After cleaning the house, shoveling snow off the driveway, and driving to town to cover the Beautification Committee meeting for a newspaper article, I receive a call. “Can you get to the school to interview the Superintendent about Common Core testing in the classroom?”

I check the time, do some mental math, and answer, “Okay.”

My movement shifts up a gear. If I’m going to get to the school Superintendent, I need to get my information quicker. No chit-chatting. Not a simple task at the Beautification meeting where committee members are agreeably pleasant to talk to.

They even have cookies and coffee, however I rarely eat while working. Some people insist I eat until I point out that eating and interviewing don’t mix well. It’s not only difficult to talk with my mouth full, its uncouth.

They understand, but they still offer me cookies and coffee.

And, when my plans changed, so did my routine of declining to imbibe in refreshments.

I knew I’d need some energy to get through the next job of interviewing the school Superintendent. So, I asked, “Can I have a brownie?”

Of course, came a resounding answer. “Take some for the road.”

I did.

While driving to the school and eating brownies, I thought about humanity’s demand for energy. I want energy, not only for my body but for my vehicle and house Billions of people in the world are wanting energy of some kind, calories, electric, oil, solar, hydro.

My neighbor, an electronic engineer, recently told me that he believed the single greatest invention of the 20^th century was the transistor.

Transistors replaced bulky vacuum tubes, used to amplify weak currents, or energy.

Electron Man said, “Cheryl, the transistor was invented or the phenomena was discovered, which ever way you see it, in 1949 by Bell Labs and received a Nobel Prize. We started seeing transistor radios in the mid to late 60’s. We couldn’t have gone to the moon in 1969 without it, as vacuum tubes are too heavy, fragile, require too much power and too much space. We simply didn’t have the rocket technology to move that much mass until the transistor.”

A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals and electrical power.

Electron Man explained, “The amount of energy we use today is a fraction of what we would use without semiconductors also. I’m building circuits that use microamps with .000001 amps, and nanoamps with 0.000000001 amps. A vacuum tube uses up to several amps, that’s a magnitude of one million to one billion times more energy required for tubes!”

He added, “We advanced to large scale integration, or LSI, which is many transistors in a very small package and that enabled home computers, printers, the internet, satellites, cell phones, tablets, LED TV’s, etc., etc. We would not have photo voltaic modules or electronic fuel injection in cars, LED lighting or compact CFL’s without the transistor.”

So, we not only demand energy, but we can use that energy efficiently and wisely.

I’ve learned this with food. My body functions better when I eat healthy foods. I also drive a car that gets good gas mileage.

This got me to thinking about spiritual energy.

Spiritual energy helps me get through those times when I don’t have brownies, or when I need good ideas in order to be productive during the day. Where does spiritual energy come from?

Spirit. God. It can never run out. It won’t crash. Spirit is infinite.

From 21^st Century Science and Health.

“Divine energy unites everyone’s consciousness to God, the one immortal Spirit.

“Caffeine and other related stimulants aren’t equal to truth when you need energy or inspiration.

“It is proverbial that Mother Teresa,[1] and other philanthropists engaged in humanitarian work have been able to undergo, without weariness and danger, that which ordinary people could not endure. The explanation lies in the support which they derived from the divine law, supreme to the human law. The spiritual demand crushes the material demand, and supplies not only energy but also endurance, which surpasses all other aid.

“Let us feel the divine energy of Spirit, bringing us into newness of life and recognizing no human or material power as able to destroy.”

[1] Mother Teresa (1910–1997) Albanian Roman Catholic nun.