Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Cole Arthur Riley

Quote by Cole Arthur Riley

“I shouldn't need to recite a litany of wounds and injustices and decay in order to justify my sadness. In lament, our task is never to convince someone of the brokenness of this world; it is to convince them of the world's worth in the first place. True lament is not born from that trite sentiment that the world is bad but rather from a deep conviction that it is worthy of goodness.”

Quote by Cole Arthur Riley

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

Work

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

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Cole Arthur Riley

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Cole Arthur Riley. more

You May Also Like

“I have never felt closer to God than when he has tears running down his face. I don't delight in this, but by this, I know that I am seen […] And when God bears witness to our suffering, it is not for his consumption or to demonstrate something. My gramma used to wonder what this all was teaching her, a rhetoric she absorbed from the church. But it seems cruel to believe that God would require grief to make a truth known. I refuse to believe we need to dissect our pain in search of purpose. Sometimes shit is just shit. It's okay to say so. I think when God bears witness to our lament, we discover that we are not calling out to a teacher but inviting God as a nurturer—a mother who hears her child crying in the night. She wakes, rises, and comes to the place where we lie. She rushes her holy warmth against our flesh and says, I'm here.”

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

“There were people who believed their opportunities to live a fulfilled life were hampered by the number of Asians in England, by the existance of a royal family, by the volume of traffic that passed by their house, by the malice of trade unions, by the power of callous employers, by the refusal of the health service to take their condition seriously, by communism, by capitalism, by atheism, by anything, in fact, but their own futile, weak-minded failure to get a fucking grip.”

HumorBritishSatire
Book:Revenge
Create image

“Anger expressed in the interior life is permitted to exist in its rawest and most honest form. It is not kept private out of shame or because it is inferior in status to public anger. Rather, its privacy grants us the freedom to understand our rage without pressure or compulsion to dilute it. It gives us the space to be laid bare and have our anger, like any emotion, refined in the presence of the divine.”

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

“Exterior anger is often in defense of some sphere, person or piece of creation […] Anger is never holier than when it acts in defense of the dignity of a person or piece of creation. But it requires we be more measured and protective of our words—not so that we censor ourselves on behalf of the fragile and defensive, but so that we will be heard by those we wish to be heard by. You can be a person of profound anger without allowing it to eclipse your or anyone else’s personhood.”

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

“As we think about the virtue of exterior anger, we should understand it as no more or less holy than interior anger. It is also not a trajectory. Our raw and private anger is not necessarily reborn into public anger. Interior expression of anger is a worthy practice in its own right.”

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

“Theologian Miroslav Volf once said, “I think the truthfulness of remembering is part and parcel of the justice of remembering… Why do we need to remember truthfully? Because every untruthful memory is an unjust memory, especially when it concerns relationships, fraught relationships of violence between people.” In this way, communal storytelling can be an act of justice.”

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

“The world of justice looks very different depending on which side of disparity you belong to. For the everyday commoner, struggle for human rights is the natural way of life, whereas for privileged egomaniacs, activism is a publicity stunt.”

Social JusticeActivismCivil RightsLuxuryActivistPrivilegedSocial StudiesHuman Rights ActivistEconomic DisparityClimate Activist
Book:Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth
Create image