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Published on the Feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary
This 25th Anniversary Edition of Joni J. Seith’s charming telling of the lives of the saints in rhyme is once again available to teach and inspire a whole new generation of saints-in-the-making. This special edition contains all the stories and pictures that were first introduced in Cloud of Witnesses I & II, but there’s more!
New saints,
Longer poems,
Better, brighter paintings,
Entire text is in both English and Spanish.
Cloud of Witnesses tells the stories and life missions of 42 holy men and women who inspire us, teach us, and pray for us. Their stories offer us hope and encourage us to be great saints here on earth so that one day we may meet in His Heavenly Kingdom and be united as an ever growing
Paperback: $19.95 | Hardback: $29.95 | Kindle: $9.99
Segment cut from The Rosary – Living Divine Mercy TV Show (EWTN) Ep.102 with Fr. Donald Calloway (posted on August 24, 2024), the full broadcast of which is available here.
“We are indeed ‘surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,’ (Heb 12:1) and this treasure of a book will teach children of all ages that the great cloud of witnesses not only surrounds… but inspires! Joni J. Seith’s book of memorable featured saints for each month of the year, enhanced by art and history about each saint is told in rhyming quatrains. Seith’s stanzas are filled equally with facts and devotion. This book will ultimately remind: we are never alone, not as long as we remember to call upon our saintly patrons. May reading this wonderful book inspire you to adopt new heavenly friends, and call upon them often!” – Annabelle Moseley, author of Awake with Christ: Living the Catholic Holy Hour in Your Home (How Keeping God Prayerful Company in the Garden of Gethsemane can Change Your Life)
“Joni J. Seith has the gift of bringing the saints to life in the hearts of her readers. Her dynamic poems and artwork have brought lasting friendships with the saints to my children, and now my grandchildren. Each poem helps the reader learn, in an entertaining way, the interesting details and facts about the saints who have gone before us.” – Sam Fatzinger, Mother of 14 children, and 13 Grandchildren, and author of A Catholic Guide to Spending Less and Living More: Advice from a Debt-Free Family of 16
“Cloud of Witnesses is filled from cover to cover with charming, effortless, engaging poetry, written and illustrated with exceptional attention to detail. One cannot help but catch the contagious passion that author Joni J. Seith has for the saints and symbolism of the Catholic Faith, which she desires to share with our children. Her book is certain to inspire, teach, elevate, and even entertain the minds of readers young and old.” – Allison Lunsford, author of The Fourteen Holy Helpers
Joni J. Seith is a Jewish convert to Catholicism and is married to Deacon Bob Seith. They are the proud parents of four grown children and four amazing grandchildren. Joni holds a BS degree in Secondary Education in Art from UMD and an MS degree in Psychology from Divine Mercy University. When Joni isn’t writing or creating in her art studio, she can be found playing with her grandkids, praying, and guiding her Spiritual Directees. Joni’s extraordinary story of joy, suffering and love for the Lord, His mother, and the saints can also be found in her book Pain of Grace. Joni can be reached through her blog at painofgrace.com.
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Walking her readers through her conversion from a culturally Jewish background to Catholicism, Joni J. Seith relates her struggle to live with a chronic, painful, and progressive debilitating genetic condition called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. Written with candor, in an upbeat and uplifting humorous style, Pain of Grace: Living and Suffering with Dignity escorts the reader on an amazing journey of faith as shown in Joni’s dizzying, remarkable life. Her story gives unforgettable testimony of God’s love in suffering to a world in great need of this truth, providing hope to many who question life’s purpose. This heartfelt and honest memoir is for all those struggling with depression, despair, and chronic pain–and for all who need to be reminded of life’s true meaning.
Paperback: $14.95 | Kindle: $9.99
Segment cut from The Rosary – Living Divine Mercy TV Show (EWTN) Ep.102 with Fr. Donald Calloway (posted on August 24, 2024), the full broadcast of which is available here.
