“Addy! Get back here,” I screamed. But it was too late. She had already been incensed. Every Labrador/Chesapeake Bay Retriever gene in her body had been yanked. A pair of Canada Geese with eight goslings strung out between them had decided to come in and sample the lakeside salad bar, which is the dandelion field that passes as our lawn. Addy had been watching them from her perch in the rec room window and when I opened the door she was out like a shot, a yellow streak roaring down the dandelion runway and launching herself through the air and into the lake like a torpedo. There was no doubt in the world that there were going to be serious causalities.
The two adult geese set up a racket of shrieking and honking as they desperately tried to herd their newborn flock out of the way. Addy was bearing down on the goslings like death on a mission. She was swimming so strong and fast that her body seemed to come out of the water with each stroke. And then, out of the corner of my eye, a third entity came into the picture. It was Uncle Albert. That’s when I really began to holler.
Uncle Albert, an exceptionally large and senior Greater Canada Goose, was swimming easily as fast as Addy. He had his body low in the water and his neck fully outstretched, coming on like a destroyer on a sub-hunting mission. He was making a noise that was part hiss and part roar. He bore down on Addy tangentially. Addy was so focused on the goslings in her sights that she didn’t even know he was coming.
It was looking pretty obvious who the casualty was about to be. A full-grown male Greater Canada Goose can seriously hurt a dog in the water.
All my hollering and dancing up and down on the shore finally got Addy to look back. That’s when she saw Albert. His extremely aggressive approach so unnerved her that she turned and raced for the shore. Albert continued in hot pursuit. I was picking up boulders to enter into the fray as they both approached the beach. But old Albert was no fool. Once he was sure that Addy had changed her mind, he returned to the gaggle of goslings and their parents, honking and wagging his tail, obviously quite satisfied with himself.
Uncle Albert has been returning to our end of the lake each spring for almost as long as we have lived here. He is a solitary bird, never with a mate, always satisfied to be the protective uncle to the flock of goslings reared by another pair. Perhaps he is a widowed bird; Canada Geese are said to mate for life. Perhaps he just likes to be solitary. Whatever the case, one thing is for sure and we have seen this exhibited time and time again over the years: Albert plays a huge role in the Canada Goose community that he has identified with. This day, the role he played was that of protector extraordinaire. Tomorrow it may be flock lookout or gosling babysitter or adult companion; I’ve seen him play them all.
Whenever I think of Uncle Albert I think of the exceptional value of single people in a society and within a community like the church. The Apostle wrote to the Corinthians: Sometimes I wish everyone were single like me—a simpler life in many ways! But celibacy is not for everyone any more than marriage is. God gives the gift of the single life to some, the gift of the married life to others. I do, though, tell the unmarried and widows that singleness might well be the best thing for them, as it has been for me (1 Corinthians 7:7-8, The Message).
Much has been made of these words but for me they have always been about the equal value of the married person and the single person within the community of faith. And yet, there seems to me to be a stigma within faith communities and especially within the hearts of some single folk that I know, that being single somehow makes them of less value within society in general and within the faith community specifically. I would go so far as to say that there is even a tragic false perception that being single is abnormal. Even the likes of so-called progressive New Age neo-Gnostic fads exhibited in the likes of recent popular books like The Da Vinci Code seem based on the premise that being single is so abnormal that Jesus couldn’t possible have been so. Some people I deeply respect and love as Christian siblings literally pine away for a mate, partly because of loneliness, which I empathize with, and partly because of the perception that being single is somehow abnormal and that life is of less value because of it. My best friend Jim, now passed away, struggled with this most of his adult life. I used to ache for him, not because he wasn’t married but because of the struggle he had in remaining single, which was his choice and gift. He was the original “Uncle Albert” in our lives, and not just us but for a number of families that he related to in his community.
Is Paul right? Is being single a gift of God, just as much as being married is a gift of God; and both institutions a gift to the community of faith? Every time I stand before a congregation and speak words in the marriage litany expounding that marriage is a gift of God, I feel like I need to say, “and so is being single.” In fact, as of this wedding month of June, I resolve to do just that.
I really feel that we as a church need to take this up, to begin to become proactive with regards to exploring and promoting the value of singleness and its companion, celibacy. I am not thinking of this with any moral agenda, which there may well be, but more from the perspective of value and spirituality. As a preacher, when was the last time I proclaimed a sermon on a text like 1 Corinthians 7:7-8 with a mind to speak into this? As a counsellor, when was the last time I met with single people in my faith circle to explore this institution as a gift of God? As a spiritual director, when was the last time I explored the spiritual possibilities of remaining single and celibate? Uncle Albert has revealed to me I have a lot yet to learn and even more to do.
