Greeting card giveaway with your {bits & pieces}!
The weekly “little of this, little of that” feature here at Like Mother, Like Daughter!
(This will all look and work better if you click on the actual post and do not remain on the main page.)
Do you love sending just the right greeting card?
I’m offering a sweet giveaway for two readers. One reader will receive a pack of three letter-pressed “Dominus Vobiscum” (“God be with you” in Latin) cards. Another reader would receive a pack of four assorted Catholic cards, (Mother’s Day, RIP, Confirmation, St. Valentine’s Day).
These cards are hand-drawn designs by Elizabeth Lemme — you can take a peek at her and see the array of pretty things she has.
Elizabeth says:
I’m a convert to Catholicism. I was led to Catholicism in part by studying Gregorian chant in graduate school! I joined my housemate’s schola and observed how beautifully chant wove into the liturgy. Then, I was toast after reading the Church Fathers, Chesterton, Robert Hugh Benson, re-reading Scripture, etc. I entered the church in 2007.
A little over a year after I entered the church, I entered a contemplative monastic order. One of my daily tasks in religious life was being a “House Calligrapher,” placing each Sunday’s Mass propers in prayer corners throughout the convent. The process involved Lectio Divina, silence, black ink, nibs and paper. I find it difficult to express in words how profound these little prayer corners were. Everywhere we walked, into the refectory, passing through the mailroom, reaching the stairwell, into the chapter room, everywhere, there was a little display set up of the calligraphed Word of God, candles, fabric, and fresh flowers.
I left the convent after four years, found my local FSSP parish, and joined the choir. That’s where I met the nice tenor who is now my husband! We still sing together in the same choir. Nick teaches music at the FSSP seminary, and I try to keep the home fires burning with our little ones, Anastasia (3) and Aloysius (1).
I haven’t lost the glow, though, from those powerful little convent prayer corners. The combination of calligraphy, scripture, the liturgical year, family life, iPhones, and the internet all inform my present efforts at creating both Catholic inspired greeting cards for handwritten correspondence, and illustrations/calligraphy for prayer corners.
It’s not really silent in family life, but I do my Lectio Divina as I’m able and still make the illustrations with drawing nibs dipped in black Japanese Sumi ink. I then scan the images to have a letterpress plate made. The plate is then stamped into cotton paper with a 1915 Chandler & Price Letterpress. It creates these incredible pillowy indentations into the paper.
My illustrations are inspired by the art of the Medieval, Early Renaissance, and Art Nouveau eras. Their stylized depictions seems to express the other-worldliness beyond our everyday surroundings. Studying the art of these eras has helped me to look at the ordinary things around me in a more extraordinary way.
And… my favorite part about working with black ink is that the fourth finger of my right hand is always stained, just like Jo in Little Women!
I think the Dominus Vobiscum cards would be perfect to offer as a gift to a priest. Or that card — as well as the Requiescat in Pacem (RIP) one — could be offered to a loved one with a Mass intention written inside!
The large heart design has an inscription from a 15th century English love poem that Elizabeth came across while searching for medieval carols and poems. It says, “For weal or woe I will not flee to love the heart that loveth me.”
These cards will be a work of beauty for the recipient to display, and well worth the expenditure when you think of it that way — you are sending art!
For a chance to win your packet, please leave a comment with your preference of the two choices — and if you like, some idea of what you would like to see in a greeting card!
Is there a special design or thought that you would like to see expressed? I know that I personally am longing for beautiful cards that tastefully wish the recipient greetings or congratulations on the reception of a sacrament. So many out there are too sentimental for my liking. These are lovely, don’t you think?
Visit Elizabeth’s to view her cards and illustrations. We will choose two winners by Thursday evening!
On to our links!
A conversation with Leila Miller about what she discovered when she asked adult children of divorce what their experience was. (The book is now FREE on Kindle!) You may know a couple in trouble; do not go along with what our society says, but offer a helping hand. Be on the side of their marriage. They need your help and most of all, so do their children.
I think I shared this essay before, but I find it worth re-reading, as the world turns and we come back to the same old rationalizations, despite their bankruptcy. Evil is persuasive precisely because it appeals to our laziness and refusal to have hope, the essence of the vice of sloth. Somehow we prefer wallowing in the mire to rising up and following the good. Prof. Christopher O. Tollefsen explains how false mercy is actually legalism, while loving God’s law makes man’s flourishing possible.
I’ve recently been learning more about Jerome Lejeune, the French doctor and geneticist who discovered the cause of Trisomy 21, Down’s Syndrome. Abortion is gaining ground. Many states are preparing against the day that the Supreme Court restricts or even overturns Roe v. Wade. People are being indoctrinated as never before about a perceived need to kill the unborn, especially if a defect is detected. Do we have a response to this utilitarianism? I really recommend that you read about Lejeune, read his “21 thoughts,” and if possible, watch this documentary about him. Here is the trailer.
Perhaps your parish could screen the documentary, or your mother’s group? He was a valiant and holy man who sacrificed his professional prestige to defend the unborn. “Today I lost the Nobel Prize,” he wrote, when he stood up before his colleagues and warned them of the coming evils of “prophylactic” abortion, totally in their hands as scientific professionals.
Speaking of quotes, this article about Sigrid Undset has some good ones, very thought-provoking. Even those who have heard of her and have read her novels don’t know that she was also a fine political and philosophical thinker. She grasped the danger of her country, Norway, having an established (Protestant) church and accurately prophesied its capitulation to the evils of Naziism. If you can ever find this book by Fr. Stanley Jaki, Sigrid Undset’s Quest For Truth, snap it up. Jeffrey Mirus has a long article here, offering a survey of Undset’s life and work, with more great quotes.
Our son-in-law John Folley has written about his journey from secure teaching post to working actively in building up a culture of beauty.
“Sex transitioning” is a one-way street, and children are being lured down it. It’s not right. In the 80s, when the problem of anorexia became acute, no one forbad therapists to help young people eat. But today, “therapy bans, originally designed to deny help for kids who seek talk therapy to end unwanted same-sex attractions, have now been expanded to deny help for kids who want to accept their biological reality.”
From the archives:
Perhaps you’ve been hearing more about ad orientem worship, a posture universally found in Christianity until about 60 years ago. I wrote about it here — in the context of a study of then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s (Pope Benedict) book Spirit of the Liturgy. I would suggest studying this book for Lent, which is coming soon!
Some thoughts on the kitchen in my Reasonably Clean House series!
Just for fun, looking over the post about the time I shored up a sagging leather cushion in my thrifted chair.
Today we celebrate two early saints, St. Juliana and St. Onesimus.
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