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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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“A Black woman I admire once drew me into a line from Jeremiah 9:20 that says, ‘Hear, O women ... teach to your daughters a dirge, and each to her neighbour a lament.’ When she told me this, two things occurred to me. The first: Lament is intergenerational. The second: It is something that can be taught.”

LiberationCole Arthur RileyThis Here Flesh SpiritualityAnd The Stories That Make Us
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one is expected to write; surely one can only write the book that is there to be written. (Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935)”

WritingHonestyIntegrityExpectationsCreative ProcessSelf ExpressionOn WritingSelling OutPandering
Book:The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist
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“We are born knowing how to cry, but it takes another to teach us how to cry well and with purpose. As we watch our elders cry, we are learning. Sister June taught me how to grieve with my body. She taught me how to feel the tears on my face and not wipe them away.”

LiberationCole Arthur RileyThis Here Flesh SpiritualityAnd The Stories That Make Us
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“I think the terror of bonds of friendship is that just as they can be chosen, they can be unchosen. You might say this of all bonds, but in friendship the risk is perhaps felt more acutely. I’m convinced that in most bonds it is not conflict we fear; it is abandonment after conflict. We fear it because we know something is at risk. For this reason, we can become cruellest to those we know will stay. And we resort to flattery or appeasement for those we are uncertain will do so. This can lead us to drink from shallow waters. Durable friendship is a bond that is able to endure both truth-telling and conflict. Bonds without these things become brittle.”

LiberationCole Arthur RileyThis Here Flesh SpiritualityAnd The Stories That Make Us
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“Solidarity is a group that stands together, and would do so for even its weakest member. It is that community which resists the intoxicating lie of individualism—we live for ourselves and by ourselves. Solidarity dismisses self-preservation in favour of a new way—to sense the injustice, need, or glory of any one part as the unflinching responsibility of the collective.”

LiberationCole Arthur RileyThis Here Flesh SpiritualityAnd The Stories That Make Us
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“We can see a mirror, and it’s doing its best—but that is not your face, just an image of it, reversed and distorted […] We need other people to see our own faces—to bear witness to their beauty and truth. God has made it so that I can never truly know myself apart from another person. I cannot trust myself to describe the curve of my nose because I've never seen it. I want someone to bear witness to my face, that we could behold the image of God in one another and believe it on one another's behalf. Audre Lorde said, "Without community there is no liberation." There is no promised land without a multitude. You think you can get there alone, and maybe by some rare chance you do. But what will become of the promise when it is collapsed by loneliness? Who is going to drink all that milk and honey with you? Look down in the cool, running stream. You cannot see yourself.”

LiberationCole Arthur RileyThis Here Flesh SpiritualityAnd The Stories That Make Us
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“But if the system is the problem, the truth is that there will not be satisfactory answers in the here and now for lots of people. That is one of the (painful) ways you know that the problem is systemic. Which means that either you build forward no matter what, or you lose. Period.”

Systemic Change2013Systemic Problem
Book:What Then Must We Do?: Straight Talk about the Next American Revolution
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