REMEMBERING JOE CAHILL

Joe Cahill visited Providence to inspire support for the Hunger Strike in 1981.

Here is news of Joe Cahill's  death and funeral  as reported in the Belfast newspaper.

 Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness carry the the coffin of Joe Cahill at his funeral in Belfast today

The funeral was held in west Belfast this morning of veteran republican Joe Cahill, who died last week. The ceremony, at St John's Church, Falls Road, was attended by thousands of Sinn Féin members and supporters from throughout Ireland.

Among those who carried Mr Cahill's Tricolour-draped coffin on the short procession from his home to the church were Sinn Féin's Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness. The cortege was flanked by a number of men in black berets and combat uniforms.

Mr Cahill is being buried at Milltown Cemetery. It was one of the largest republican funerals in Belfast since the death of Bobby Sands in 1981.

Former taoiseach Mr Albert Reynolds was among those attending the funeral. Mr Reynolds described the republican as a hugely influential figure in moving the provisionals away from violence.

The ex-taoiseach said: "We worked together on the peace process. He was a remarkable man and he played a major part. The only thing I regret is he didn't last long enough to see the process completed. I'm sure it would have been his greatest satisfaction."

Joe Cahill flanked by Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, poses for photographs during the launch of his biography in Belfast, in October 2002

Mr Cahill, who died on Friday aged 84, was an unapologetic physical-force republican and a pivotal figure in the republican movement in the second half of the 20th century.

A small, balding man invariably dressed in nondescript clothes, he cut something of an incongruous figure from a bygone age among the Sinn Féin elite of the last decade.

Despite this, he was regarded as an icon among the party faithful, a reminder of the historical context which fuels their ideology.  Mr Cahill began his 60-year path of violent republicanism in the early 1940s.

He was convicted of the murder of a Catholic RUC constable in an ambush in west Belfast in 1942 and sentenced to death. His sentence, and that of three other members of his gang, was commuted to life imprisonment four days before he was due to be hung after the intervention of the-then Pope. Only the leader of the gang, Tom Williams, did not escape the gallows.

Mr Cahill was released from prison in 1949, whereupon he joined the predominantly Protestant workforce at the Harland and Wolff (H&W) shipyard in Belfast.It was during this time that he contracted the asbestosis that would eventually kill him. He was part of a large group of ex-shipyard workers who sued H&W, winning £30,000 in compensation last May.

Mr Cahill soon rejoined the IRA, finding himself interned without trial in 1956. He was eventually released after the IRA campaign collapsed in 1962.

He maintained a lower profile during the 1960s, until the advent of massive sectarian conflict towards the end of the decade. He was said to have been particularly affected by the abuse meted out to the IRA by Catholic communities for failing to protect them from loyalist mobs.

He said Catholics welcomed the British army with open arms because they regarded them as the only people capable of protecting them. "People collaborated with the enemy because the IRA had betrayed them," he said.

We have won the war, now let us win the peace
Joe Cahill at the Sinn Féin ardfheis in Dublin last year

He was instrumental in setting up the Provisional IRA in 1970 when the republican movement split. He was elected to the  first army council and subsequently became the IRA commander in Belfast, overseeing a brutal campaign of bombings and shootings. The British authorities responded by re-introducing internment without trial.

Mr Cahill was jailed in 1973 by a court in Dublin for gun-running from Libya after the cargo ship Claudia was intercepted off the Waterford coast carrying a five-ton arsenal of weaponry. He was given a three-year sentence but released early on the grounds of ill-health.

He spent most of the 1980s involved in fundraising and training activities. He was arrested in Dublin cafe in possession of $80,000, which was confiscated. He was deported from the United States two years later in a bid to stem the flow of money from sympathetic Americans.

Despite receding from the republican limelight in his later years, he is regarded as being instrumental in securing the first IRA ceasefire in 1994 and the IRA's subsequent move into largely political means.

