Christian Living
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This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In her stunning debut, the creator of Black Liturgies weaves stories from three generations of her family alongside contemplative reflections to discover the "necessary rituals" that connect us with our belonging, dignity, and liberation.
"This is the kind of book that makes you different when you're done."-Ashley C. Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Somebody's Daughter
"Reaches deep beneath the surface of words unspoken, wounds unhealed, and secrets untempered to break them open in order for fresh light to break through."-Morgan Jerkins, New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing and Caul Baby
"From the womb, we must repeat with regularity that to love ourselves is to survive. I believe that is what my father wanted for me and knew I would so desperately need: a tool for survival, the truth of my dignity named like a mercy new each morning."
So writes Cole Arthur Riley in her unforgettable book of stories and reflections on discovering the sacred in her skin. In these deeply transporting pages, Arthur Riley reflects on the stories of her grandmother and father, and how they revealed to her an embodied, dignity-affirming spirituality, not only in what they believed but in the act of living itself. Writing memorably of her own childhood and coming to self, Arthur Riley boldly explores some of the most urgent questions of life and faith: How can spirituality not silence the body, but instead allow it to come alive? How do we honor, lament, and heal from the stories we inherit? How can we find peace in a world overtaken with dislocation, noise, and unrest? In this indelible work of contemplative storytelling, Arthur Riley invites us to descend into our own stories, examine our capacity to rest, wonder, joy, rage, and repair, and find that our humanity is not an enemy to faith but evidence of it.
At once a compelling spiritual meditation, a powerful intergenerational account, and a tender coming-of-age narrative, This Here Flesh speaks potently to anyone who suspects that our stories might have something to say to us.
"This is the kind of book that makes you different when you're done."-Ashley C. Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Somebody's Daughter
"Reaches deep beneath the surface of words unspoken, wounds unhealed, and secrets untempered to break them open in order for fresh light to break through."-Morgan Jerkins, New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing and Caul Baby
"From the womb, we must repeat with regularity that to love ourselves is to survive. I believe that is what my father wanted for me and knew I would so desperately need: a tool for survival, the truth of my dignity named like a mercy new each morning."
So writes Cole Arthur Riley in her unforgettable book of stories and reflections on discovering the sacred in her skin. In these deeply transporting pages, Arthur Riley reflects on the stories of her grandmother and father, and how they revealed to her an embodied, dignity-affirming spirituality, not only in what they believed but in the act of living itself. Writing memorably of her own childhood and coming to self, Arthur Riley boldly explores some of the most urgent questions of life and faith: How can spirituality not silence the body, but instead allow it to come alive? How do we honor, lament, and heal from the stories we inherit? How can we find peace in a world overtaken with dislocation, noise, and unrest? In this indelible work of contemplative storytelling, Arthur Riley invites us to descend into our own stories, examine our capacity to rest, wonder, joy, rage, and repair, and find that our humanity is not an enemy to faith but evidence of it.
At once a compelling spiritual meditation, a powerful intergenerational account, and a tender coming-of-age narrative, This Here Flesh speaks potently to anyone who suspects that our stories might have something to say to us.
Editorial Reviews
"This book is an invitation into the delicate weavings of family, inheritance, and pain, how they mark a bloodline and connect a people. Cole Arthur Riley writes with grace and gravity. And somehow she teaches us to think of ourselves as deserving of such grace along the way. This is the kind of book that makes you different when you're done."-Ashley C. Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Somebody's Daughter
"Welcome the rising of Arthur Riley's astonishing voice. This is a gorgeous and muscular work."-Krista Tippett, host of On Being and New York Times bestselling author of Becoming Wise
"Timeless . . . This is a book I know I will return to again and again. Through this work, I am reminded I am seen. I am reminded I am free."-Morgan Harper Nichols, artist and poet
"Exquisite . . . Arthur Riley's writing is both transporting and hauntingly intimate as she narrates this important account of generational inheritance. The stories and meditations in this book are sure to stay with you forever."-Ayọ Tometi, human rights advocate and co-founder of Black Lives Matter
"Through a narrative of family and generation, Arthur Riley speaks of a Blackness so beautiful it can't be contained and a liberation that is present and possible. This Here Flesh is an invitation to hold space, return home, and rediscover joy."-Amena Brown, poet, author, and host of the podcast HER with Amena Brown
"In this beautiful, soul-stirring book, we rediscover a sense of awe for the bodies that make us, the stories that ground us, and the delicate grace that enlivens our spirits."-Kate Bowler, New York Times bestselling author of No Cure for Being Human
"This Here Flesh is a gospel to what we remember. This book is rigorous, joyous, complex, and honest, and tells the story of how we get free. It is a story that would not let me go."-Danté Stewart, author of Shoutin' in the Fire
"In This Here Flesh, Cole Arthur Riley reaches deep beneath the surface of words unspoken, wounds unhealed, and secrets untempered, breaking them open to let fresh light through. Her personal anecdotes alongside Biblical anchors are serene vehicles through which any reader will remember the preciousness of their body, their humanity, and most of all, their dignity."-Morgan Jerkins, New York Times bestselling author of Caul Baby
"A wonderfully winsome, heartbreakingly honest, and ever-poetic work of spiritual biography and theological reflection . . . While some theologians will talk in the abstract about ‘incarnation,' ‘enfleshment,' or ‘embodiment,' Arthur Riley's book is a lesson in concreteness, in Black theology, in seeing a...
