Tigger

Twelve thousand miles from tortoiseshell Tigger
missing her energetic enthusiasm
her softness and her loving,
I came across another cat,
curled in silent, safe-place sleep.

Tabby and white and warm
her fur invited my touch.
I could not hold back,
I reached out
quietly to caress.
But the cat was not alone
for God was gently lying there
beneath my longing hand.


This poem, written in 1995 when we were spending a year in Canterbury UK for me to do some study, marks the first time I really became aware of God's loving presence in creation.

I wrestled with the concept, wondering whether I 'ought' to be thinking along those lines and, because my default setting is to 'find out more information' I explored the distinction between pantheism, the belief that the universe/nature is identical with the divine and that there is no distinct personal God,  and panentheism  “the belief that the being of God includes and penetrates the whole universe, so that every part of it exists in Him, but ... that his being is more than, and is not exhausted by, the universe” (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church). 

This helped. But even without that  theological exploration, there was something about the experience that clear morning, as we walked around a stately home in the Kent countryside, that allowed me an insight into a  deeper way of knowing God which continues to inform and delight me to this day. I experienced a God who cared for me, who  met me in my homesickness and comforted  me in just the right way, at just the right time.

I believe that God's presence permeates all of creation, that we have only to stop and look and listen to become aware of what lies 'beneath our longing hand'. In doing so, we open ourselves to receive the love that God tailor-makes for each one of us, meeting us in our need, so the journey of transformation into being 'as Christ'  may continue.