He was given the task of selling the political route to IRA's financial base in the United States and was granted a visa to visit that country by President Bill Clinton, despite British protestations.

Mr Cahill received a standing ovation at Sinn Féin's ardfheis in Dublin last year when he told delegates: "We have won the war, now let us win the peace."

Mr Adams last week described Mr Cahill as "both a leader and a servant of the republican cause" who spent a lifetime in struggle.

"He was an unapologetic physical force republican who fought when he felt that was the only option but he also significantly stood for peace and was a champion of the Sinn Féin peace strategy, travelling to the UN on many occasions on behalf of the party."

In 1956 Mr Cahill married Annie Magee. She survives him, along with their son and six daughters.

A POET from PAWTUCKET

 

I am not the  only  poet from Pawtucket.

There is another who is really good. 

GALWAY KINNELL.

My mother liked his work so it was quite a delight when she met  Galway's mother at the Mobile Library that used to come to a  parking lot near our house.,

She loved that his mother had used one of the names of the counties of Ireland as his first name.  Her family is from County Tyrone and if she had been blessed with a son that would be his name.

She wished that she had named me Clare or Kerry or Mayo, but she had named me after my father, Norman, so there could be no confusion that I was his child.

Confusion and disarray had come into my father's life in 1918 when his mother and his grandmother died within a week of each other of the Spanish flu. He and his brother Irving and sister Grace became orphans  all under the age of 6 years.

My mother  is the other poet from Pawtucket.She wrote and published poems  that I recall from my youngest years. She loved  the poetry of Yeats and knew many of his poems by heart.She also loved  the poems of Houseman publishd in the SHROPSHIRE LAD.

My mother was forced into Coats Mill the day after she finished the 8th Grade.  Her formal education ended then, but not her informal education.

When I was in college she would follow my course  syllabus and read the same books that I was reading  in the course and we would discuss them

She never stopped learning and growing. 

Here  is a poem  by Galway.

Galway Kinnell


Another Night in the Ruins

1

In the evening
haze darkening on the hills,
purple
of the eternal, a last bird
crosses over, ‘flop, flop’
adoring
only the instant.

2

Nine years ago,
in a plane that rumbled all night
above the Atlantic,
I could see, lit up
by lightning-bolts jumping out of it,
a thunderbird
formed like the face
of my brother, looking nostalgically down
on blue,
lightning-fisted moments of the Atlantic.

3

Wind tears itself hollow
in the eave of my ruins, ghost-flute
of snowdrifts
that build out there in the dark,
upside down
ravines into which night sweeps
our torn wings, our ink-spattered feathers.

4

I listen.
I hear nothing. Only
the cow
of nothingness mooing, mooing
down the bones.

5

Is that a
rooster? He
thrashes in the earth
for a grain. Finds
it. Rips
it into
flames. Flaps. Crows.
Flames
bursting out of his brow!

6

How many
nights must it take each one such as me to learn
that we aren’t, after all, made
of the bits of that bird
which creates itself again
in its ashes,
that for a man
as he goes up in flames his one work
is to open himself, to be
the flames?
 

THINKING OF FAIZ AHMED FAIZ

 

I am placing an entry on Faiz to honor the 25th anniversary of the death of Hardial Bains.  To comfort him,when he was dying. a friend read aloud the poems of Faiz in URDU.

 THAT IS WHAT GREAT POETRY CAN DO!

VERY HARD TO SUM  UP THE  QUALITIES OF FAIZ

I felt so pleased when I went to Amritsar, Punjab, India  in 1975
with my husband to teach at the Guru Nanak Dev University
 and learned that  this was the same city where the poet
 FAIZ taught college too. 
His work speaks directly to me and I hope I picked up his
 blessing, I certainly would bless him if I could.


