living in a relationship demands time and energy, and these are people who have weighed up the amount of time and energy they possess and decided that, to be true to themselves, they have not enough quality time and energy to put into a relationship. They may never verbalise this: they may simply feel an inner urge to shape their life as they do.
I think it is important to be clear about why we choose to be single. Have you chosen a single life in order to live more fully and be more creative than you could be if you were married? It is sad to slide into a single life and never manage to enter a relationship through being shy or isolated or afraid of one's sexuality. That way, people end up unfulfilled, "on the shelf". We all know crusty celibate priests or sad maiden aunts who are unable to give or receive much love.
In fact we are never too old to change; we need never be on the shelf. A nun came out of her order in mid-life and wanted to get married. She wanted children too, and knew she hadn't much time left to do so. She bravely contacted a marriage agency, and through them she met a minister of another church, whom she happily married in due course.
I don't believe our motives for choosing singleness are ever clearcut. We are complex people, with needs and desires coming from many levels of our being, and God calls to us through these many levels, and inrough our experiences, good and bad.
In a way it is an easy option to stay single. I haven't got the daily challenge of sharing my life with someone else, and of pouring out my energy to bring up children. I can eat when I like and sleep when I like; I can go wherever I like and work however I like.
Single life therefore has its dangers: I can turn into a selfish eccentric, and no one may challenge me. The prior of a group of hermits told me he didn't let his men go off to live alone in the forest until they had reached their forties. Until then they had to live with the other monks. Otherwise, he said, they too easily went off track.
And this was an order of hermits!
Even people who are profoundly introvert can and do make intimate friendships, and such friendships are vital if you are single. We need people who love us to call us out of ourselves, to challenge us to grow, and to delight us with their affection. Otherwise we will stay as we are, untouched and unchanged.
What if you have been bereaved and are single not through your own choice? It may seem cruel to say, but you still do have a choice. You may choose to spend the rest of your life grieving your dead husband or wife, or you may choose to look again for a partner.
This is not being unfaithful. It may be right for you to live alone, cherishing the memories of your former spouse; but equally, it may be right for you to move forward into a new phase of your life, open to the possibility that you may love and be loved once again. St Paul suggested to young widows that they remarry: "I think it is best for young widows to marry again and have children and a home to look after" (1 Tim .5:14).
In earlier centuries, death in midlife was more frequent than now, and the early church soon gave her attention to the quite high proportion of bereaved among her members. The Acts of the Apostles describes how the church distributed food daily to those left impoverished by bereavement.
But many of the bereaved in the early church had time and resources to help others. By 65AD there was an order or organisation of widows in which you could enrol if you were over 60. You could then help those in need, with the friendship and support of others like yourself.
Life seems to have been quite busy for widows in the early church! A few centuries later, when monastic life had evolved, widows come to be chosen as abbesses because of their maturity and broad experience.
It was not only the bereaved in the early church who gave their life to praying and caring. Younger single people were free to devote their energies to the same things., It was this that led to the later development of monks and nuns and celibate priests. Only centuries later were Christians to develop an equally positive theology of marriage.
In the view of Jesus all of us, married and single, are brothers and sisters sharing a father who is very close to us. Whether married or single, we are all both parents and children in the family of humankind.
Sr Elizabeth Rees is pastoral assistant at Corpus Christi parish at Tonbridge in Kent.