"From midwinter's burrow,
Send light down the furrow.
Come forth, hidden sun,
For the year's work's begun!"
___ Incantation for Plough Mother
by Caitlin Matthews
The first Monday after Twelfth Night was called Plough Monday in earlier centuries: the day on which farm laborers returned to work and the plow was honored and paraded around the village. During this week when many people have returned to employment after the holidays, it is easy to either become mindlessly immersed in work or to remain detached from it (depending on how committed we are to our job). For many of us, work is a means to an end rather than a craft or profession that we undertook purposefully and in which we actively delight. How can we return to our work with better spirit?
The customs of Plough Monday offer suggestions that can help reinvest both our work and our workplace with fresh interest and vigor. Meditate upon the nature of your work. What tool or object is emblematic of it? ( If you use computers, this might be a pen and paper; if you work on the land, this might be a plant.) Whatever your actual work, what small object might represent it ritually? What is the finished product or effect of your work?
On the day when you must return to work after a period of rest, spend some time in meditation with the emblem of your work enshrined and honored before you: contemplate it and the outcome or final result of your work (even if this is shared by many employees). Make your own dedication to the work of your hands and ask for a blessing upon it.
"Create a personalized and suitable ritual of your own based on the suggestions above."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]
Plough Monday: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plough_Monday
http://www.ploughmonday.co.uk/
http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/questions/ploughMonday.htm
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