“Joni Seith was given the cross of Ehlers Danlos, a debilitating connective-tissue disorder. Pain of Grace is her touching and compelling tale of Jesus inviting her into his transformative love through her suffering. Joni eloquently testifies to the words of St. John Paul II in Salvifici Doloris, ‘It is suffering, more than anything else, which clears the way for the grace which transforms human souls.’ Her story is a guide for us all to find His Grace in our pain.” – Most Reverend William D. Byrne, Bishop of Springfield, Massachusetts
“Pain of Grace: Living and Suffering with Dignity is precisely as the title proclaims — and then some. This is a most engaging story of a life suffused with physical pain and spiritual suffering, but even more so with God’s grace and love. Every reader should resonate with Joni Seith’s heartfelt reflections, from early memories of her family of birth, to those of a loving wife and mother across decades of struggles and triumphs as her children grow to adulthood as children of God. Every reader with a serious physical illness should obtain special solace, motivation, and even good laughs in this beautiful story of how all kinds of adversity can be transformed by God’s grace to the benefit of those who suffer and to all who are blessed to share their lives with them. A glorious read!” – Kevin Vost, Psy.D., author of Memorize the Latin Mass!
“Joni Seith has opened a window into the sanctifying and life-giving grace God freely provides through her memoir recounting her many decades of suffering Ehlers Danlos Syndrome with love and dignity.” – Cameron Fradd, “Among the Lilies”
“The words in Pain of Grace uniquely emerged through tears. Author Joni Seith wept throughout her writing because, simply, she was often in agony. Readers will shed tears for a different reason: they’ll be pierced and taken into a warm embrace of the manner in which a person copes and surrenders lifelong pain to Christ. Seith offers readers a profound meditation on how one brings physical and emotional travail – and bouts of hopelessness – to Golgotha. Cheeky humor is spread throughout her story, which makes Seith’s omnibus on living redemptive suffering all the more poignant and effective. The cross is rarely discussed today; thankfully Seith’s bracing tale shines bright light on its eternal weight. Bravo!” – Kevin Wells, author of Burst, Priest and Beggar, and The Priests We Need to Save the Church
“With clarity, charm, and open-hearted honesty, Joni Seith shares her transformational life journey with readers in a way that inspires us to reflect on our own burdens and blessings, and to embrace hope as real, and faith with purpose and celebration. As we travel with her – through pages of pain and perseverance, and moments of discovery and deepening spirituality – we are gifted with the truth of ups and downs and tears and laughter and loss and longing – all of which unfold as opportunities to live wiser, and to know God’s presence and love in a more personal and powerful way.” – Jeni Stepanek, PhD, author of the NY Times Bestseller, Messenger: The Legacy of Mattie J.T. Stepanek & Heartsongs
“Joni Seith has produced an incredibly wonderful book based on a remarkably beautiful life.” – Sebastian Mahfood, OP, PhD, author of The Narrative Spirituality of Dante’s Divine Comedy
“What a wonderful life story – full of psychological insights and spiritual wisdom. A must to give to anyone suffering with chronic physical pain.” – Dr. Ronda Chervin, Jewish convert to the Catholic faith, philosophy professor, writer and speaker.
“Anyone who struggles with finding peace and purpose in suffering should read this book! We all think suffering is the thing getting in the way of our living peaceful lives full of purpose. Joni’s words and personal journey reveal the opposite: through Christ, our suffering yields peace and purpose otherwise inaccessible to us.” – Jessica Ptomey, PH.D. Author of Home in the Church: Living an Embodied Catholic Faith
Joni J. Seith is a convert to Catholicism from a culturally Jewish background whose conversion story has been published in Envoy Magazine and shared on EWTN’s Journey Home program. Joni is the author and illustrator of Cloud of Witnesses I and II, and was the Founder and President of Biblically Correct, Inc from 1995 – 2010 and a member of the Catholic Marketing Network. As a speaker on the subjects of Redemptive Suffering, prayer, the saints, miracles and her own conversion story, Joni enjoys sharing her love for the Catholic Church and Her teachings to people of all ages and faiths. Joni has given Lenten Retreat talks both to Catholic and non-Catholics alike and has taught Theology of the Body to teens. She has also taught RCIA classes as well as CCD. Although Joni suffers with a chronic debilitating pain and deteriorating condition, it hasn’t stopped her from spreading the joy of the Gospel which Jesus has handed down through His Suffering Bride, the Church. Joni’s candid and unique joy-filled way of seeing God in and through the sufferings in her life is both inspirational and contagious.
