Sunday, March 1st 1992

     I think of the Holy Spirit as God.  I also think of the
holy spirit as a spirit, a sense, a sensibility of holiness
that is a spirit in humans.  The holy spirit in that sense,
then, is the heart and reason (the faith or gestalt?) of the
spirit of being holy, something akin to the spirit of fair play.
The holy spirit in the human sense is something that is fostered
by doing things that are good things to do, reflecting and being
pensive about the whys and wherefores of them.  Things like fol-
lowing the golden rule, loving, what treatment enemies are sup-
posed to get -- if these are dwelt upon, reasoned through, and
practiced with belief in them -- these things cannot fail to 
inseminate one with a human spirit of holiness.  These doings and
indwellings, used and massaged humbly (and not arrogantly) help
in connecting ("networking," if you will) the human's spirit of
holiness with the Holy Spirit of He who is the creator of the
potential for -1all-0 spirits that are.
     God is creator of all matter, mass, gravity, electric fields,
magnetism, light, and the potential for all brands of electro-
magnetic emanations.  God is also the architect of the soul ...
and we humans are the ones responsible for populating our souls
with the spirits therein.  God creates the potential for all man-
ner of spirits to live inside, be they spirits of meanness or
kindness, friendliness or lack of friendliness, spontenaity or
dependability, cruelty or compassion, self-hatred or self-love,
concern or derision, harmony or chaos.  It is we humans ourselves
that make the decisions, select from the spirit-menu if you will,
what spirits our soul will amplify and which spirits our souls will
hush.  In other words, we make ourselves by our very own choices
because the God who suffers our existence has the grace to let us
have that liberty of choice.  What most of us fail to account for
is this:  Selection from that menu need not be haphazard and 
irrational; as creatures of intelligence and love, we humans can
pick and choose with care items that increase the quality of life
not only for ourselves but also for our neighbors.
                 -            -            -           -
     A lemma of our times:  There's a sense of a spirit of fast-
thinking rather than slow-thinking (mania vs. pud) that pervades:
A destructive spirit that promotes haste and promotes pressure in
work unparalleled in human history.  Our manic spirit is a pushy,
self-centered, "gotta-have-it-now" kind of spirit that is a spirit
forgetful of human compassion and care for another.  It hurries
decisions that should be made slowly and causes pain that need not
be.  Time may be money, but what of life?

						-D. Eisenstein