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FeaturedMemoir

Cane and Able: A Retrospective Leading Me Somewhere

My work with RCA Disability Concerns has forced me to wrestle in deeper ways with ableism—the subtle, pervasive bias evident in attitudes, actions, or systems that consider a person with a disability as defective, broken, and “less than.” When I was hired in 2009 to launch this new RCA ministry, I resisted emphasizing the church's many ableist practices because it seemed too difficult to start there. But as I’ve observed and repeatedly experienced ableist practices and systems over more than…
April 25, 2022
Featured

The Voice of your Brother’s Blood

Watching and listening to Eitan Haber, I felt the past and the present collapsing into each other. We were reliving the drama of Cain and Abel. Yigal Amir had murdered Yitshak Rabin, his brother in the faith, and Rabin’s blood was crying out to us from the text of Shir L’Shalom. One drama was interpreting the other. Rabin’s blood was crying out for peace and reconciliation, and I began wondering what the blood of Abel might have been crying. What…
April 18, 2022
ChurchEasterFeatured

Missing Easter

The theme I should have preached is that hardly anyone gets it right away. Like the disciples, most of us are a little slow. I was definitely on the slower side. Faith takes a while, sometimes a very long time, which doesn’t make for a rousing Easter sermon, the kind I thought I was expected to preach. It wasn’t until the sun was high overhead that a few of the earliest disciples began to catch on, and even then there…
April 11, 2022
Featured

Thoughts and Prayers Aren’t Enough

We do have a gun violence problem in this country. In my view, both action and prayer can be appropriate ways to respond. But prayer alone, without active response has literally never worked to bring healing and wholeness to systemic issues in the United States. Ever.
April 4, 2022
Featured

Lean into the Power of Story

As a psychologist, I also know it is never too late to change and create new habits! Oh, to experience the mystery of God’s word as I did as a child—what a pleasure that would be—as would sharing that with the youth of today.
March 28, 2022
Featured

Reflections on the Crisis in Ukraine

There are difficult days ahead for Ukrainians, and the West must not back off from full support of their struggle against the Russians. As Pete Wehner has noted, in this terrible human drama, we are witnessing “ordinary people – including the young and the elderly – acting in extraordinary ways to defend the country they love, against overwhelming odds.” There are lessons here for us.
March 21, 2022
ChurchFeatured

Judicial Business

It has been my lot to chair the judicial business committees of three different classes and now this regional synod. Why should I do this, when I might better spend my time on Christ-and-Culture or spiritual iconography in the films of Tarkovsky? Or how to convert my front lawn into a haven for native pollinators? Why do I end up having to act like a canon lawyer when I want to live like Wendell Berry?
Daniel Meeter
March 14, 2022
ChurchFeaturedTheology

Where Are We Going?

If our goal is not to punch our ticket to heaven and escape this world, but to live into the reality of the new creation, the role of Christian mission needs to be more than just teaching people to say a prayer or understand a truth. The goal is to have people see new creation in us, through us, and around us.
March 7, 2022
FeaturedOld Testament

Isaiah and Glorious and Vainglorious Leadership

A corrupt leader is a cancer cell in the body of a people. Corruption begins small, grows exponentially, saps the vital energy, and eventually kills the body. Isaiah saw this in himself when he said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.” God’s self-disclosure is chemotherapy, a consuming fire that burns clean.
February 28, 2022