for you are my God, you are the one who feeds me with the everlasting bread of life. I love Sunday mornings, there is something sacred and beautiful about them. Sunday is a day of romance, it is the day where I fall deeper in love with my Savior, and it is the day he woos my broken heart, he places himself on my tongue, he abides in me. This morning I went to St. Ann’s with Bryan, and due to confusion about a mass time, were very early, but as I knelt in a hushed church, I felt as if I were a lover with stolen moments. I have teasingly told my friends I believe the consecration of the bread and wine into His Body and Blood, to be the most romantic moment, we can achieve in this world. For in the moment Love is made manifest, and by receiving it, Love dwells among us.
Father Dominic, was talking about how the widow was not very wise when she gave her remaining supplies to Elijah because the village was not going to support, however because of her faith, God ensured she never ran out of oil and flour. As I stood there singing next to Bryan I realized that I want to give him my oil and flour, so I can feed him my Lord. He is forever filling my jar of oil. The charity I have experienced through my friends here at Purdue and at home, is overwhelming at times.
So on this Sunday morning, I offer up what I have so that I may surrender what I cling to, so that he can make thousands of little cakes out of it. So as I sit here and sip my vanilla latte I know that God knows my future, and he knows what makes me smile, and he knows my heart. And so I am going to give him my oil and my flour, because I trust that he will “feed” me.
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Epiphany
Prose, the vanity of love
is incomparable, trivial, as if the
voice can ache thousands of gray
suns from the bottom
of the sea. Poseidon hears
confession. The ocean dances on immature
evenings, timid against eroded shores.
Sinuous lines soar like
miracles.
To voice love is to answer
silence, who lives on the bread
of destiny. Call Aphrodite—
the heart is no match for its own shadow.
Life is awakening, touching.
Rise like incense naked, beautiful
left cold like a fresh wound’s
smoldering fire.
And you, chosen for death, a
strange beauty, the sought
after city, open beneath You.
You hover on winds
of levitation laid out before you.
Become someone whole.
Notice the eternal beneath
an alien rib. Upon utterance
you sacrifice ones remains.
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I am utterly exhausted, and I want to go back to bed but I have a Modern Arabic Fiction midterm at 9:30 and I have been up since 5:15 because I had to study before my 8:30 class. So I went to Einstein’s for coffee and a bagel, but now I have class in 50 minutes and I am falling asleep. And I haven’t finished studying. And I just wanted to complain to someone.
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Life truly is beautiful
There is something about Sundays that always improve my mood and overall outlook on life. Ever since I was little, my family always went to mass in the morning, and lately for the past month I have noticed that when I go to mass in the morning versus the evening so much more is accomplished. And Sunday never feels quite like Sunday, when I am going to mass in the evening.
However this morning I was at mass at Saint Mary’s with a good friend of mine, and I found something that Father said to be beautiful. Today was the sunday for the priesthood, and he was talking about how we, as a baptized Christian, are all called to partake in the common priesthood. He said that often, the sacrament of marriage in looked upon as a default, as if the person wasn’t good enough to be a priest or sister. Yet he reminded the congregation that this is not the case, that one cannot look at the sacrament in this way. It is not giving it the respect that it deserves. He said that one should be able to look at one’s spouse and say to them, I discerned religious life and I discerned that God was calling me to the vocation of marriage. And then he led me to you to share in that vocation. This stunned me in a way, for how often is it the case that we do consider marriage the default. And this is painfully obvious when we see images reducing marriage to the arguments over whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher, or whose fault it is that the milk was left at the grocery store. However marriage is not simply two people living together, raising a family, it is two people who God has placed in a grace filled union, so that each might inspire the other to live a holy life. Sometimes it frustrates me when you hear someone say, oh I am only going to get married so why do I have to strive to live the commandments in the same way. I am not as holy as a priest, so why do I have to try. My brothers and sisters, this is exactly what Father is pointing at. Marriage is not the default, it is a vocation that must be discerned like any other. It something to be respected and admired, it is to see Christ and his sacrificial love for the Church in the eyes of our beloved, and it is to take that idea of sacrificial love into our own lives, and seek to share it with the spouse God has intended. Have a beautiful Sunday. barbaralisette
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Breil Bloom: One Jewel Two Souls
This is an Italian commercial featuring a necklace that becomes two, and my old italian dotoressa told me about it, and I thought it was lovely.
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So I succumbed and am now on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lisettetherese. In a fiction reading at the Lafayette Library the other day Micheal Martone was reading, director of the Creative Writing Department at University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, he told us he had a fascination with postcards, and consequently has written an entire book on them. However I found this one statement to be especially humourous, he said a postcard is an analog text message, or even better a tweet, referring to twitter. So I shall now tweet, and perhaps a poem will come out of it. Shall I say I am twitterpatted over all this change?
