V 20 'no suitable helper was found.'
I can recall the ride home from Sunday school in my familys' green Rambler station wagon when I asked my parents about Eve being made from Adams rib. 'What about it,' they asked, 'Well it seemed to me that making a man and all the animals out of the ground was pretty cool,' I said in my most off hand manner. 'Darn right,' my parents agreed together.
'So, why would God need to borrow a rib out of Adam to make Eve? Why not just gather up some more mud and get busy?' Sensing a skeptic was about to hatch my parents put the genie back in the bottle by sharing with me a well known, and irrefutable medical fact – namely, women have seven sets of ribs and men only have 6 and a half. 'You can prove it to yourself by counting them if you want to,' my father dared. At the time I had 3 brothers and would never have any sisters. Mom, our families lone female representative demurred when I asked if I could count her ribs.
This pleasant fiction continued until I got to college. Upon seeing my roomate, Norm's skeletal charts for his kineseology studies, I remarked to him that this must be a female skeleton, to which he replied, Why? I was right, but he wanted to know how I could tell from such a quick glance. I replied, it has matched sets of ribs. Thinking there was a punch line coming he said, AND?? To which I had no intelligent response.
Of course what actually is a irrefutable western medical fact [since 1534] is that men and women have exactly the same number of ribs. Another translation of the Hebrew word would be that God took Adams side, meaning that Adam was split in half. I think the imagery of this story is meant to explain the drive and delight we enjoy when we encounter a soul mate; the one and only other half of one's soul, for which souls are driven to find and unite. Someone with whom one has a feeling of deep affinity, love, intimacy, spirituality, and compatibility. 
"This cleaving is our natural desire to become united again with our own wholeness, it is a remembrance that calls us and guides us. A soul mate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. Our soul mate is someone who shares our deepest longings and our sense of direction." Richard Bach
I think when we call forth a community we call forth a kind of soul mate because it shares many of the important aspects of a soul mate -with the power to uplift our heart, challenge us, call us, renew us, and support us in opening up in ways that express our inner most selves. A soulful community is about being so supported that I can ask for help, it's about believing in you so totally that there is no doubt about your inherent greatness, worth and destiny in life. Being in relationship with a soul mate or in a common-unity has the power to wake us up to the possibilities of our lives, and dare with us to put our principles and priorities into ACTION.
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