"It is a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found." D.W. Winnicott

The most important rite of spring is the ritual of choosing a mate. The delicate and intricate process of pairing is as varied as the species, but the agenda is the same: find a mate and reproduce. Everyone wants to be chosen.

We humans are the same, although our emotional lives are far more complicated than those of an ant or fox or bird and our rituals even more so. In the western world particularly, survival no longer depends on producing children to help farm or hunt. But that deep instinctual need to be selected remains. We want to know that we matter and often we believe that to be chosen by another is the only way in which our value can be affirmed. Some of us, for lots and lots of different reasons, have lost the natural instinctual understanding of our own worth. As we create our lives we keep discovering that an essential piece is always missing. Like a beautiful jigsaw puzzle we realize over and over that the one piece that makes the puzzle whole, is the one we cannot find. And so we look and look in all sorts of places outside of ourselves in our search to find it.

The leaves in the woods are now fully open. The air is lush this morning with the promise of rain and thunderstorms. Soon that expectancy will ripen and the rain will wash over the leaves and fading azaleas and the mountain laurel just about to blossom. Its arrival is a powerful witness to the forgotten truth we already have been chosen in the most important way-- by life. Our very existence says that we have been chosen to be here, now, in this life. If we did not have value, we would not be here at all. That is the law of the natural world of which we are a part and of the spiritual world we manifest. We are needed in ways far beyond our ability to comprehend, to help complete the world. Despite all our attempts to place ourselves apart, we still belong as much as all the rain and blossoms and creatures in the world. We are the missing piece we seek.

Oh, my dear heart,
my own dear heart,
full of hesitations,
questions, choice of directions,

look at the world.

Mary Oliver, from "The Singular and Cheerful Life"