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This is my 200th post….
…and I feel as if I should say something profound. But as soon as I want to say something profound the profoundness of the thought flees like fog under fiery sun. Tonight as I was sitting in front of the eucharist at st.thomas in adoration, I realized that I want my poetry to point to Christ, I want to be the translucent medium through which those can see His Love and Hope. It seems so easy to begin to think that it is the “I” that is responsible for the work. However it is never the “I” for every gift we are given through him and in turn offer our lives back to him. The point of my poetry is not is essence to draw attention to myself, but rather to draw attention to the Artist that has no beginning or end. Whether I sell a single poem or not is too entirely miss the point, for if the art becomes about the “me” and not the “You” than I have failed as an artist and I have failed the Artist. To submit to his will, is the simple truth. This is profound.
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Tajci “Only 16″
Tajci in Concert St. Thomas Acquinas October 8th, 7 pm free admision
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Ave Maria
This evening at mass I took the body of Christ in my hands and I realized how blessed I am to be able to receive him without fear of harm to myself or my family. I was remarking to a friend that it is sad that I can go to mass any day of the week, and often it is a question of whether I have “time”. Our brothers and sisters in the Middle East, and other parts of the world do not have that luxury. To say Amen and place the host on their tongue is an act of love, for it could be the last thing they do. There are young people our age that risk practicing their faith, whether it be underground, or with the constant tension that they are risking their lives for Christ.
Ironically one of the parishes in Iraq outside Mosul is Mother of Sorrows, yet these people have not let the war embitter them, or cause them to turn against a God, even when all seemed hopeless. Rather we see them now coming forward in alarming numbers, having been steadfast in their devotion. And it reminds me that if they, even in the face of death, claim the faith as true, can not I who in no danger not seek to follow the call of Christ?
The Seminary in Baghdad St Peter’s Chaldean is in need of funds, if any of you have extra money from sacrificing that cup of Starbucks consider putting it towards a people who having lost so much, held onto the truth:
Project Number: M1004-S
Project Title: Keep a Seminary Running.
Country: Iraq
Description: St. Peter’s is the only seminary in Iraq. Don’t let it close.
Amount requested: $24,224.00
http://www.cnewa.org/donate-projectlist-us.aspx?locationID=6
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Tags: Chaldean Catholics, Mother of Sorrows, St Peter's Seminary Baghdad
How often have we heard this? Do not all our mamas tell us this when we are putting on our makeup back in highschool, trying to look pretty to maybe just maybe catch the boy in our ap lit class. We stared at them through mascared eyelashes, thinking to ourselves, they mean well but they just don’t get it. Maybe you all were not like this but I recall this scene played out over and over again. However as a senior in college I see what my mumsie was saying. Do not get me wrong, I do swipe on mascara most days before running off to class, and I am simply in love with the new Covergirl lip stains (it looks like you just bite into a strawberry, and it taste delicious) but beauty does not come from the cosmetics we put on our faces. Nor does it come from the clothes we wear, or our perfected societal conversations, it comes from none of these things….rather beauty becomes apparent when we look through the eyes of the Beholder, through the eyes of Christ.
Today was a beautiful autumn day. The sky was that perfect blue, with white fluffy clouds, and just cool enough to feel fallish, but one is still able to wear a sleeveless dress. Since Wednesdays are my lighter days class wise, I cleaned my room and went to the grocery store to get salmon primarily for dinner. However I also got a bunch of orange roses because the bouquets were priced down for five dollars, and well roses are a weakness of mine:)
my roses
I had wanted to make dinner for a good friend of mine, and the menu was terryaki salmon, sauted spinach, rice, and cornbread muffins with star fruit and strawberries for dessert. In my mind it would all be done before he walked in, and I could be the perfect hostess. Well that did not happen. Rather I didn’t start until he got there and he helped me cook the entire meal. And I realized that it was beautiful just the way it was. And that God knows the plan for our lives, what we really want, even when we think we want something else. He is the one through whom we see beauty, and the beauty we witness is the Christ in our lives! So praise him for the blue skies. And praise him for the fall weather and the smell of apple and pumpkin. Praise him for the ones you love in your life. Praise him for lightened hearts. Praise him for salvation. Praise him.
I praise him for the coffee I nurse constantly, and my roses, and my friends, and the poetry I get to study and write. Every day that I wittness the beauty in this world I find myself falling deeper in love with the one who sees the beauty in me, the beauty he created and the beauty that will be glorified in death.
Praise be Jesus Christ now and forever,
Barbaraanne
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