Here again I am indebted to a newer collection and translation of
  THE BEST OF FAIZ translated by Shiv Kumar  (old friend of
 my husband Yashdip Bains)

  To have said that Hafez is the great poet of Love and then to turn 
to Faiz is to find the working out of that idea in another time and
 place.The closest equivalent to Faiz as a poet of beauty and love
in English tradition would be the English Romantic
poet John Keats  who wrote in a  poem an aphorism that I read as
 a teenager and was too young to understand :

BEAUTY IS TRUTH; TRUTH BEAUTY. THAT IS ALL
YOU KNOW AND ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW.

Faiz's  message is also about  the reign and ultimate 
victory of  beauty.

.He expresses a  passion for enjoying the beauty of life,
 his deep paradoxical attachment to love of people and the
 agony of the world, his love of humanity, his patriotism,
 his passion for revolution, his sense of justice, are all
 metaphors of the agony of love.

In one poem he addresses the BELOVED
 and gives  the Beloved credit for all of his metaphors.

Agony of love is the soul of his imagination and feeling, 
 which illuminates the beauty of the world with
 the desolation of his heart.

Here is  how Keats sums up the power of longing
 for the unattainable:

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal – yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! (lines 17–20)


 For Faiz, the testing power of beauty is in its creativity.

Beauty is not mere artistic value, it is also a social and moral value:

The candle of a look, the star of imagination, 
All these illuminations
 have come from your gathering.
Whichever be the source of pain, we ascribe it to you,
Whatever complaints we have, are on account of you.
If it be the agony of the world, if it is the beloved's face
 or the hand of the rival,
We responded towards all of these with love.


When I was much older,I saw that Keats was expressing
 a profound Spiritual Truth,

 BEAUTY-TRUTH-GOODNESS-- LOVE--WISDOM

 are all attributes of GOD
.
To search honestly for any one of these attributes will
lead the Seeker to  the DIVINE.

AUGUSTINE expresses it in that line

LATE HAVE I LOVED THEE, BEAUTY ANCIENT 
AND EVER NEW.

For Faiz LOVE always TRUMPS hate.

Faiz wrote a sad revolutionary battle-song, the like of which is

 not be found in any language of the world:

For the love of your flower-like lips,
We were sacrificed on the dry branches of the noose,
For the desire of the candles of your hands
We were killed on half-dark paths.
And with revolutionary dignity:
On our lips the words of the ghazal,
And the torch of misery in our hands,
Gather our banners from the place of murder,
Caravans of other lovers will emerge,
For whose path our feet have shortened the distances of pain.



When he accepted  the Lenin Peace Prize speech he said:

  

    Human ingenuity, science and industry have made it

 possible to provide each one of us everything we need to be

 comfortable provided these boundless treasures of nature 

and production are not declared the property of a greedy

 few but are used for the benefit of all of humanity…

 However, this is only possible if the foundations of human

 society are based not on greed, exploitation and ownership

 but on justice, equality, freedom and the welfare of everyone

… I believe that humanity which has never been defeated

 by its enemies will, after all, be successful; at long last,

 instead of wars, hatred and cruelty, the foundation

 of humankind will rest on the message of the

 great Persian poet Hafez Shiraz:

 ‘Every foundation you see is faulty, except that of Love,

which is faultless’.     

And Faiz the secular Muslim  prays:

Let us too lift our hands,
We who do not remember the customary prayer,
We who do not remember any idol or God except love.


This agony of love is not only a part of the human condition
 but it is a relationship which extends from one end of the
 world to another. Faiz's love for humanity is free from the 
prejudices of race, color or nationality. 

The new literature of protest suggests a radical change
 and, in the words of Faiz, it confers on us the power
 of "forcefully spurning the hand of the killer".

 It does not accept defeat because it is convinced that
 darkness should and must end.

 
When personal sorrow drank 
the elixir of world-sorrow,
 the lovers' love became doubly strong:
My heart repents neither this love nor the other,
My heart is spotted with every kind of sorrow,
Except the mark of repentance.

rm of emotions is raging insid

A CALL FROM IRELAND

SOMETHING GREAT JUST HAPPENED.

