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Quote by Cole Arthur Riley

“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.”

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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“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.”

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“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.”

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