gather: Plough Monday
Ploughman's supper, blessing the plough, and wassailing
I will go with my father a-ploughing
To the green field by the sea,
And the rooks and the crows and the sea-gulls
Will come flocking after me.
I will sing to the patient horses
With the lark in the white of the air,
And my father will sing the plough-song
That blesses the cleaving share.Joseph Campbell, excerpt from the poem “I Will Go With My Father”
For the past few years, I’ve hosted a Liturgical Life group. We’re a diverse gathering - of all ages, from a variety of denominations, learning alongside each other and working to graft the traditions of the liturgical calendar into our own varied circumstances.
As we gathered to celebrate Plough Monday together this January, our group was on the heels of a really sweet anniversary: the end of 2025 marked 24 consecutive months of celebrating together.1 And, though our gatherings are absolutely not about the ticking-off of boxes, this consistency marked some incredible momentum toward community for my own very introverted personality (traditionally, consistent gatherings would have been anathema to me!)
And, as I tell everyone who comes month by month: this is only made possible by the co-creation that occurs with all of us together. I can’t do it on my own.
Anyway: as you know, I’m not a stickler when it comes to celebrating the holidays of our calendar on their ‘exact’ day - the exactitude we have in the modern world tends to be made possible only through the precision of technology, and our forebears were far more comfortable with the idea of each holiday being a “tide”: a miniature season within a season.
So, to celebrate Plough Monday, we gathered on a gloriously clear-weathered Saturday…we couldn’t have hoped for better winter weather.
Join me for a peek into our Plough Monday celebration…from a ploughman’s dinner, to a candlelit blessing of the plough, to some good old-fashioned wassailing…