I am sitting in the Krannert Lobby working on homework on a Saturday, and I do not want to be here. I want to be outside where the weather is pretty, but I am stuck here. However I am considering after I finish this poetry blog of taking my books and heading down to Greyhouse to sit outside in the sunshine. It is 67 degrees here in West Lafayette and for the middle of November that is ridiculous and yet thrilling all at the same time. Every time I look at my list, and realize all I have to do I want to start to cry because I have no idea how it is all going to get done by the various deadlines, and I already feel like I never sleep. Anyways I know I am complaining but it has been rough. Every time I start to panic I just think of Jeremiah 29:11. Ciao. barbara

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.

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.

 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.

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

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.

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?

…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.

Tajci in Concert St. Thomas Acquinas October 8th, 7 pm free admision