top of page

STEPHEN COPELAND
AUTHOR & STORYTELLER


St. Anthony Messenger: Harvesting Justice
Julie Taylor remembers growing up working long days on her grandparents’ farm in rural Alabama. They would pick vegetables, but before...
0 comments


Franciscan Media: Off the Page (Season 1)
Ep. 10 | Thomas Moore | A Mystical Christmas Thomas Moore is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Care of the Soul . He has...
0 comments


St. Anthony Messenger: Pioneering Support for Pregnant Women
Charla Hale’s heart ached as she witnessed several frustrated women walk to the front desk and cancel their appointments. “I have to get...
0 comments


St. Anthony Messenger: Replacing Moral Outrage with Curiosity and Wonder
At the start of the 2024 summer Olympics, Pope Francis called upon the world to honor the “spirit of fraternity” that the games were...
0 comments


Franciscan Media: The Franciscan Friar Who Taught Me to Read
There’s a line from the poet Robert Lax that would always make my dear friend, Fr. Dan Riley, choke up. That line was this: “We rose and...
1 comment


Franciscan Media: All In, Let Go
In a recent episode of Dana Carvey and David Spade’s popular Fly on the Wall podcast, their guest, Jerry Seinfeld, discussed how he has...
0 comments


St. Anthony Messenger: Building Peace in a Nation Divided
I remember when I realized a new age of discourse was upon us. It was mid-November 2016. A contentious election had resulted in the...
0 comments


St. Anthony Messenger: Panting After Peace in Prayer
As I began climbing the mountain at the Franciscan sanctuary of La Verna in central Italy, the great Franciscan theologian Bonaventure’s...
0 comments


NCR: St. Francis, Kurt Vonnegut and the radical absurdity of the Incarnation
My 19-month-old pointed toward his shelf of Christmas books, "Boke?" He wanted to pick another book for me to read to him before bed,...
0 comments


St. Anthony Messenger: Shalom—A Christmas Reflection
The first time I took my Southern wife to my childhood home in Indiana for the holidays, she told me she felt like she was stepping into...
0 comments


NCR: Listening with Franciscan ears
I learned to listen at the Double Door Inn. Many times I'd step into that ramshackle music venue in Charlotte, North Carolina, carrying...
0 comments


RELEVANT Magazine: Attending Concerts Is a Spiritual Discipline
Trappist monk Thomas Merton once wrote a beautiful essay titled “Rain and the Rhinoceros” where he meditated upon a rainstorm from his...
0 comments


Chapter 1: That's What Love Can Do
A candle burned between us in a small, dim conference room. “Have you ever been to the Double Door Inn?” my mentor asked. I drew a blank....
0 comments


St. Anthony Messenger: Presence and Surrender
As I gave our son his nightly bath, my wife, Lauren (who I call La La), showered in the other bathroom. It dawned on me: Is this the only...
0 comments


St. Anthony Messenger: The Franciscan Connection to the Stations of the Cross
“Why did Jesus have to die?” the pastor proposed after a tirade about the fallenness and brokenness of the human race. Those at the youth...
0 comments
bottom of page