Mama Monday #19

 The imaginative prayer walk that I did a few weeks ago (where I ended up walking in my mind to the garden on 20th and imagined Jesus saying to me "Consider the lilies") is one that I adapted from Pádraig Ó Tuama's work when he was a chaplain at a retreat center in West Belfast. 

He relayed a story about a teenage boy who went on one of these imaginative prayer walks and found himself walking through the woods. As he was walking, he was worried because the pathway kept changing. He found himself, eventually, in a dell, where he met Jesus. He said that Jesus asked him three questions: 
How would you describe today? 
Have you seen anything interesting along the way? 
And: 
Is it working? 
 
Padraig shared that these questions that were so grounded in the moment, felt like an invitation to mindfulness. He wrote this poem in response: 

Is it working? 
When you’ve been alive for only
five thousand
eight hundred
and twenty-nine days
 
The pathways are
rarely clear
here where
the roads keep changing.
 
What makes sense
one day
makes no
sense the next.
 
And so
to avoid exhaustion
and to deepen rest
ask yourself
 
these questions.
How would you
describe today?
And
Have you seen
Anything interesting
on the way?
And
 
Is it working?
Is it working?
Always
Is it working?

- Pádraig Ó Tuama, In the Shelter