Weekend pleasures...and pains...and ponderings

Apparently something at a departmental party for MP's program on Friday night yielded up a case of something-didn't-agree-with-me. I spent the majority of yesterday, especially into the evening and through the night, in a fog of ill-being and gastrointestinal anguish.

But yesterday was a lovely Saturday nonetheless. Rainy -- as it has been for most of September in the Bend -- but perfectly enjoyable. MP and I planned a short, simple trip to the Farmer's Market, and it wound up being something like this:

1. Go to the new branch of our credit union in downtown South Bend to take cash from the ATM for use at the Market.

2. Notice the little used bookstore that is never open with its doors...open. Go inside and poke around and find several interesting new acquisitions to bulk up our already crammed shelves (a delight for any book collector. I purchased an anthology of Kierkegaard; a translation of the Tao, including commentary, by Ursula K. LeGuin; a work by Pierre de Chardin, a Catholic priest exiled to the Far East by the Church for his espousal of human evolution, who is quoted extensively in Annie Dillard's For the Time Being; an anthology of American folklore, printed in wartime United States; and an updated version of Love Medicine -- the proprietor commented on my eclectic selections).

3. Drive to the Farmer's Market, getting outrageously lost in what ought to be, after two years, a familiar area of town. Buy lots of delightfully local, slightly unnecessary items such as Indiana- or Michigan-grown Cortland apples, Concord grapes, Provolone, and garlic.

4. Swing by Bamber's, a family-owned grocery store a stone's throw from the Market, which has on its shelves amazing and hard-to-find staples such as bulgur wheat, red lentils, and sherry vinegar (a requirement for the finer points of Spanish cooking), as well as amazing and hard-to-find luxuries such as spicy pickled beans, mini cloth bags for bouquets garni, and cooking twine. I then and there fell head-over-heels in love with small, privately owned businesses.

5. Drop MP off at her apartment so she can begin concocting her almost sinfully delicious spaghetti sauce, and zip up to Wal-Mart for everything I've been running out of lately, which almost put me in the poorhouse.

6. Lounge around for the remainder of the day, nursing my digestive tract.

I've also been pondering, a little, the predicament of Christian singles everywhere. It seems there are a plethora of young Christian women and a dearth of young Christian men, none of whom in much of any kind of ratio are dating each other.

It appears to be a double-edged sword (forgive the cliche). Plenty of the Christian women I know I wouldn't date if I were a man. MP realized yesterday, and I agree, that it's hard enough for us to find female Christian friends, let alone for Christian men to find dating partners -- in the two years we've lived in South Bend, we've only grown really close to one Christian woman. We're becoming better acquainted with a few more, but ironically we've met none of them through church. So for the first time I begin to sympathize with the male predicament. Most Christian men whom I have met through church are simply not friends with any women, and when I survey the available material, I don't much blame them. The girls seem to have impenetrable social walls around themselves, and even if they didn't, those girls and I have very little in common except our shared faith. What then, are the guys to do? Church, despite what our elders tell us, is not a good place to meet future mates.

For women either. I've only had one pseudo-dating experience with a man that I met in church, and he turned out to be much less than what I was looking for -- to be specific, he seemed to be strongly physically attracted to me, which I enjoyed, but ended up calling me only once every three or four weeks, and seemed to expect those few and far between appearances to light up my life.

The flip-side of the predicament for women in situations like mine is that I know a lot of guys, some non-Christian, mostly Christian (which is perhaps unusual, but we are talking about South Bend, Indiana). I count a lot of them as friends. The ratio of men whose company I enjoy actually outstrips the ratio of women whose company I enjoy, if we're talking about group environments. Why, then, is it so difficult to attract a date?

So the situation appears to run something like this: Christian men don't see the trees for the forest, and Christian women don't see the the forest for the trees. Men aren't finding any individuals to inspire their attention because the over-all scene is humdrum and they stop looking, while women get so fed up with the lackadaisical individuals they know that they write off the whole species.

What's the answer? My solution has been a resolution to spend less time losing my mind over the issue, and to spend more time out socially in groups, meeting people, getting to know acquaintances better, and deepening already good friendships, while continuing to cultivate excellence in my lifestyle, skills, and habits. The true frustration lies in the knowledge that in the end there's not much more I can do. I find myself growing virulent towards Christian men in a similar vein to my attitude toward men in general while at Grove City, and I would like to avoid that cutting persona a little -- I don't want to run everyone off.

Plus when it comes down to it (where did that most generic of phrases originate?), I truly have faith that I will find the person I've been seeking, and that no art or cunning or rage on my part will bring him along any faster. At the finale, it's all about the right person at the right time in the right place. There's mystery to it. And it won't be all that complicated when all the coordinates are in place; but I can't orchestrate those coordinates any more than I can pattern the stars. So my part, for now, is to wait, to be patient, to cultivate my talents and to grow in love and virtue, to enjoy all of my friendships, and to be content and really happy with my life as I pray for the future.

Besides, constant frustration gets to be exhausting. If there's nothing more I can be doing than what I listed above, it's futile to "throw effort after foolishness," as Spur says in The Man from Snowy River.

And yet there is a time to express frustration, to shout questions, to shake fists -- there's as much a season for trumpeting warnings from the roofs as there is for waiting for the dawn. So I'm certainly not going to give up thinking or writing about, or discussing, the problems among the Christian single population. For now I'm just tired, and coming off a period of deep despair, and I'd like to rest a bit from all the worrying. And I'm not that unhappy with being single, believe it or not.