One advantage of being early January-born, as I am, is that one can look backwards and forwards into time, as Janus did, one face looking back, the other looking forward.  So in this first winter season of the new millennium, I look back to Christmas of 1900, and to the cluster of years following that date.  The writers, artists, composers, and thinkers of that era were so significant -- and yet strangely quaint -- as if for all their brilliance they had no idea of the changes that would soon be common knowledge to those born only a few years after the turn of the century, to say nothing of those of us born in the 1940's, and the '50's, '60's, '70's '80's, and '90's.

Those living in 1900 seem so old-fashioned to us now, so protected and encapsulated, so privileged and arrogant.  They lived in dangerous times, but they were too unaware and unawake to know it.  And so we look back at them in their funny top hats, stiff gait, gold buttons, their stuffy arch-dukes, their women who couldn't vote, their repressed children, and we think how much smarter, more enlightened, we are than they.

But one day, people will look back and think similar things about us.  It's odd to feel so modern, even post-modern, while at the same time recognizing that from the perspective of the future, we're already quaint, out-of-date, cocooned, and clueless about what lies decades, or even a few years, ahead.  To those being born in the 2040's, '50's, and beyond, we're already ancient and preserved, if at all, in nostalgic snow-globes of memory.

Yet we too live in dangerous times.

May we spend this time wisely so that at least we won't be seen as foolish or reckless.  Those born later in this century may not agree with us, but may they think of us as genial, full of humor, humble, and wise.  We're in a "thin space," as the Celts call it, a portal between the worlds.  Those who stood at that portal in the winter of 1900 brewed, all unknowing, two world wars.  May we brew, if not peace, at least a growing sense of humanity and compassion.  May we have the skill to defuse explosions.  May we be remembered as tolerant and awake.

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