 Never too old to learn.I had been  getting messages from an Irish cousin on Messenger a young man Eoin whose mother is a cousin and a dear friend. 

When we met so many decades ago, we immediately clicked. We were so alike. When Dympna confessed her love for THE KING, I  knew she meant Elvis and I share that love.

One of my greatest pilgrimages was to GRACELAND. For me it was an unforgettable experience ---people weeping in every room. And me among them.

So today I got to talk on a phone call to one of her sons.  I  hope that tomorrow she will be on the call.

This turn of events and this reconnection with my Irish cousins has made me so happy.

It has been a complete change from the sadness of my sister-in-law Gurmit's death and  the anniversary of my husband's younger brother's death   25 years ago.

I want to add here a poem that I wrote years ago after I first met my cousin Dympna. I hope that she likes it.

IN ARDBOE DYMPNA REMEMBERS

 

The old women say “Oh, surely there’s time

Yet to have bairns.” But at night I worry.

Thinking of their soft skin and staring eyes.

They look up at a mother and follow her

Around the room. Is it too late for me?

I can’t face that end. Oh, that – a music box.

Hand-made, wind it up and it plays “Let Erin Remember.”

 

Where? In the Long Kesh Prison Camp. The H-BLOCK.

The boyos make things to sell or give.

That was given to me and the little harp-

No , Patrick is from the next town, Coalisland.

Isn’t it a scram? A woman lives with her mother

For thirty- four years in a place just a few miles

Down the road from a man she meets in a prison.

 

Fifty miles away.-- That Celtic Cross on the mantle?

He made for my mum. All alone here—

No,no,  in the Council housing we’re not afraid.

Not lonely, we had to leave our place in the moss.

Too scary with soldiers busting the door late at night.

When these flats went up, we applied.

But to be honest I could not marry an active IRA man.

 

He will give that up when he is released.--

The Brits ambushed your cousin’s wife’s brother.--

Hugh, he has a monument. Let Erin remember?--

No, let us forget long enough to have a life,

A moment, a love, a baby. Babies are magic—

A baby before the earth closes over us.

And only God remembers and Erin forgets.

Remembering Gurmit Kaur

 My husband's  older  sister Gurmit died this past Sunday night at the age of 91. Here are a few of his thoughts and remembrances of her. Although her last years were blighted by dementia and Alzheimer's disease, she had in her long life exerted a powerful and positive influence on her family, friends and community.

She was the mother of three children.Her marriage to Surain Nunner ended in divorce decades ago.

Gurmit was an active supporter of her younger brother, Hardial Bains, a brilliant progressive leader in Canada who also inspired the foundation of political parties in Ireland and England.

Always involved in social and political activity, Gurmit's interest took the form of talking to  people about political problems and encouraging peple  to participate in the political life in India.

The child of the village Sarpanch, Gurbakhs Singh, who had played a major role in the anti-colonial struggle against the  British  in India,  Gurmit grew up supporting that progressive struggle to free India from British domination. 

Both  sisters Gurmit amd Ranjit  attended the college that opened in their village of Mahilpur in 1946.

This move reflected their parent's progressive attitudes towards educating  women  beyond their traditional roles of wife and mother.

It is important that we remember Gurmit as she was for most of her long and dedicated life. We should not allow the later years of mental chaos shape  our memories of her.

Most of us to do not get better with age,  and we ask that our dear sister be remebered for all the ways she encouraged and advanced the  progress of humanity that we hail in the INTERNATIONALE.

Eugène Pottier, 1871; English lyrics by Charles H. Kerr, French lyrics

Arise, you prisoners of starvation! Arise, you wretched of the earth! For justice thunders condemnation. A better world's in birth. No more tradition's chains shall bind us. Arise, you slaves, no more in thrall! The earth shall rise on new foundations. We have been naught, we shall be all. 'Tis the final conflict; Let each stand in his place. The international working class Shall be the human race.

