Guerrilla disability rock: Sloan Meek and his music

“All right, Lee,” murmurs a robotic voice. “If you’re ready, take it away.”

The voice comes from a laptop affixed to Sloan Meek’s wheelchair. The 26-year-old has cerebral palsy and cannot speak. His longtime live-in caregiver, Wendy Lincicome, spends hours asking him questions in order to craft short speeches like this one, an introduction to a worship song Meek wrote with Lee Anderson, one of his part-time aides. A microphone over Meek’s wheelchair captures the sound from the laptop speakers. It also captures his own voice, in those moments when it’s able to fight its way from a body that won’t cooperate with his brain.

The song is called “I Am for You.” At Durham Presbyterian Church in North Carolina, Amanda Diekman has just preached a sermon on God’s abundant love in the midst of suffering. Now Anderson strums his guitar and sings: “I am the bread of life; when you’re hungry, I will fill you.”