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“Danny Fitzpatrick practices a poetics of experiential immediacy. Sound and image converge, where ‘the knuckles of my left hand have / split, and dark seeds squeeze / from Greek crosses cracked / into my ring finger.’ The sensitive, sensual engagements with the physical and familial lead into meditative moments where Hector and Achilles feature, how, in ‘Odysseus and the Squid’: ‘The War rhythm / drifted through the dream light / as irons sank into the shadow / like the soul of a murdered man / bending to drink a black lamb’s blood.’ Fitzpatrick has constructed a guide for wanderers, for those who feel unmoored, a map of many voices, where Marsden Hartley’s The Ice-Hole brushes with Don Quixote, Salvador Dali, and Wangechi Mutu. Yonder in the Sun is a book of lived lives steeped in dailiness, the present, while simultaneously enveloping the past. It’s a book of deep engagements with art, with examining what it means to be an American and a human in our present moment.” —Charles Kell, senior editor of the Ocean State Review
“This collection is a beautifully haunting ensemble of poems that each in their own way, offer glimpses of the author and his immediate surrounds; and yet the work operates just as efficiently through elusive imagery, which allude to ideas and slip insights that encourage and tempt the reader to look deeper that mere surface meaning. There is a perfectly pitched tone and rhythm that is at home in the South, but the poems open up into a wider world both contemporary and classical almost in the manner of a gentler Poe. Fitzpatrick commands the attention of his reader through skill and control of the line, but just as importantly, he has a gift for figurative language that encourages and demands trust in his delicate blend of suspended reality and absolute place. —Clifton Redmond, Poet
Yonder in the Sun is a powerful collection that takes the reader on an evocative voyage of light and shadow, loss and surrender, hope and transfiguration. Daniel Fitzpatrick skillfully weaves his personal experiences within the aesthetics of art, literature, and Christianity. Titled after Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night, Yonder in the Sunshines brightly amid well-crafted elegance and sensitivity to free, formal, and ekphrastic verse. Fitzpatrick’s word combinations sing as demonstrated in these lines, “sagging in her sofa’s gentle jaws, . . .” and “her eighty-year ears ripping rabbits/ from reality to thump the time, . . . “—Line after line Yonder in the Sun is an evocation of brilliance. Like Fitzpatrick’s poem Gabriel’s Oboe, this collection is poignant, higher-pitched, and penetrating, echoes the sounds of a double-reed woodwind instrument, where “The silken cups are shining in the knuckled twigs/ of dogwood.” —Jeannie E. Roberts, author of The Ethereal Effect – A Collection of Villanelles and other books
“Daniel Fitzpatrick, who is a recent translator of Dante’s epic journey through Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, now gives us his own journey of original poetry spanning a spectrum through the hell, purgatory and heaven of his life experiences, with subjects ranging from family…to loss… to literary fascinations. Daniel’s poem “Transfigured” is an exemplar of the chiaroscuro of this collection, from the rawness of “resurrected wounds” to the encounter with a “glint of mystery.” —Annabelle Moseley, author of Awake with Christ, Sacred Braille: The Rosary as Masterpiece, and Our House of the Sacred Heart
“Behind the many opposites blended in these poems, a single spiritual landscape emerges – sunstruck but desolate, classically Mediterranean but also of the American south and the Caribbean, inhabited by the ghosts of past masters like Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens, vividly particularised like Elizabeth Bishop and touched by the traditionalism of Allen Tate. Daniel Fitzpatrick is the latest to have wandered in that hot, composite zone where childhood gives way to death and family is the only steadying influence. He has made his world here, taken his stand, and grounded himself in the language.” —Harry Clifton, Irish poet, author of “Secular Eden”, professor at University College Dublin