---

The "Internationale" was written in Paris, in June of 1871 by Eugène Pottier, who was born in Paris in 1816 and died in 1887. He was a member of the International and of the Central Committee of the Commune. He was condemned to death in May of 1873, but sentence was never carried out as he took refuge in America. The song was published in Chants Révolutionnaires (1887), and dedicated to Gustave Lefrançais, member of the Commune.

46.

Fundraising letter for Hunger Strike Memorial

THE TIME HAS COME

Many times on this blog I have celebrated the lives and  sacrifices of Bobby Sands and the nine other men who lost their lives in a hunger strike in 1981. 

There is only one monument to the heroism of these men in the United States and it is in Hartford, CT.  We want to create one in Providence, RI to be sure that the deaths of these  heroic men are never forgotten.

Dear Friends of Irish Freedom,

The spring and summer of 1981 witnessed the slow and painful deaths of ten invincible Irish patriots. Led by Bobby Sands, these men began Hunger Strikes to demonstrate their refusal of the British government attempt to criminalizetheir armed revolt against hundreds of years of tyranny in Ireland. Displaying the support of the Irish people, while on Hunger Strike, Bobby Sands was elected as a Member of Parliament. More than 40 years have passed since those tragic events and the English government still has not implemented the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. The deaths of these men inspired protests all over the world. Sinn Fein began holding political office and has reached a current position of strength in Ireland.

 The 1916 Committee plans to memorialize the sacrifice of the Hunger Strikers and keep their names and brutal deaths in our historic memory by raising a monument to them at the site of the Irish FamineMemorial. A simple bronze plaque, mounted on granite stone, will proudly enshrine our gratitude. It will read:

In the spring and summer of 1981, ten brave Irishmen fasted to death to fight Britain’s attempt to

criminalize their Irish struggle. The deaths of these ten men, and the international response to it,

caused the British to change this policy and also created the conditions for the armed struggle to evolve

into participation in electoral politics, leading eventually to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

We Honor These Ten Men and Martyrs

“I may die but the Republic of 1916 will never die”

Bobby Sands

BOBBY SANDS MARTIN HURSON

FRANCIS HUGHES KEVIN LYNCH

RAYMOND MCCREESH KIERAN DOHERTY

PATSY O’HARA THOMAS MCELWEE

JOE MCDONNELL MICHAEL DEVINE

The cost of the proposed monument will be 15,000 dollars. We ask all our members, friends and Irish Americans who recognize the sacrifice paid by these ten men, to contribute to the cost of the monument.

Now let's make it personal. We are asking  you as individuals to think of the sacrifice that brought these ten men to  martyrdom and to ask that you make a small sacrifice to honor them.

We ask that you think about what amount you can give easily and then  think of what would push you  out of your comfort zone.. If  ten dollars is easy for you, why not double it even if that means that you forego some little treat  and feel the pinch?

LET'S GET REAL!!

Here are some examples--

Send the cost of the cigarettes that you smoke daily.

Send the cost of the liquor you drink daily.

Send the cost of the lottery tickets or online bets you make daily.

Or  maybe skip the daily coffee and doughnut at  Dunkin?

Making this small sacrifice for one day  will align you spiritually with the sacrifice these men made daily until they died.

YOU CAN DO IT!

Be willing to suffer just a little to honor these brave men who suffered so much for so many days.

All for Irish freedom,

Make checks  out to 

RI 1916 Committee

PO Box 28321

Providence RI 02908

Thank you in advance for your support.

The Rhode Island 1916 Committee

PS. If this appeal moved you to donate, please forward  it to Family and friends  in your circle.

Beats in the BUCKET

 How  did  the Beat  movement come to me in Pawtucket? 

Like so many of the good things that came to me there. it came to me through the good offices of  a member of the Boucher family.

