"A table for one?"
A couple of weeks ago, I read an article from The Atlantic on the death of dining rooms in the American home and how loneliness is literally being built into American homes. Homes that no one can afford. The amount of people struggling with loneliness, social isolation, and anxiety is on the rise- in fact, most people refer to the current state of loneliness as an epidemic. All that to say, there appears to be a social comorbidity of housing crisis and lonely epidemic.
Which brings me to conversations on singleness I have often as a staff member of a local church.
It wasn’t until I attended Dallas Theological Seminary that I realized we have, at best, an unhealthy fascination with romantic relationships within our ecclesiastical homes, and at worst a straight up idolatry. Now, I want to preface this by saying two things: 1) I am a big fan of marriage. Marriage is good, a holy covenant institution unto God, and full of sacredness, beauty, joy, sanctification, and purpose, 2) I am never married and without children yet I desire to be. Some may say these are the eccentric ramblings of a cat lady, to which I would respond that I am highly allergic to cats.
I was speaking with a young woman a few weeks ago, who is just 22 years old. She’s at the infancy of adulthood and mentioned that though she is very content to be single now and finds a lot of joy in her unmarried state, that may change as she ages. And I can understand, most women in the South- especially Christian women in the South- are probably married before the exit their 20s. And I can fully attest, as I slog towards my 34th married, I could have never been convinced that I would remain unmarried and childless this long. And yet my life is ripe and full of joy and people who love me and who I love.
Yet, reading the article in The Atlantic the absence of a dining room struck me. I carry a grief and a shame for not hitting the cultural markers of maturity that my cultural and ecclesiastical contexts set up as mile markers.
I’m unmarried, without children, renting a (lovely) apartment, with mountains of student loan debt, and never-ending academic pursuits. I’ve remained a student, transitioning from college to seminary to a DMin program at Northern Seminary, and hopes to finish a PhD one day. And yet, in some spaces, in spaces that should be homes, my perpetual state as a student coupled with my state as 30-something single strikes others as, well, odd.
I think The Atlantic is wrong. The dining table hasn’t died- it’s become exclusive.
The reality is not everyone can afford a dining table. A dining table requires space. And in the midst of a housing crisis, people are concerned with sleeping, space to work remotely, not hosting.
Loneliness in an endlessly “connected” world is a paradox no one saw coming. There’s a rise in screen time, a decrease in attention spans, and we’re all just chasing the dopamine hit of an illusive relational connection without the relational work. I don’t think hookups don’t just extend to sex anymore.
We do not have time for each other. We’re all overworked, overwhelmed, overcommitted, and over-scheduled. Sometimes it’s a reality of life, sometimes it’s just our poor choices, and sometimes it’s a cultural expectation of success and florishing. Successful, flourishing people are booked and busy. They don’t have time to share a space with people.
Gone are the awkward family meals with your weird uncle and your sharp aunt who said something stupid or who swore the government was hiding big foot, or whatever. Now, everyone at the table has to agree with me about everything and reinforce my own epistemology. The dining table evolves around doubling down on dogma instead of revolving around the people.
Where’s an unmarried, childless, 30-something, perpetual student to go? I eat most of my meals alone. As most people in this country do. Which is fundamentally different to a large part of the world and most of human history.
And this is why I love The Eucharist.
The Eucharist has become a balm to loneliness, to longings, to dreams denied or deferred, to the shame and doubt of not meeting expectations of the world around me. When I come to the Lord’s table, prepared to sit and receive God’s grace, it’s not another meal I’m eating alone. The Lord is there with me. The Lord’s people, my sisters and brothers are there with me. All of us, overworked and overwhelmed, too busy, disagreeing on who to vote for, married not married, renters and homeowners, we are all there sitting and receiving God’s grace.
The Church is so far behind on recognizing the cost of eating meals alone. We’re still navigating the choppy waters about what to do with all the single people, on how to get them married, that we have failed to address the ever-growing exclusivity of the one thing that’s supposed to brings us all together- The Table.