it's officially summer. sheesh! It's supposed to be 90 degrees here today and there's already a fair amount of fear in the air about the reprisal of West Nile Virus >http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/06/06/west.nile.preview/index.html I like the quote from the guy at the end of the article--apparently about 100,000 times the amount of people die from the flu each year as die from West Nile Virus. Why, then, does it make the news? quote for today, tuesday, june 24th (I'm still on that Jacques Ellul kick): "What I have just described ('do not be conformed') could not originate from a particular understanding or from an exceptional science; it was the 'renewing of your understanding'--that is, the point of departure lies higher than the action which I described [a Marxist revolution]. What is necessary is a change in understanding (of things, of people, of situations), which is more than a change in method! That is to say, everything has to be brought into the light of Jesus Christ. This involves a lucidity (which the best observers never attain, and which in reality was that of the prophets) and a new way of understanding. "This renewal of understanding corresponded for me with the commandment to love God with...all one's thought. It appeared to me that it did not mean simply to study theology and become a minister! To love God with one's thoughts was to place one's thoughts at the service of God's work in the world, through the medium of the believer. And this work pertained to the political as well as to the psychological! This gospel, which today transforms not only hearts but also minds, would then enable believers to change the world. "This change in understanding had to correspond, finally to what God wills for this world; it had to be pleasing to God; and it had to be well done. consequently, for example, a revolution for justice resulting in millions of deaths could be neither pleasing to God nor 'well done.' Increasing communication many times over in order to say nothing could not be considered loving your neighbor...." --Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom, 2nd. ed 1989, pp. xii-xiii.