Authors /
Beth Merrill Neel
Beth Merrill Neel is a Presbyterian pastor. She blogs at Hold Fast to What is Good, part of the CCblogs network.
Foul-weather friends
There are people who can't take crisis, but there are others who only show up for that.
You are not powerless
We have all the power we need for daily acts of resistance and hope.
After the flood
What will we do on November 9?
Leaving a garden
Gardens are a labor of love, imagination, and hope.
Mortal, after all
A week ago I led a memorial service, a celebration of life, for a two-day old. It was excruciating, as you might imagine. It was also stunning and beautiful, as you might not imagine. Pain was real and evident, but more present was the love that surrounded these two parents and these three grandparents.
That service came on the tail of four other deaths in our congregation, all women in their nineties.
Free concerts Thursday nights
Evidently we’ve been reaching out to our neighbors without meaning to do so. It’s the latest church trend—unintentional evangelism.
Every Thursday, our choir rehearses in our fellowship hall, a large and acoustically great space on the second floor of the education wing.
A familiar stranger
We were just about to enter the sanctuary with the paschal light when the pastor carrying the Christ candle turned around and said in a stage whisper, “Aaron is here.” At first I thought he’d said, “Karen is here,” which I already knew—she came to church on Easter even though her mother had died two days before. I must have had a weird look on my face because he said again, “Aaron is here.” And I knew that our second Easter service of the day would now be up for grabs.
Wrestling with my angel
A year or so ago the story of Jacob wrestling the angel came up in the lectionary....
Sometimes we have to let each other fail
My spouse and I are four-and-a-half years into our adventure of co-pastoring. Will it be our last such adventure? I have no idea. Other married co-pastors have written great things in the last four-and-a-half years, and I am grateful for the wisdom they have shared. As we move further along in this relationship, new and subtle facets of working together emerge, and I think about them, and sometimes share them my husband.
There’s a meeting today with the city about some of our building issues, and one of our great members is going and said one of us needed to go with him.
Sighing at the angel tree
Our congregation has, for many years, had a Christmastime angel tree, in which members purchase requested gifts for families in our local Head Start program. Do not get me wrong: this is great. It’s a way to make the holiday a little merrier for families who (I assume) don’t have a lot of extra disposable income.
And every year, our family waits until the later weeks of the angel tree to pick up our cards.
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Preaching: What’s the point?
Often on a Sunday afternoon, after I’ve changed out of my church clothes and into jeans and a sweatshirt, after I’ve had a wee nap in the comfy chair, after I’ve unwound from All Things Sunday Morning, a creeping doubt comes into my head: what difference does a sermon make? I’m not fishing for compliments here. I’m pretty realistic about my sermons and I, like everyone else, am an above-average preacher.
About ten years ago I let go of worrying that every sermon I preached had to be wonderful and inspiring.
To the planter of trees
Two of my frequent routes include an arcade of trees. Neither is very long—one just a block, the other maybe a quarter-mile. But even when the branches are bare, the trees form this graceful archway that we drive through.
As I went though one the other day, I started wondering about the person or persons who planted those trees.
Heart's desire
For months, at the urging of my spiritual director, I have been praying to find my heart’s desire, to find that thing (not a person—I have those) that inspires me, energizes me; my flow. But you pray for something long enough, and the prayer goes unanswered, and eventually you stop praying for the thing.
Many waters cannot quench love
Recently I asked my Facebook world what they were hankering to read a post about; the answers were few. But two friends both said they wanted to read something about love. One of them, a former college professor of mine and a drama queen in the absolute best sense of the term, said this, “The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.” I don’t think my former professor is a religious sort of person, but her suggestion immediately took me to the Song of Songs.