I first attached to Cole Arthur Riley when she started publishing Black Liturgies during the pandemic, a space for Black spiritual words of liberation, lament, rage, and rest (I admit, I follow those posts on Facebook because I’m not cool enough to remember to visit Instagram).
These artfully curated meditations have been a lifeline for me. They walk a careful balance between realism and grace, awareness of racial injustice and redemptive ways forward, and they are precisely the form more of our brief social media encounters could be stewarded—they make me better.
In spite of some ongoing health struggles and the pandemic, Cole Arthur Riley made use of the last year to then also write this incredibly stirring book. It launched last month and even rose to a presence on the New York Times Bestseller list. Next weekend, she will be in conversation with Krista Tippett on On Being (at NPR). Side note: On Being is hands-down the best spiritual podcast available.
This Here Flesh is hard to categorize. It’s a series of essays that are also a kind of non-chronological memoir. I’ve been finding I have to really slow down to read the book, not necessarily because it is philosophically complicated, but because it is emotionally intelligent, and it takes me time to process and integrate many of her core insights.
For example:
“I wonder if God feels as alienated from us as we do from God. Sometimes it cracked me up to think of the stories that describe Christ just boldly inviting himself over to people’s houses for dinner. Roaming around telling people to stop everything and follow him. Multiplying food, but making everyone sit down in groups to eat it. He knew how to make his own belonging. Do we?” (75)
Quotes like this sit down on pages throughout the book, ranging widely and gently between meditation on the author’s own life, spirituality, and the human condition. It’s not logically cohesive in the typical format of non-fiction. It’s more like prose poetry. It’s gorgeous and true.
If you are seeking one read this season that might improve the condition of your soul, or at least serve as gentle friend in a difficult season, this is the book. One final quote, this time a photo from the book itself as small if less artful homage to the Instagram quotes that started it all.