“This collection of Daniel Fitzpatrick’s elegant poetry is a deeply personal journey into his soul and memories, but it becomes much more than that when we also realize that much of what he writes applies to our own journeys in this life. The first poem in this book, “Magi,” is the perfect jumping off point for the entire collection when it becomes clear that the Wise Men’s search, guided by a star, can apply to us in our own journeys led by our own personal stars.” —Charles Gordon Rex, Jr., editor of It Is My Soul That Sings: Selected Poems of Charles Gordon Rex
“This is a book arrayed with poetic puzzles, full of aromatic words, giving off sounds and smells and inviting us to listen, to see, to scent our way through many and various moments, sketched, observed, like ‘where a snake scribbles its way’ (p. 17), suggesting a mixing, an unusual juxtaposition of words, like ‘the liquid tick’ (p. 74), and a blending of memories, impressions of people and places, ancient echoes and holy thoughts slipping out and through the kaleidoscopic, surreal sense. Enjoy!” —Francis Etheredge, Catholic married layman, father of 11, 3 of whom are in heaven and an author, recently, of An Unlikely Gardener: Prose and Poems
“These are beautiful poems. Daniel Fitzpatrick has the ability to describe ordinary events in startling and moving ways. His poems dialogue with the classics, great art, and particularly the Bible, but always take us in unexpected directions. Yonder in the Sun has a philosopher’s heart, but with lines that will haunt the imagination. What I love about these poems is how this world and the next world rub up against each other as if the poet has peeled something away.” —Justin Lacour, A Season in Heck and Other Poems and editor of Trampoline: A Journal of Poetry
“There is a chastening, an encroaching of night into the senses, a holy agon in all great poetry. In Daniel Fitzpatrick’s refulgent Yonder in the Sun, the borderlines of Being and Memory crescendo into the faraway yet evocatively familiar land of all lands. Our poet lives within the sunset between this life and the next, between the heart’s own transience and the immortalizing wish which carves it anew, in that purgatorio of grace and glory. The poems are a lovemaking within the lifelong elegy of ecstasy, entanglement, and surrender. The beauty of this collection is in the entreating of the other to recover for the first time, the great oceanic trust in the hidden God Who resides in unending wells withi
n and beyond us: ‘You must come close before your soul/swims into view at the bottom of the doubled world./ That second self will float in eyes like altars/ curved as gently as the earth/ to give you back this you/ which is not you, mirrored and multiplied.’” —Caitlin Smith Gilson, author of Rhapsody and Redolence and Tregenna Hill
“A masterpiece of the sublime!” —Dr. Sebastian Mahfood, OP, author of The Narrative Spirituality of Dante’s Divine Comedy
“A delightful blend of imagery, fact, memory, meaning, and myth!” —Fr. Dennis Billy, CSsR, author of His Divine Presence and A Time Will Come

Daniel Fitzpatrick is the author of the novel Only the Lover Sings (En Route) a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy (En Route), and Restoring the Lord’s Day: How Reclaiming Sunday Can Revive Our Human Nature (Sophia Institute Press). He is the editor of Joie de Vivre: A Journal of Art, Culture, and Letters for South Louisiana, a member of the Creative Assembly at the New Orleans Museum of Art, and a teacher at Jesuit High School in New Orleans, where he lives with his wife and four children.
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This book explores the Catholic themes that can be found in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is written for all lovers of Tolkien, Catholic or not, who are intrigued by the richness of his writings and want to learn more about the incredible mind of the author behind them. By understanding the rich background of the faith that gave color to his ideas, we will come to have a deeper appreciation for the trilogy itself and the man who wrote it. Through this exploration, all readers will come to an even deeper understanding of why J.R.R. Tolkien can be said to be one of the great artists of history.
