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4.5
This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
ByPublisher Description
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.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.
"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.""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 FleshThis Here Flesh speaks potently to anyone who suspects that our stories might have something to say to us.
"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.""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 FleshThis Here Flesh speaks potently to anyone who suspects that our stories might have something to say to us.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThis Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us Reviews
4.5
“Beautifully written and thoughtful. The ideas on rest were especially insightful. I didn’t enjoy her delving into chronic illness as a topic and though I understand why it was included it felt out of place and like it distracted from the larger work.”
“Cole Arthur Riley is, now, among my favorite authors. Her embodied theology stretches to both directions of history, liberating it in dignity. This book is wonderful; not because it is prescriptive but because it is descriptive. It describes our humanity, bodies, emotions, and stories; affirming the dignity that is already there. Quotes like this change my imagination:
“You want to tell me to love God? Ask me when I’ve last eaten. Come now, you want me to tell you a prayer? You’ll find it in the blood beating from heart to head to toe and home again. Don’t ask me of salvation. Listen to the hum of my chest as I now fall asleep. I cannot see the face of God by rejecting my own” (This Here Flesh, 68).
I invite you to submerge into this book, and in it that you would find yourself. Wait for liberation, and look for it today.”
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