sol mates: keeping company with the sun

my husband and i have chosen “simply living” as the door sign over our string of challenges this summer.  our quest to live more simply, justly, sustainably, faithfully may in fact just be learning how to actually live.  truly.  completely.  simply.  thus, we embark on our quest to simply live.

my children have two good friends in the sky: luna (moon) and sol (sun).  we look to our friend sol for guidance in our first simply living challenge.  we will sleep while sol hides himself from us, and wake while his face shines on our patch of ground.  we begin Monday morning June 17^th at 6:19 am, and then close the challenge at sunset on Friday June 21^st, around 9:15.

as it turns out, we actually weren’t the first to have this idea.  our internal circadian rhythm follows this schedule.  our bodies are programmed to become sleepy as light diminishes, then wakefulness triggers as light increases.  modern society ceased its attentiveness to this natural cycle with the entrance of electricity.  “the current” (as my grandma sara called it) manufactures light on demand any time in the 24-hour cycle.  we have thus moved both socially and physically from this natural rhythm.

so what will happen when we resynchronize ourselves with the natural circadian rhythm?  are there benefits beyond a decreased electric bill?  will we feel the impact of this synchronization in a mere week?

and the most important question….do we wake our sleeping children at 6:19 in the morning??

share your thoughts, or join us in this first simply living challenge!