This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation and the Stories That Make Us: An instant NEW YORK TIMES bestseller

Cole Arthur Riley

John Murray Press, Feb 24, 2022 - Biography & Autobiography - 224 pages

'This is the kind of book that make you different when you're done.' - Ashley C. Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Somebody's Daughter

'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 an unforgettable book of stories and reflections on discovering the sacred in her skin. In these deeply transporting pages, Cole reflects on the stories of her grandmother and father and encounters of enfleshed, embodied spirituality. As she writes memorably of her own lived experiences of childhood and selfhood, Cole 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 honour, lament, and heal from the stories we inherit?
How can we find peace in a world overtaken with dislocation, noise, and unrest?

At once a compelling spiritual meditation and a tender coming-of-age narrative, This Here Flesh invites us to ponder the site of the soul by examining our capacity to rest, wonder, joy, rage, and repair - and finding that our humanity is not an enemy to faith but evidence of it.

'Exquisite' - Ayo Tomenti, co-founder of Black Lives Matter

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LibraryThing Review

User Review  - deusvitae - LibraryThing

The ruminations and meditations of the author about life in America as a Black person, a woman, and a person who suffers from chronic illness, as well as the lives of her father and grandmother. The ...

About the author

Cole Arthur Riley is the creator of Black Liturgies, a space where Black words of dignity, lament, rage, and rest, are curated and integrated with a liberating spirituality. She serves as the content and spiritual formation manager for Chesterton House: A Center for Christian Studies at Cornell University. Born and for the most part raised in Pittsburgh, Cole studied Writing at the University of Pittsburgh. She once took a professor's advice very seriously to begin writing a little every day, and has followed it for nearly a decade.

Bibliographic information

• Title: This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation and the Stories That Make Us: An instant NEW YORK TIMES bestseller
• Author: Cole Arthur Riley
• Publisher: John Murray Press, 2022
• ISBN: 1529372852, 9781529372854
• Length: 224 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Cultural, Ethnic & Regional / African American & Black; Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs; Biography & Autobiography / Religious; Religion / Christian Living / Spiritual Growth; Religion / Christian Rituals & Practice / General; Religion / Spirituality