Their son Raymond, my  friend Lucille's brother, had started  his college education at RISD while  Lucille and I were going to Saint Xavier's Academy, a great school in Providence.

The first year Raymond had an old Volkswagon Beetle that he had painted a brilliant yellow. He drove Lucille  and me into downtown Providence and  we walked up Broad St to the Academy. I gave him a couple of dollars a week for gas and for  a while it worked.

He also shared with us some of the new things that he was reading. He knew that I was interested in poetry and that I tried to write it. One day he handed me a  book with a one word title --HOWL.

"This is how poets write now--contempoary poetry" he said as he showed me the black and white volume.This was in 1956 and my freshman  year at high school.

I remember reading the long poem and being struck by its  daring form. I loved it. In fact in recent years I have written a  Pawtucket version that  won me a prize in the Galway Kinnell poetry contest.

Here is that poem

A HOWL IN PAWTUCKET-- Circa 1959

 

I am with you in Pawtucket

 

My greatest fear as I sneaked a smoke

with the black leather-jacketed boys

at the White Tower on Main Street Bridge

was that someone who knew my mother,

sitting on one of the buses lined up at the light,

leaning forward in her window-seat might

 

spy me standing there: cigarette dangling,

blue uniform skirt rolled thigh high

black turtleneck hiding Catholic school badge,

mouth smeared with white lipstick.

eyes outlined in kohl like a baby owl.

the Beatnik of Pawtucket: I had read “HOWL”

 

I am with you in Pawtucket.

 

Where are you now? The boys who dived

at Limerock Quarry, their skin porcelain

in the milky water; or the dusty boys--

come on back where you belong

of Sunset Stables who always copped a feel

at the dismount? Where is little Lucille?

 

 

Who would skate with me those cold starry

nights at the Blue Pond? Where is Roland--

with his red sweater, his white '51 Ford

with the fairy fringe, and his dazzling smile?

Or sweet Eleanor who would walk with me

through the dappled lane of Dunnell's shady lea?

 

I am with you in Pawtucket.

 

 

We reached  that pond at Prospect Heights

on those long hot days filled with polio scares

and paper dolls on my porch. And where are you?

That black-haired boy who met me in the Back lots

and showed me the broken-walled reservoir

where he looked for any signs of Indian lore.

 

Oh, that's right, -- we married for a while ; our son

called last night. So where am I? That one—the one

who would sit for hours with my Bronte novels

and dream of writing my own romance idylls?

I am older, not richer or wiser, just older.

Grading papers, giving marks-still reading and writing.

 

I am with you in Pawtucket.

 

Let's meet up for a “First and Last Chance” reunion

Start at the White Tower, walk up Main past Peerless

to Shartenberg's, go to the Windsor for a drink

and end up at the LeRoy for a late show---

or better still-- go on up Broad to Warner's Ballroom

where sounds of “Harlem Nocturne” pierce the gloom.

 

Sweet blues sax papering the world with longing,

 the mirror ball spangling speckled light all over my pink

and white gingham dress with tender embroidered berries

spilling over the bodice; dancing to our favorite song.

 Your cheek closely pressed to mine – “This is our song”,

you whisper, “This will always be our song.”

 

I am with you in Pawtucket.

 

Now I know what GHOSTED means

 

About GHOSTING I KNEW NOTHING. SO I did what I always do about the unknown--I googled it.

Here's what I learned online:

in most situations, if you haven't heard from someone even after contacting them repeatedly, they've ghosted you. They won't respond to your messages or calls. A telling sign that you've been ghosted is if you can't get in contact with them. No matter how you reach out or for how long, you don't hear back.Jun 4, 2022

And here is what I learned through experience:

 However, ghosting could also be a sign of self isolation seen in people with depression, suicidal tendencies, or are relapsing with an addiction.^[20] There is limited research directly on the effect of ghosting on the person on the receiving end. However, studies have indicated that ghosting is considered the most hurtful way to end a relationship in comparison to other methods such as direct confrontation.^[21] It has been shown to cause feelings of ostracism, exclusion, and rejection. Additionally, the lack of social cues along with the ambiguity in ghosting can cause a form of emotional dysregulation in which a person feels out of control.^[22] Some mental health professionals consider ghosting to be a passive-aggressive form of emotional abuse, a type of silent treatment or stonewalling behaviour, and emotional cruelty.^[7]

THE PERSON ON THE RECEIVING END.  

