Playwright Maria Hedley Had Her Fill Of Terrible ...

Playwright Maria Hedley had her fill of terrible dates. Most of the dates she went on she thought the guys would be great candidates but they were totally unsatisfying. She got sick of her own taste and decided that fate couldn’t mess up her love life anymore than she could, and it might just do a better job. So she decided to take her personal tastes out of the equation and put aside all her preconceptions. Instead—as she vowed to her roommate one morning—for the next year she would date every person who asked her out. In the past, Maria had refused a deli worker’s invitation because she assumed he hadn’t read enough books. A taxi driver’s offer was refused because Maria thought they wouldn’t have anything in common, and she said no to short guys though she was short.

All of that changed. It would be the Year of Yes. She ended up dating half of NYC. There was a homeless guy who thought he was Jimi Hendrix, a subway conductor, a mommy-obsessed millionaire, even a woman who asked Maria to have her baby, a 70-year-old salsa dancer, a Colombian Cowboy/Handyman, her high school nemesis, whom she’d spent seven years rejecting, and a mime. He proposed with hand gestures and body language.

She tells about this in her book The Year of Yes. Maria said she went looking for a new kind of love, and found a new kind of life. She advises making an effort to talk to new people. Their stories can enrich your life.

There are a group of people who patiently listen to my sermons on marriage, remarriage, and divorce. They are the singles. The singles include the never married, the formerly married but divorced, and the widowed. Paul now addresses this group in the church at Corinth. Like Maria Hedley, the Christians at Corinth had some interesting ideas about the single life.