Paperback: $19.95 | Hardback: $24.95 | Kindle: $9.99
“Madeleine Dobrowski offers a compelling case for the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Catholic faith on his development of Middle Earth in which his epic masterpiece The Lord of the Rings is set. She demonstrates over the course of her analysis how Tolkien “infuses the presence of Christ into the values and roles of a multitude of characters throughout the story” while using no formal allegory indicating that it was written against a Catholic landscape. In short, Tolkien’s Catholic faith is the source of the hope his characters find in their fellowship with one another in response to the despair imposed upon them by Sauron and his minions. A must read for any serious student of Tolkien’s work!” – Dr. Sebastian Mahfood, OP, author of The Narrative Spirituality of Dante’s Divine Comedy
“Madeline Dobrowski has written a gem. Her book paves a delightful path for Catholics interested in discovering the riches of the trilogy. This book will enkindle a hunger to feast on Tolkien’s broader corpus as well. For Tolkien aficionados, Dobrowski’s book convincingly shows just how deeply Tolkien’s imagination was suffused by his faith. In particular, I was impressed at Dobrowski‘s rich analysis of the themes of eucatastrophe, Eucharist, and Our Lady. Rest assured, she does not simply point out the well-worn, obvious connections you’ve heard in other Tolkien scholars. In finishing the book, one can feel a sense of gratitude and awe not merely for Middle Earth but for the world in which you sit.” – 5 star review from Tyler on Goodreads
“Nowhere in JRR Tolkien’s LOTR does he mention Christianity, but every page is infused with the themes of the Catholic faith. The book isn’t just about LOTR. It’s also a study of how a creator’s worldview finds a way to shine through his work. We don’t need to stand on soapboxes cajoling passersby to repent. That works for some, but, in my experience, it’s the people who often don’t need to say a word about Jesus who proclaim the Christian way of life the loudest through their humility, friendship, and mercy. These themes are pondered in Maddie’s book. As a novelist, I was inspired and encouraged because I’m interested in telling stories about life-saving mercy and hard journeys but hate how heavy-handed “Christian” fiction can feel. Reading this book made me realize how without really having to try, your faith (if you are being true to it) seeps into your work. That’s at once comforting and freeing.” – 5 star review from Adrienne Morris on Amazon
Madeleine Dobrowski is originally from the great Midwest but currently resides in Spokane, WA, where she spends her time studying philosophy, reading, writing, teaching literature, and enjoying the Pacific Northwest with her husband. She obtained her BA in Philosophy from Boise State University and is currently pursuing her MA in Philosophy – Christian Wisdom at Holy Apostles College and Seminary.
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This book began as a failed article about gardening; however, having written one, several more followed and so it became a short book, wonderfully enriched by the criticisms of my eldest daughter and a “Foreword” by an Anglican author, embracing our communion in the Christian Faith. But it is not so much about an experienced, knowledgeable, semi-successful gardener, as about a writer who goes into his back garden in the course of writing breaks and ends up writing about what happens “out there” and “in here”. It is part of an autobiographical series and so the author looks at his own life as well as what is around him; and, taking advantage of the multifaceted theme of nature, almost locally inconsequential as well as world-wide and geographically immensely significant, he writes “to” and “from” his own activities and the thoughts that break and burst into words. There are little discoveries, observations and themes; but, principally, it is a book about thought taking a start from going “to and fro” into the Garden of God in the hope that the flight of a word will catch the sunlight as it rises and speaks of what is so much greater than itself: an ascent, indeed, on a spiral staircase, “inlaid” in creation, to the One greater than any account of whom can be given!