That would be me. So maybe  I can add to "the limited research  on the effects of ghosting."

Some how because this person  initiated the contact by commenting on one of the things I mentioned on this blog, I feel as if my blog has been  made a less safe place for me. So perhaps that is why I want to talk about it on the blog.  It is a way to reclaim this space.

This person--whom I have never met--shares a lot of  traits and circumstances with me. Pawtucket born and bred, this person  also writes poems and stories about  Pawtucket. And this person shares my love for poetry and for Beat   writers. We also shared early experiences of going to the Narragansett Race Track with our gambling fathers . We both lived close enough to walk to the track which no longer exists.

All of those memories and associations have been polluted by this person  cultivating me about these topics and interests and then ghosting me.

This person is old like me and we shared the memories of the "golden age of Pawtucket."

Now all is tarnished. Can I remove that  tarnish  and polish them back again?

I  want to reclaim these years and times and experiences and  remove them from this person's destructive influence. 

In fact my hope is to transform this experience into material for my work. To trust that having a new  experience in the  79th year of my life is a great gift.

That it will be new material for my plays and poems and yes, even for my blog. A great gift for my work. And maybe for my soul.

I am grateful that this charade of friendship only wasted a few weeks of my time. But at this  time in life, even a few weeks is a few weeks  too many. 

                    LIVE AND LEARN

 my nlog

What is the Holy Ghost"

  

Baptism of Fire and Spirit

 

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. —Acts 2:1–4

When I was a child and the  nuns told us about the Trinity, I got the idea of a father and a son, but what in the world was the HOLY GHOST!

That is what we  used to call the Third Person of the Trinity.Now we say HOLY SPIRIT, but has that name change brought us any closer to understanding who the third  person is?

Not really.

It is a shame that the Holy Spirit tends to be an afterthought for many Christians. We don’t really “have the Spirit.” We tend to simply go through the motions. We formally believe, but honestly, there isn’t much fire to it. There isn’t much conviction. There isn’t much service. We just sort of believe.

 That’s why in the Gospels there are two baptisms that are clearly distinguished. There’s the baptism with water that most of us are used to, and there’s the baptism “with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matthew 3:11); that’s the one that really matters.

The water baptism that many of us received as children really demands little conviction or understanding. Until that water baptism becomes real, until we know Jesus, and we can rely on Jesus, call upon Jesus, share Jesus, love Jesus, we’re just going along for the ride.

We can recognize people who have had a second baptism in the Holy Spirit. They tend to be loving. They tend to be exciting. They want to serve others, and not just be served themselves. They forgive life itself for not being everything they once hoped for. They forgive their neighbors. They forgive themselves for not being as perfect as they would like to be.

Even though we so often pray, “Come, Holy Spirit,” the gift of the Spirit is already given. The Holy Spirit has already come. We are temples of the Holy Spirit, equally, objectively, and forever! The only difference is the degree that we know it, draw upon it, and consciously believe it. All the scriptural images of the Spirit are dynamic—flowing water, descending dove, fire, and wind. If there’s never any movement, energy, excitement, deep love, service, forgiveness, or surrender, you can be pretty sure you don’t have the Spirit. 

If our whole lives are just going through the motions, if there’s never any deep conviction, we don’t have the Spirit. We would do well to fan into flame the gift that we already have.

God does not give God’s Spirit to those

 of us who are worthy, because none of

 us are worthy. God gives God’s Spirit

 in this awakened way to those who

 want it.