"Welcome the rising of Arthur Riley's astonishing voice. This is a gorgeous and muscular work."-Krista Tippett, host of On Being and New York Times bestselling author of Becoming Wise
"Timeless . . . This is a book I know I will return to again and again. Through this work, I am reminded I am seen. I am reminded I am free."-Morgan Harper Nichols, artist and poet
"Exquisite . . . Arthur Riley's writing is both transporting and hauntingly intimate as she narrates this important account of generational inheritance. The stories and meditations in this book are sure to stay with you forever."-Ayọ Tometi, human rights advocate and co-founder of Black Lives Matter
"Through a narrative of family and generation, Arthur Riley speaks of a Blackness so beautiful it can't be contained and a liberation that is present and possible. This Here Flesh is an invitation to hold space, return home, and rediscover joy."-Amena Brown, poet, author, and host of the podcast HER with Amena Brown
"In this beautiful, soul-stirring book, we rediscover a sense of awe for the bodies that make us, the stories that ground us, and the delicate grace that enlivens our spirits."-Kate Bowler, New York Times bestselling author of No Cure for Being Human
"This Here Flesh is a gospel to what we remember. This book is rigorous, joyous, complex, and honest, and tells the story of how we get free. It is a story that would not let me go."-Danté Stewart, author of Shoutin' in the Fire
"In This Here Flesh, Cole Arthur Riley reaches deep beneath the surface of words unspoken, wounds unhealed, and secrets untempered, breaking them open to let fresh light through. Her personal anecdotes alongside Biblical anchors are serene vehicles through which any reader will remember the preciousness of their body, their humanity, and most of all, their dignity."-Morgan Jerkins, New York Times bestselling author of Caul Baby
"A wonderfully winsome, heartbreakingly honest, and ever-poetic work of spiritual biography and theological reflection . . . While some theologians will talk in the abstract about ‘incarnation,' ‘enfleshment,' or ‘embodiment,' Arthur Riley's book is a lesson in concreteness, in Black theology, in seeing a...
Readers Top Reviews
Lindsey EricsonRa
This book is wisdom and peace and healing and affirmations of both Cole’s own story and the universal truths they uplift.
ChristinaCLindsey
This book is beautifully written and so poetic. The weaving of her family's story with spirituality is needed in such a time as this.
Amy GeislerChrist
Cole’s writing is so powerful. In the first few words of her book, she locks you in with her imagery and you feel a part of her personal story. I bought one for myself and a friend!
Richard SperryAmy
This book is amazing. It's poetic and prophetic. It drips with flavor. The sights, sounds, tastes, thoughts and experiences share life and beauty.
MRichard SperryAm
Cole Arthur Riley is a gift. I'm grateful to have her words on paper so I don't get sucked into the dark side of social media after breathing through a prayer. (Originally encountered her work on Instagram.) I look forward to keeping this book at my bedside and honoring these meditations by going through them slowly, without distraction.
Short Excerpt Teaser
One
Dignity
A baby bursts out of a great Black womb saying, It is what it is what it is and he is my father.
My gramma used to say, Oh, chile, when your daddy came outta me, he tried to take his whole house with him. He cleaved to her insides like he knew what was his to have.
My father was born smooth. He glides and sways when he walks, cuts his hands through the air in meaningful arcs when he talks, like he's in a ballet. I've never seen the top of his head because I've never seen him look down. He told me from a very young age, Keep your head up, relax those shoulders, look at that skin shine. He told me that Black was beautiful. It seemed to me that he was a man who would never think to apologize for his existence. Some people are born knowing their worth.
I was an anxious and insecure child. I'd tiptoe around with my shoulders cupping my ears like a perpetual flinch. I believe my father saw this in me and did what he could to drown out whatever primordial voice had told me to fold up my personhood into something small and negligible.
Every morning, he'd squeeze my sister and me in between his legs as he methodically parted our hair and laid grease on our scalps. He'd spend what felt like hours propped up in his chair, leaving us with braids stretching in all directions, barrettes and ballies gripping the thick black curls. When he finished, he would lick both thumbs and press them against our shaggy eyebrows and say, You look good, honey. Do you feel good? This was our ritual. And in time, it formed us.
Toni Morrison's novel Beloved has become a sacred text to me. It tells the story of a family, once enslaved, now making their way in freedom as they dwell with the ghost-force that haunts their home. When Morrison takes us back to the Clearing, the family's matriarch, Baby Suggs, preaches a message to all the women and the men and the little children who lie in the grass after dancing, laughing and crying together. After leading them in a practice of liberation with their bodies, Baby Suggs says this:
In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face 'cause they don't love that either.
