Really neat website I stumbled upon by chance on Twitter!
The “Natural Cycle” Liturgical Clock
The concept may not be obvious if you’re not used to ancient ways of thinking about a time, but there is a different way of calculating time based on the natural cycles of sunrise and sunset rather than artificial things like time zones.
We are tied to clocks and watches, but it’s not the way things used to be. Without watches and clocks, we would follow a natural diurnal cycle based on sunrise and sunset (gee, somehow that reminds me of a song). Like farmers from time immemorial, we would rise with the sun and go to bed with night. We divided the day in to 12 hours from dawn to sunset – some seasons hours would be longer, some seasons hours would be shorter. This page shows the “natural” time along with the “modern” time. Really did open my eyes!
The Early Church‘s Liturgical cycle was based on sunset and sunrise. This page, with links for daily readings from Scripture and from various Synaxaria is really an eye-opener to me!
Hope you like it as much as I do.
