A watch in the night
11/01/22 02:10
This seems to be a good environment for rabbits. We frequently see wild rabbits when we are taking our walks. Not far from here, on Whidbey Island, the town of Langley has a lot of wild rabbits that appear to be more like domestic rabbits than the cottontails we commonly see around here. The story is that domestic rabbits escaped their confinement, took to the area and have reproduced in large numbers. The presence of the rabbits is a bit of a local controversy, with some people wanting public officials to decrease the rabbit population and others finding the rabbits to be nearly harmless and a unique feature of their town.
At any rate, we recently were talking over dinner about rabbits and the question we were pondering is whether they are nocturnal or diurnal. It seems that we don’t see as many rabbits in the day as we do in the mornings and evenings, leading me to think that they must be nocturnal. So, as often is the case these days, one of us got out our phone and looked it up. And we learned a new word in the midst of our conversation. Rabbits are crepuscular. they are most active at dusk and dawn.
My wife occasionally accuses me of being nocturnal because I have the habit of going to bed in the evening and then rising for an hour or more in the night before I return to bed. I often write my journal during that pause in my sleep as I am doing right now. So, I’ll introduce another term that is relatively new to me. I practice biphasic sleep.
The practice of double sleeping was widely practices throughout the preindustrial world. There are references to “first sleep” in literature, songs, and even old court records. Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, written between 1387 and 1400, present a storytelling contest between a group of pilgrims, and mentions first sleeps as a common and accepted practice. There are descriptions of biphasic sleep in colonial documents from South America. It is mentioned in the Greek epic The Odyssey.
The practice is much less common these days. I didn’t practice it much when I was in the active phase of my career, preferring then to go to bed early and to rise in the predawn hours for my spiritual practices before beginning the day with the rest of my family. I had taught myself to wake quickly and focus my attention in the hours when many others were sleeping from an early age. In college and graduate school I found that some of my most productive hours were in the early morning. I got into the habit of rising at 4:30 am and getting in at least a couple of hours of work before breakfast.
As a pastor, and as a suicide first responder, I learned to rise quickly when the phone rang and respond to the call. I also learned to go back to sleep when the call was ended. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for me to receive a call, rise and dress, go out into the community to provide help for grieving persons, and then return home, get back into my night clothes and sleep for a few hours.
Biphasic sleep was once the most common pattern for the majority of the population. They would rise to tend the fire in cold climates, to take care of needs such as toileting, and to engage in conversation with other family members before returning to their beds for more sleep. There is some evidence that the contemporary practice of going to bed a bit later and sleeping for as much as eight hours or more at a time is relatively new in human history.
Somehow, I was thinking of my sleep pattern and our family conversation about crepuscular rabbits. One might say that I am the opposite of crepuscular were it not for the long nights around here. Although I probably sleep a bit more in the winter than the summer, no one I know needs to sleep from dusk to dawn in this country. That would mean going to bed between 4 and 5 pm in the winter, and even I don’t find myself being sleepy at that time. I get to see plenty of rabbit activity as I am awake in the early evening and again in the early morning when rabbits are most active.
One thing that often surprised me when I was going out into the community in the middle of the night, is how many other people were out and about. It seemed like I always saw other traffic at night. I know that the Interstate highways are full of trucks moving goods at night. There are a lot of shift workers who sleep in the day and work at night. Our society is a place where there are many different sleep patterns and a lot of people who shift their time of sleep at times to change from one shift to another. This shifting of sleep patterns can be stressful and result in the person getting less than optimal amounts of sleep. Orientation to shift work is one of the challenges for law enforcement officers, health care providers, and others who provide essential services.
In my semi-retired state, however, I am free to have unusual patterns of sleep and waking. I rarely use an alarm clock any more. I seep and wake when my body is ready to do so. I have a job with significant flexibility about which hours I work. The pandemic has meant that there are fewer meetings and a lighter schedule of activities. It is no effort for me to be awake and alert well in advance of worship on Sunday mornings and I have no trouble with evening meetings, of which there are fewer in this phase of my life.
