Saturday, November 6, 2010

Hibbard Standard Time

“The times change we change with the times”---Sir Humphrey Appleby

It’s the time of year where, here in America, we mess with everyone’s heads and change the clocks again.  Back in the Spring, we moved the time setting so that we were an hour ahead of the sun, and now we’re going back to being in sync with the daylight.  We supposedly saved some daylight in the process, but it doesn’t work enough to power solar stuff at night….anyway.

Officially, we change the time at 0200 Sunday, but I doubt anyone stays up to change their clocks at that point.  Most of us are so computerized these days that it will happen while we sleep.  However, manual changes are usually done right before bed.  At least by most folks.  This, however, can cause some chaos with your Sunday.  For many people, it’s not that big of a deal.

A few years ago, though, our family was involved in a commuting pastorate---we lived in Mississippi (in a house we would love for you to buy right now!) but I pastored in Northeast Arkansas.  It took being well-coordinated on Sunday mornings to make the day work.  We were sitting around Friday night and it clicked: Why wait?  We had nothing Saturday that we couldn’t just make sure we were aware of the time difference, and that would give us the whole day to adapt, and we wouldn’t forget.

Ever since then, time change weekends typically involve a day or so of Hibbard Standard (or Hibbard Daylight) Time.  For example, we “fell back” this morning, and will spend all day an hour behind everyone else.  This is actually beneficial, because the Arkansas Razorbacks play at 6:00 Central Time tonight, and the game would not end before bedtime for the kids.  However, on Hibbard Standard Time (HST), they start at 5, and the kids don’t go to bed until 8, so barring any major lightning delays, we’ll be on espn3.com watching the game!

Basically, for the day, we’ll have to be aware of our time difference, but we’ll live just an hour off the people around us.  We will take responsibility to make sure that we interact appropriately, such as realizing that the local post office closes at 815 HST, and so we won’t get that package mailed today!  It works for us, besides the fact that for us, today the time is right on: noon is when the sun will be overhead.

All it took for us to get to this point was for us to realize that we can live our life a little off-center from the rest of our culture.

And if you know I’m a preacher, you see where this going, right?

In what ways are we living synchronized with our culture?  In what ways do we have to do this, and it what ways do we not have to?  Not just on things that are unChristian (those should be non-negotiable), but in things that we can claim are ok, but just become a bit of a trouble?  Are there ways that we should, perhaps, detach from the times, just a bit?

Or are we so caught up changing with the times that we hardly notice what is happening to us?

 

Doug

2 comments:

  1. Love your comment about living a little off-center.

    You know, a "peculiar" people...

    Julie

    ReplyDelete
  2. We are supposed to be that....even those there's not a lot of definition to it!

    ReplyDelete

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