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Quote by Cole Arthur Riley

“People who truly know how to wonder don't expend a great deal of energy talking about it; they are off catching snowflakes on hot tongues. They're folding themselves in half to smell the sweet potatoes in the oven just one more time. I no longer try to convince someone of the delight of soup dumplings; I take them to Dim Sum Garden on Race Street in Philly and let them watch me slurp. I let the steaming miracle broth run down my face and lap it up in remembrance. I think awe is an exercise, both a doing and a being. It is a spiritual muscle of our humanity that we can only keep from atrophying if we exercise it habitually.”

Quote by Cole Arthur Riley

Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us

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Cole Arthur Riley

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“For me, the story of God becoming body is only matched by God's submission to the body of a woman. That the creator of the cosmos would choose to rely on an embodied creation. To be grown, fed, delivered—God put faith in a body. In Mary's muscles and hormones, bowels and breasts. And when Christ's body is broken and blood shed, we should hold in mystery that first a woman's body was broken, her blood shed, in order to deliver the hope of the world into the world.”

ActivismBelovedBlack Lives MatterBlack AuthorsToni MorrisonCole Arthur RileyBlack LiturgiesThis Here Flesh
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“White anger is something else. It can spit on a kid and appear victim enough to have someone else thrown off the bus. White rage, like all rage born not in defense of dignity but in defense of oppressive power, is manipulative. It is one of many examples of the difference between anger that dominates and anger that liberates […] Anger that dominates relies on fear tactics and abuse to live. It makes no demand of the world except that it bow. This is often because it fears being ruled or overpowered itself. This is no excuse. Holy anger is that which liberates. It marches, chants, and flips tables, demanding wrong be called by its rightful name. It is both passion and calculation, longing for more but for the sake of justice and dignity.”

ActivismBelovedBlack Lives MatterBlack AuthorsToni MorrisonCole Arthur RileyBlack LiturgiesThis Here Flesh
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“Our hope can be only as deep as our lament is. And our lament as deep as our hope. Now there is a distinction to be made between true lament and the more sinister form of sadness we know as despair. Despair is lament emptied of hope. It is a shell that invites the whole of your soul to dwell in its void. Many of us will visit this shell, but despair depends upon our staying. With no framework for healthy lament, I was a prisoner to sadness. Even still, it's not good to drag someone from their lament out of fear of despair. In fact, being forced too quickly out of lament can drag the soul into despair in secret. We are left to wander in sadness but without a confidant to help guide us out of the void.”

ActivismBelovedBlack Lives MatterBlack AuthorsToni MorrisonCole Arthur RileyBlack LiturgiesThis Here Flesh
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“Stillness makes for a capable mirror. Look down in a rough and fast current, and you won’t see a thing. Still water allows you to lean in without danger and really see yourself. And in doing so, you may remember a liberty over yourself that is easily forgotten when things are jostling about.”

ActivismBelovedBlack Lives MatterBlack AuthorsToni MorrisonCole Arthur RileyBlack LiturgiesThis Here Flesh
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“Solitude can be a profound teacher. It can teach us how to hold ourselves—how to affirm ourselves and listen. How much is the sound of your own voice worth? And yet, we were made for belonging. Maybe you’ve heard it said that you need to learn how to be alone before you can be with someone. I say you have to learn how to be with and part of something in order to know how to be alone. I think it is only out of a deep anchoring in community that one can be free to explore the solitary.”

ActivismBelovedBlack Lives MatterBlack AuthorsToni MorrisonCole Arthur RileyBlack LiturgiesThis Here Flesh Spirituality
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“I’m learning to befriend my body again. It does not always move the way I want it to, but I have made a commitment that if it ceases to move at all, if I lose all control and agency, if my hands go numb in the night and never wake again, even still I will not forsake my body. To be people capable of extending welcome to the body, even those bodies the world discards and demeans, is to be people of profound liberation. By this we will know our faith: We will stay whole.”

ActivismBelovedBlack Lives MatterBlack AuthorsToni MorrisonCole Arthur RileyBlack LiturgiesThis Here Flesh
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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