"January" has a formal, royal sound to it, appropriate for the month that precedes all others, the month named for the Roman god Janus.  Guardian of the gates of heaven, he was the two-faced god who looked ahead and behind, into the future and into the past, without turning his head. January is much the same today, the closest we have to a mountaintop among the months, a manmade promontory on the calendar where we catch our breath and take stock before plunging into the wilderness once again.  But Janus' two faces also remind us of intentions  forgotten, promises broken and vows gone unkept, of the eternal conflict between what we say and what we do that is the inevitable result of the pressure to resolve, to forgo and to sacrifice that are the rituals of the New Year's celebration.

We all realize that it is the twenty first century. We have landed on the moon, developed nuclear weapons, have the power to shift the earth from its axis with that same technology, can spot your Hanes underwear label from 5 miles in space, can pin point a target and neutralize it from 3 miles away, never even seeing it. We can feed the entire planet (minus the political obstructions) and we can measure that light particles, everyday light, are “alive.” We can cure diseases, and have found that humans have lived in the America’s for as far back as 200,000 years. Pretty spectacular!

So I ask you; why do we still believe that an omnipotent being, (one who looks and thinks like you and me) is watching over us? Why do we spend any of our precious time here on earth (80 years if we are lucky) looking and “praying” for this being’s attention?

Reading through my sources today, I found a bit of encouraging news.  In a UPI article, this green nuggett appeared.

"ENERGY COMPANIES PREPARE FOR DEMOCRATS

Energy companies are preparing for the coming Democratic majority in the U.S. Congress by beginning a push for their favored approaches to global warming. Companies like the major oil and power producers would prefer national curbs on greenhouse gases, instead of a state-by-state approach, the Washington Post reported. "We have to deal with greenhouse gases," John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Co., told the National Press Club recently. "From Shell's point of view, the debate is over. When 98 percent of scientists agree, who is Shell to say, 'Let's debate the science'?" Hofmeister and James Rogers, head of Duke Power, say they would prefer caps on greenhouse gas emissions that would allow companies to trade credits. Others favor a tax on carbon dioxide emissions.

Even Exxon, the company most prominently known as a global warming skeptic, is considering eliminating funding to a think tank devoted to trying to undercut climate change research, the newspaper said."  (UPI Nov. 25, 2006 at 12:37AM)

A local philospher once told me many years ago that, "It's not what you say that counts, it's how you say it."  Maybe we should modify this a little and say "It's not what you say that counts, its how many times you say it."