20/11/2025
There’s a reason Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam is considered one of the most important images in the history of art. God reaching out to Adam — that nearly–touching moment — has come to represent the giving of life, consciousness, and perhaps even something deeper: a meeting between two beings that irreversibly transforms them both.
It’s this idea of meeting that I want to explore, particularly through the lens of the philosopher and theologian Martin Buber, whose writings on “I and …” relationships have shaped the way many of us think about human connection.
Buber described three fundamental kinds of relationships: I–It, I–You, and I–Thou. It’s the last of these that interests me here. He describes an “I–Thou” encounter as a direct, mutual, sacred way of relating — one in which individuals meet each other as whole beings. I often think of it simply as Personhood. Others might call it God, the Divine, the Transcendent, the Wholly Other. Whatever the word, the sense is the same: being connected to something bigger than myself.
And yet describing this kind of connection is notoriously difficult. Words buckle under the strain, as T.S. Eliot reminds us: “Words strain, crack and sometimes break…” So, with due humility, I’ll do my best — and trust you’ll follow what I mean.
What did Buber mean by I–Thou?
You may have heard the phrase “a moment of meeting” in psychotherapy. It refers to those rare instances of deep connection and shift — when therapist and client meet each other not as roles, but as real beings. They don’t happen often, and when they do, they feel like a gift.
A moment of meeting is a little like the creation of a child. No one can claim sole authorship; it’s always a joint effort. In therapy, the therapist creates the conditions for change, but nothing happens without the client’s readiness to receive, respond, and co-create the transformation.
But these moments aren’t limited to the therapy room. Like grace, which I wrote about in a previous blog, they can appear anywhere, often when we least expect them. And this is where Buber becomes especially helpful.
A concise definition of I–Thou might be:
A mutual, direct, authentic encounter where each person meets the other as a whole, unique being — without judgement, agenda, or objectification.
These encounters can happen in prayer, worship, s*x, nature, play, or any moment of genuine intimacy. Sometimes they show up in the most ordinary places: in supermarkets, queues, bus stops, or gyms.
Just the other day in my gym, a woman I’ve been chatting with recently told me she hadn’t spoken to anyone all day and felt lonely. I listened. I nodded. I made a mental note to invite her over for dinner. It was small, unplanned, and unmistakably an I–Thou moment.
I’m due for surgery later this week and expect to be in hospital for about a week. I wonder how many I–Thou encounters I’ll have there. Last time I ended up nearly having a fist fight with a nurse who decided I was “difficult and demanding.” One hopes not to meet him again.
Two encounters stand out from my years as a counsellor and nurse.
The first happened in a park with a patient. We were watching pigeons doing very pigeon-like things. I began humming Tom Lehrer’s “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.” My patient joined in, and soon we were strolling through De Crespigny Park singing Lehrer at the tops of our voices. Fortunately, no one heard us, or we might both have been sectioned.�It was absurd, joyful, and unexpectedly sacred.
The second happened on a ward. I had arranged four times to spend an hour with a patient, and four times I’d had to cancel because of ward pressures. On the fifth attempt, I went to cancel again.
“I’m sorry, Tim, but I’ve got to cancel our meeting again,” I said.
“That’s alright…” he began. Then he stopped. “No. It’s not alright. I want to talk with you.”
There it was. Realness. Personhood.
I said, “Give me two minutes.”�I went back to the office, handed the keys to another nurse and said, “I haven’t managed to see Tim all week and he’s cross. See you in an hour.”
For me, that was a profound I–Thou moment. My patient had become real, and so had I.
So wherever you are, in hospital, in the park, in the gym, in a queue, in prayer, or in conversation, may your days be filled with I–Thou encounters.�Or perhaps more accurately: may they find you.
