metaphysics Archives -

On Being Alive: Reflections from Toy Story | Daybook

April 3, 2026

I have always loved animated features. There was a dearth after the decline of the old Disney Studios but, after some time, new studios started a post-Disney style that continues to develop. They make great watchables for doing my exercises, since they are upbeat and don’t require detailed attention.

A great series I have been watching is the Toy Stories triad. They have almost metaphysical penetration. What is it to be a toy? What makes a toy’s life meaningful? What brings a toy ALIVE? Each belongs to a particular youngster and, as one explains, “When Andy plays with me, I feel as if I am alive!”

The toys live in fear of several things. One is spring cleaning, when, if they are broken or out of date, they risk being put in the annual yard sale. In fact, one is sold – to a dealer who recognizes this is an original Woody from a famous cowboy collection. It will complete a set he can then sell for good money to a Japanese toy museum. Woody is desperate to return home to his kid, but learns that the other toys in the set have been languishing in a box. To be sold to a museum is their way back into the visible world. Andy is now torn, feeling loyalty both to his kid and to the other toys in his set. The cowgirl in the set accuses him of being selfish and he feels the sting. But then he looks at the bottom of his boot and it says “Andy” and it is as if this is his true love. He says to the cowgirl, whose kid was Emily, “Wouldn’t you give everything just to have another hour with Emily?” “Yes!” she admits. So he escapes home.

That was Toy Story 2. Toy Story 3 introduces a new set of dilemmas and conflicts, all from a deep ability to emphasize with, well, toys. Why not?

Being facing Being

January 29, 2026

I wondered what it could mean for “Being as such” to be a Person, a Thou, as surely, from my own experience, God is. Then it struck me that this rushing Stuff, this force of Being, is also the being of me. And I am a person. So why shouldn’t the rushing Stuff, the Being of—of what?—the World, of Being itself, be a Person writ large? I don’t mean the World merely in a physical sense, since my own being is not merely that of my body. Similarly, the Being that animates everything could be a Person.

Looking out the window at the passing trees, it struck me that their very leaves are full of Being as such, the Being that is also a Person, and that it made sense for them to be a Thou for me. And, more remarkably, for me to be a Thou for them. I felt that Being facing Being, not necessarily speaking but simply facing, is what personhood is.

“Any religion that does not allow for this aspect of My presence is missing something.”

October 30, 2025

It sounded as if there were something true in polytheism. Abigail’s father had also been a philosophy professor and I married into his library, which included Martin P. Nilsson’s Greek Popular Religion, a classic on ancient Greek polytheism.

According to Nilsson, anything that had potency or an aura was regarded as holy. Spirits lurked inside striking features of the landscape such as trees, forests, lakes, and mountains. River crossings and cave entrances would be marked with stones or statues.

“Were these valid responses to You, Lord?”

You lump them all together.

We would have to take them one by one. You see them as generic types of actions. I see them as specific communications or acknowledgements. One person looked at a stream and saw the current of My energy running through it and marked the spot in homage. Another was superstitious and marked the spot for good luck.

Some were fearful and thought they might drown crossing if they did not place a token on the bank. Some actually stopped and prayed or meditated or sang a song of praise. These are very different kinds of communications, with different degrees of reality.

If your question is whether streams and mountains and so forth do in fact embody My presence, the answer again is not so simple.

Of course, everything embodies My presence and it is always a good thing when someone pauses to acknowledge that. But some things do embody it more. There is truth to the sense that I am more distinctively present in aspects of energy and force than in matter that is relatively more inert. We would have to go into physics, into the physics of the future, to discuss that in detail.

At particular times, I am especially present in a certain place or to a certain person.

It is not mere superstition that causes (people to) pause before the fact of death, for example. That is a moment and place of particular interaction between Me and the deceased and their survivors. However, there are some dramatic elements of nature, such as lightning, that might be appropriate symbols for divine power but are not in fact times and places of special presence or interaction.

But, in general, did polytheism respond to a divine reality? Yes, it did.

And any religion that does not allow for this aspect of My presence—My presence in nature, in objects, in places, and in forces—is missing something.

________

Listen to this on God: An Autobiography, The Podcast– the dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin.

He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered- in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him.

I am the Innermost Being of Man and of Matter

July 11, 2024

Later I learned that there are some interpretations of quantum mechanics that use the notion of a universal consciousness to explain how an electron in one part of the universe can be in perfect synch with an electron in another part of the universe without any physical interaction between them. I was not aware of that at the time, but I had just read about dark matter and dark energy, “dark” because they cannot be seen but only inferred from gravitational and other effects. The mass of these previously unsuspected components are now thought to far exceed the total visible mass in the universe.

Yes, you should look into those. Think of it—most of what is in the universe is unnoticed. It is inferred from gross phenomena, but it is inferred as force. Think of the human body. It is moved by the mind. How? Where is the mind? The mind is throughout the body. Its actions are registered, but it is not noticed. I am not noticed. But in fact I am seen everywhere, and I am in the innermost being of man and in the innermost being of matter. Do not have contempt for matter. It is not the inert stuff of certain old theories. It is vital and alive and a part of Me. The interaction of mind and matter is part of Me, and I am the vehicle through which it takes place.

Pure being is not an abstraction but a living force.

March 7, 2024

To the philosophers and theologians, feelings, along with other affects, are weaknesses. So God is regarded as passionless, so passionless that it is difficult to see how He can love. St. Anselm puzzles over how a passionless God can be com-passionate. His solution is that “we experience the effect of compassion, but Thou dost not experience the feeling.” You can see the logical puzzle: we experience God’s love, but God feels no love for us. For the philosophers, even to speak of a personal God is at best a metaphor or analogy. But, in my experience, God is not a metaphor. He is a Person to whom we can pray, who can give us guidance about our lives. However, I was told,

They have some aspects of Me right.

“What do they have right?”

They understand that I am pure Being, Being unto itself. They understand My metaphysical essence. They do not understand My dynamic existence, a force …

“A Person?”

… yes, and a Person. They use these categories in a way that makes them mutually exclusive, but they are not. Pure Being is not an abstraction but a living force, focused personally. Do not avoid metaphysics, but always listen to Me or you will go on the wrong track.