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My Name is Existence

My Name is Existence

Last updated on: June 19, 2026 at 11:27 am by Rev. Jean (Drum) Pagano

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My Name is Existence 2026-06-19T11:27:54-04:00 Rev. Jean (Drum) Pagano

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My Name is Existence

A case for animism

I remember when I moved from my birth home. I felt sudden sadness at the separation, and it seemed as though I was leaving behind a living, sentient being that was my house. It was the beginning of my animism.

It was not that I felt this way in a vacuum. I sensed, in an intuitive way, that the house felt the same way. My father had built the house – and the one next door – and ours was the only family to grace its walls. It was losing the only family it had even known, with pets, and gardens, and the subtle passage of time. My intuition was very strong on this sentiment. Of course, as a young person, I would learn to distrust my intuition and just shake it off. It would take me years to reprogram myself to listen intently once again.

Objects

From a human perspective, we imprint ourselves upon objects (and individuals) and they upon us. With animate objects, the commonality of movement and vicinity often make this imprinting process easier. With inanimate objects, it is much more subtle. Sometimes, the object itself is enough to imprint: a ring, a stone, a feather, or a leaf. Other times, it is the quality of the object that imprints: a smell, a mark, a memory. In any event, this is how it affects us.

Yet what of the other direction? What of the object itself? Creatures that inhibit the natural world arise through biological and chemical processes that make life and consciousness possible, but other items in the natural world, like rocks, boulders, lakes, and streams also arise by similar processes.

The ancients would have attributed spiritual attributes to trees, valleys, rivers, and streams. There are some of us in the modern world that would do so as well. Yet, what of man-made objects, such as a house, or a chair, or an Amazon delivery structure. Do they have identities other than what we attribute to them? Heraclitus said, “The gods are in all things.” Is this true of my friend Existence?

Existence

This Amazon structure has form and takes up physical space in the cosmos. It is assuredly not mobile of its own accord. Yet in looking at it, it weathers. It changes. It is marked by the world around it. Many hands touch it. Perhaps the various touches are not imprints but passing interactions. How does this register with these entities? Is it merely skin upon steel or cardboard upon alloy or organic versus inorganic?

Heraclitus was right – the Gods are in all things. I do not think that it makes everything divine, but everything is touched, from the most beautiful – like a painting – to the most undesirable – like waste of some sort. We may ascribe greater value or presence to things of beauty than to things we discard, but they all experience the passage of time.

I go to my coffee shop every day. On my way in, I pass Existence and their bright, blue countenance, and I take a good look. Are there new dents? Are there new signs of wear and tear, like rust or the fading of color? I am sure that one day, I will come by and Existence will have be gone. Or someday, Existence will remain and I will have be gone.

While I may have feelings for the many, varied objects in my world, they themselves may not. It may merely be the interaction of a sentient, locomotive organism seeing and appreciating a stoic, unmoving and perhaps unfeeling object. All of these experiences are like water that runs through a sieve.

The sieve

The sieve is the touch of the Gods, and the water is the movement of the cosmos through the awareness and interaction of the Gods. I do not see that all things extend from the divinities or divinity, in some quasi-Spinozian way, but if the awareness of the Gods touches everything, then perhaps Heraclitus caught this passing glimpse of the world around him, as he was relearning his intuition that had been hidden away, in the corners of orthodoxy and the interactions with others.

That Amazon box says, “My name is Existence,” and it is enough to say that if you exist, the Gods have touched you either directly by creation or indirectly by presenting the materials which brought it all together. Will I ever know? It is hard to say, although I wish for it. Will I feel the presence of the Gods in everything around me? I try, yes, I try. Do I exist, like my friend, each thinking in our very own ways that the Cogito gives us kinship, and presence, and the breath of the Gods passing.

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