at the risk of seeming ridiculous…

One can compare the Spiritual Presence with the air we breathe, surrounding us, nearest to us, and working life within us.  This comparison has a deep justification: in most languages, the word “spirit” means breath or wind.  Sometimes the wind becomes storm, grand and devastating.  Mostly it is moving air, always present, not always noticed.  In the same way the Spirit is always present, a moving power, sometimes in stormy ecstasies of individuals and groups, but mostly quiet, entering out human spirit and keeping it alive; sometimes manifest in great moments of history or a personal life, but mostly working hiddenly through the media of our daily encounters with men and world; sometimes using its creation, the religious communities and their Spiritual means, and often making itself felt in spheres far removed from what is usually called religious.  Like the wind the Spirit blows where it wills!  It is not subject to rule or limited by method.  Its ways with men are not dependent on what men are and do.  You cannot force the Spirit upon yourself, upon an individual, upon a group, or even upon a Christian church.  Although he who is the foundation of the church was himself of the Spirit, and although the Spirit as it was present in him is the greatest manifestation of Spiritual Presence, the Spirit is not bound to the Christian church or any one of them.  The Spirit is free to work in the spirits of men in every human situation, and it urges men to let Him do so; God as Spirit is always present to the spirit of man.

 -Paul Tillich, the Eternal Now