A little research has given me a bit of new vocabulary such as crepuscular and biphasic sleep. And the period of wakefulness in the middle of the night is called “the watch,” and there is a great deal of Christian literature referring to the watch in the night as being a time for prayers. Psalm 90 speaks of a watch in the night as a short period of time. For now I’ll be keeping my watch. And if I happen to sleep through it on occasion, the journal will be written at a different time. I’m flexible.
At any rate, we recently were talking over dinner about rabbits and the question we were pondering is whether they are nocturnal or diurnal. It seems that we don’t see as many rabbits in the day as we do in the mornings and evenings, leading me to think that they must be nocturnal. So, as often is the case these days, one of us got out our phone and looked it up. And we learned a new word in the midst of our conversation. Rabbits are crepuscular. they are most active at dusk and dawn.
My wife occasionally accuses me of being nocturnal because I have the habit of going to bed in the evening and then rising for an hour or more in the night before I return to bed. I often write my journal during that pause in my sleep as I am doing right now. So, I’ll introduce another term that is relatively new to me. I practice biphasic sleep.
The practice of double sleeping was widely practices throughout the preindustrial world. There are references to “first sleep” in literature, songs, and even old court records. Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, written between 1387 and 1400, present a storytelling contest between a group of pilgrims, and mentions first sleeps as a common and accepted practice. There are descriptions of biphasic sleep in colonial documents from South America. It is mentioned in the Greek epic The Odyssey.
The practice is much less common these days. I didn’t practice it much when I was in the active phase of my career, preferring then to go to bed early and to rise in the predawn hours for my spiritual practices before beginning the day with the rest of my family. I had taught myself to wake quickly and focus my attention in the hours when many others were sleeping from an early age. In college and graduate school I found that some of my most productive hours were in the early morning. I got into the habit of rising at 4:30 am and getting in at least a couple of hours of work before breakfast.
As a pastor, and as a suicide first responder, I learned to rise quickly when the phone rang and respond to the call. I also learned to go back to sleep when the call was ended. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for me to receive a call, rise and dress, go out into the community to provide help for grieving persons, and then return home, get back into my night clothes and sleep for a few hours.
Biphasic sleep was once the most common pattern for the majority of the population. They would rise to tend the fire in cold climates, to take care of needs such as toileting, and to engage in conversation with other family members before returning to their beds for more sleep. There is some evidence that the contemporary practice of going to bed a bit later and sleeping for as much as eight hours or more at a time is relatively new in human history.
Somehow, I was thinking of my sleep pattern and our family conversation about crepuscular rabbits. One might say that I am the opposite of crepuscular were it not for the long nights around here. Although I probably sleep a bit more in the winter than the summer, no one I know needs to sleep from dusk to dawn in this country. That would mean going to bed between 4 and 5 pm in the winter, and even I don’t find myself being sleepy at that time. I get to see plenty of rabbit activity as I am awake in the early evening and again in the early morning when rabbits are most active.
One thing that often surprised me when I was going out into the community in the middle of the night, is how many other people were out and about. It seemed like I always saw other traffic at night. I know that the Interstate highways are full of trucks moving goods at night. There are a lot of shift workers who sleep in the day and work at night. Our society is a place where there are many different sleep patterns and a lot of people who shift their time of sleep at times to change from one shift to another. This shifting of sleep patterns can be stressful and result in the person getting less than optimal amounts of sleep. Orientation to shift work is one of the challenges for law enforcement officers, health care providers, and others who provide essential services.
In my semi-retired state, however, I am free to have unusual patterns of sleep and waking. I rarely use an alarm clock any more. I seep and wake when my body is ready to do so. I have a job with significant flexibility about which hours I work. The pandemic has meant that there are fewer meetings and a lighter schedule of activities. It is no effort for me to be awake and alert well in advance of worship on Sunday mornings and I have no trouble with evening meetings, of which there are fewer in this phase of my life.
A little research has given me a bit of new vocabulary such as crepuscular and biphasic sleep. And the period of wakefulness in the middle of the night is called “the watch,” and there is a great deal of Christian literature referring to the watch in the night as being a time for prayers. Psalm 90 speaks of a watch in the night as a short period of time. For now I’ll be keeping my watch. And if I happen to sleep through it on occasion, the journal will be written at a different time. I’m flexible.
