Origin Story #12 of 21:

Then the Lord God said, "It is not good …” (Gn 2:18)

Creation is not quite right. We can’t have man all by himself. Paradise isn’t paradise without the joys and wonders of sharing it with others. Man alone isn’t good. The creator himself notices it. So the Creator goes back to work to bring his creation to a better place.

For things to be right, Adam needs company. “So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air.” Man’s vocation expands to giving all the animals their proper name. Up to now, God has done the naming as when “God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas” (Gn 1:10). But now, God hands this task of naming things over to the man.

The Lord himself seems interested in how Adam will do: “The Lord God brought the animals to the man to see what he would call them.”  God “looks on” to see how Adam does. It’s a  task that requires intelligence and speech. God seems happy with man’s work: “Whatever the man called every living creature that was its name.” No second guessing or corrections made on God’s part. It’s totally man’s doing and man’s responsibility.

Adam does good. But still, things are not good. Man can give names to God’s creative work, but man can’t create something that isn’t. So the Lord, once again, goes back to his creative work. Man, with all his power and intellect, has nothing to do with it. He’s asleep, completely out of it. This is totally God’s work. God does what only God can do: “While man slept God took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.” When Adam sees her, he does what man does. He breaks into a love song:

This at last is bone of my bones

        and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman,

        because she was taken out of Man.

What a wonder. She’s human with flesh and bones just like Adam only breathtakingly different. She not only gets a name, but a song. A song not unlike Johnny Cash singing "Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood and you’re the one for me.” Now things are good. Paradise becomes paradise.