This is necessary ritual. From the womb, we must repeat with regularity that to love ourselves is to survive. I believe that is what my father wanted for me and knew I would so desperately need: a tool for survival, the truth of my dignity named like a mercy new each morning.
I cannot say with precision when I came to believe him-or if I ever truly have-but the knowledge began with my father and Toni Morrison and stretches back into God. The origin story of the world and the dark and stars that hold it is one of dignity. The divine is in us.
When I first heard that all humans were created in the image of God, I pictured God with a million eyes and a million noses and a million mouths. It was horrifying. What did this mean, all humans? If God walked in the garden of Eden, whose two legs did he walk with? Did they look like mine, with knees black and ashy?
It is not wholly unusual for individuals or cultures to imagine God as being like them in some way. Perhaps this is because we lack an imagination for a being who loves us and doesn't resemble us. Things that are unlike us strike us as unsafe. When I encounter the unfamiliar-a new food, a stranger on the train-I may be intrigued, but I am nearly always cautious. I've no frame of reference for how it might hurt me, what compels it to violence or tenderness. If God is like me, then perhaps she becomes more predictable. Safer. But when we force our picture of God on another, or when God is presented as singular, we tend to colonize the image of God in others.
As a default, I imagine God as a white man. Even now that I know the tragedy and the lie in the image, it seems to be branded on my soul. I used to feel guilty because of this, but what else should be expected of me with all the stained glass and oil paintings? Does the church truly believe that God might look as much like me-gapped teeth and skin like glistening leather-as a white male? It has damaged many to think that the holiest being that ever was looks precisely like the man who kept our ancestors in bondage.
It takes time to undo the whiteness of God. When I speak of whiteness, I am r...
Dignity
A baby bursts out of a great Black womb saying, It is what it is what it is and he is my father.
My gramma used to say, Oh, chile, when your daddy came outta me, he tried to take his whole house with him. He cleaved to her insides like he knew what was his to have.
My father was born smooth. He glides and sways when he walks, cuts his hands through the air in meaningful arcs when he talks, like he's in a ballet. I've never seen the top of his head because I've never seen him look down. He told me from a very young age, Keep your head up, relax those shoulders, look at that skin shine. He told me that Black was beautiful. It seemed to me that he was a man who would never think to apologize for his existence. Some people are born knowing their worth.
I was an anxious and insecure child. I'd tiptoe around with my shoulders cupping my ears like a perpetual flinch. I believe my father saw this in me and did what he could to drown out whatever primordial voice had told me to fold up my personhood into something small and negligible.
Every morning, he'd squeeze my sister and me in between his legs as he methodically parted our hair and laid grease on our scalps. He'd spend what felt like hours propped up in his chair, leaving us with braids stretching in all directions, barrettes and ballies gripping the thick black curls. When he finished, he would lick both thumbs and press them against our shaggy eyebrows and say, You look good, honey. Do you feel good? This was our ritual. And in time, it formed us.
Toni Morrison's novel Beloved has become a sacred text to me. It tells the story of a family, once enslaved, now making their way in freedom as they dwell with the ghost-force that haunts their home. When Morrison takes us back to the Clearing, the family's matriarch, Baby Suggs, preaches a message to all the women and the men and the little children who lie in the grass after dancing, laughing and crying together. After leading them in a practice of liberation with their bodies, Baby Suggs says this:
In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face 'cause they don't love that either.
This is necessary ritual. From the womb, we must repeat with regularity that to love ourselves is to survive. I believe that is what my father wanted for me and knew I would so desperately need: a tool for survival, the truth of my dignity named like a mercy new each morning.
I cannot say with precision when I came to believe him-or if I ever truly have-but the knowledge began with my father and Toni Morrison and stretches back into God. The origin story of the world and the dark and stars that hold it is one of dignity. The divine is in us.
When I first heard that all humans were created in the image of God, I pictured God with a million eyes and a million noses and a million mouths. It was horrifying. What did this mean, all humans? If God walked in the garden of Eden, whose two legs did he walk with? Did they look like mine, with knees black and ashy?
It is not wholly unusual for individuals or cultures to imagine God as being like them in some way. Perhaps this is because we lack an imagination for a being who loves us and doesn't resemble us. Things that are unlike us strike us as unsafe. When I encounter the unfamiliar-a new food, a stranger on the train-I may be intrigued, but I am nearly always cautious. I've no frame of reference for how it might hurt me, what compels it to violence or tenderness. If God is like me, then perhaps she becomes more predictable. Safer. But when we force our picture of God on another, or when God is presented as singular, we tend to colonize the image of God in others.
As a default, I imagine God as a white man. Even now that I know the tragedy and the lie in the image, it seems to be branded on my soul. I used to feel guilty because of this, but what else should be expected of me with all the stained glass and oil paintings? Does the church truly believe that God might look as much like me-gapped teeth and skin like glistening leather-as a white male? It has damaged many to think that the holiest being that ever was looks precisely like the man who kept our ancestors in bondage.
It takes time to undo the whiteness of God. When I speak of whiteness, I am r...
