Tuesday 12th January 2010
The Church of England tradition of Plow Monday has been modernised by the forward thinking Rev Canon Parrott at St Lawrence Jewry in the City of London.
On Plow Monday (the first Monday after Twelfth Night), farm labourers would bring a plough to the door of the church to be blessed. Said Canon Parrott, "When I arrived a few months ago I looked at this service and thought, Why do we have a Plow Monday?"
The modern congragation at St Lawrence Jewry rarely use ploughs to earn their keep. More often then than not, the modern personal work tool of choice is the laptop and mobile phone. With this in mind, Canon Parrott decided that it would be approriate to pray for God's blessing on these modern work implements.
So he delivered a blessing to the new work tools instead. As his congregation held aloft their mobiles, he delivered the prayer, “By your blessing, may these phones and computers, symbols of all the technology and communication in our daily lives, be a reminder to us that you are a God who communicates with us and who speaks by your Word. Amen.”
Behind him on the altar stood four smart phones, one Apple laptop and one Dell laptop (presumably running Windows 7), although details were not available at time of writing.
We can only guess at why Linux was overlooked in laptop blessing. We also wonder whether any of the smart phones was running Google's new Android OS. Perhaps, with their mission statement of "Do no evil," Google is already blessed?
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