Paperback: $14.95 | Kindle: $9.99
Foreword, Poem and Biography by Christine Sunderland: “A Garden of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty”
Introduction, other books by this author, and a summary of this book
The First Garden: The Garden of Eden
A poem called: “Beautiful”
Part I: Conversions
The Garden of Eden and the Fall
A triptych called “The Unlikely Gardener”
Part II: Plants and Family Life
A Garden of Delights and The Marriage Feast at Cana
A poem called “Difference”
Part III: The Global Starts at Home
The Road to Emmaus (Lk 24: 13-35)
A poem called: “Time and Change”
Part IV: Eating up the Time
The Song of Songs: A Garden of Delights
A poem called: “Hands”
Part V: Talking Points
The garden of the world and the Word of God
A poem called “Global Gardening”
Part VI: A Question of Science
Biblical Science
A poem called “Shells”
Part VII: Philosophy and Ecology
The vocation to Global Gardening
A poem called: “Clothes
Part VIII: The Identity of a Seed
An Enclosed Garden
A poem called “Tree Seeds”
Part IX: We Are Not Products
The Garden of Gethsemane
A poem called “The Winter Tree”
Part X: The Garden of God
The future Garden
A poem called “Lilies”
A shout out to Mary Grenchus of the Grenchus Foundation for sharing the lead poem, entitled “Beautiful”, on her blog.
“A vision of loveliness, passing through time and space
Like a glance at the opening and flowering of grace.”
“This final couplet of An Unlikely Gardener, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, also aptly describes the experience of reading this collection of prose and poetry by Francis Etheredge. For indeed we behold the loveliness Etheredge shows us, with a gardener’s eye for displaying beauty and juxtaposing this lush crop with lessons firmly rooted in seasoned experience. In An Unlikely Gardener, Etheredge offers a well-ripened harvest of work, filled with the sun and shadow of hard-won wisdom learned over the literal and symbolic gardens of abundant years. Etheredge’s signature literary style is present in this volume in full splendour— journeying deftly from prose to poetry and back again— and his show-stopping hybrid is one that weaves faith and Scripture with family stories and verse bursting forth with tendrils of lush language. Francis Etheredge writes of, ‘Going into the garden with a cup of tea…’ and I suggest you enter this writer’s garden with a cup of tea large enough to fully savor the experience. The Unlikely Gardener sings of ‘The one who comes, you are the one who is already here, Ready and able to save me into the bark of Peter, You who are the Risen Christ, rising in me.’ May the Saviour, the greatest of all gardeners, accompany you through this ‘vision of loveliness’ Etheredge has written, and may you grow closer to Him because of it.” — Annabelle Moseley, author of Awake with Christ: Living the Catholic Holy Hour in Your Home (How Keeping God Prayerful Company in the Garden of Gethsemane can Change Your Life)
“As a lifelong Christian with a particularly strong passion for just about everything outdoors, I found An Unlikely Gardener to be thought provoking, spiritually nourishing, and refreshing. Akin to a beautiful and bountiful garden that begins, thrives, dies, requires work and thought along the way, and then brings goodness again, Etheredge has composed and arranged his own garden of interlacing stories, observations, reflections, and rich poetic verse that bring God’s gifts of the personal human experience, nature, and written word – with reminder of our call for Christian stewardship – into one unique place, An Unlikely Gardener.” — Tom Sunderland, Native Edge Landscapes | MLA, University of Colorado Denver
Mr. Francis Etheredge is married with eight children, plus three in heaven.
Francis is currently a freelance writer and speaker and his “Posts” on LinkedIn can be viewed here. Poetry; short articles; autobiographical blog; excerpts from books; and “Philosophize: A Ten Minute Write.”
For a list of all of Francis’ books published by En Route Books and Media, click here.
See Francis’ other books, too, entitled Scripture: A Unique Word, From Truth and truth: Volume I-Faithful Reason, From Truth and truth: Volume II: Faith and Reason in Dialogue, From Truth and truth: Volume III: Faith is Married Reason.
He has earned a BA Div (Hons), MA in Catholic Theology, PGC in Biblical Studies, PGC in Higher Education, and an MA in Marriage and Family (Distinction).
Enjoy these additional articles by Francis Etheredge:
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