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This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us Paperback – January 31, 2023

by Cole Arthur Riley (Author)

4.8 927 ratings

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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

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Root, Library Journal

“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

Review

“Arthur Riley’s quest to discover the ‘necessary rituals’ connecting us to a sense of belonging, dignity, liberation, and faith prompts her to plumb the stories of her grandmother and father to reveal an affirming spirituality rooted in kindness, love, and deep holiness.”—Oprah Daily

“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 . . .”—Library Journal (starred review)

About the Author

Cole Arthur Riley is the creator of Black Liturgies, a space for Black spiritual words of liberation, lament, rage, and rest; and a project of The Center for Dignity and Contemplation where she serves as Executive Curator. 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.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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 referring not to the mere existence of a person in a particular body; I am referring to the historic, systemic, and sociological patterns that have oppressed, killed, abducted, abused, and discredited those who do not exist in a particular body. Whiteness is a force. It moves in religion in the same manner it moves in any sphere of life. In art, it might look like the glory of the American Western film and the lie of white bravado. In global development, the lie of the white savior. These are spiritual afflictions in and of themselves, but in religious communities, when whiteness becomes inseparable from the character of God, you’ll find customs such as evangelism equated with conquering, but admissible under the guise of “love.” You’ll find guilt-driven spirituality, which is obsessed with alleviating guilt and becoming “clean”—for whiteness always carries the memory of what it has done to those in bodies of color, and guilt is its primary tormentor. The irony, of course, is that this guilt cannot be relieved save by a rending of whiteness from the image of God (which the force of whiteness will never do).

In order to rend whiteness from the face of God, we must do more than make new images. We have to persist in observing and naming all the ways this force has obscured the face and character of God. The God I’ve known does not dominate; he kneels and washes his enemies’ feet. God does not make himself hero; he heals and works miracles both publicly and privately.

We also have to expand our understanding of how other cultures and peoples contain the divine. Does God slap the tambourine like my auntie? Do they put butter and salt in their grits?

Some theologies say it is not an individual but a collective people who bear the image of God. I quite like this, because it means we need a diversity of people to reflect God more fully. Anything less and the image becomes pixelated and grainy, still beautiful but lacking clarity. If God really is three parts in one like they say, it means that God’s wholeness is in a multitude.

I do not know if God meant to confer value on us by creating us in their own image, but they had to have known it would at least be one outcome. How can anyone who is made to bear likeness to the maker of the cosmos be anything less than glory? This is inherent dignity.

I do find it peculiar that humans have come to wield this over the rest of creation as though we are somehow superior. I don’t believe this to be the case. Sometimes I wonder if we knelt down and put our ear to the ground, it would whisper up to us, Yes, you were made in the image of God, but God made you of me. We’ve grown numb to the idea that we ourselves are made of the dust, mysteriously connected to the goodness of the creation that surrounds us.

Perhaps the more superior we believe ourselves to be to creation, the less like God we become. But if we embrace shalom—the idea that everything is suspended in a delicate balance between the atoms that make me and the tree and the bird and the sky—if we embrace the beauty of all creation, we find our own beauty magnified. And what is shalom but dignity stretched out like a blanket over the cosmos?

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Convergent Books (January 31, 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593239792
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593239797
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #18,637 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #77 in Christian Meditation Worship & Devotion (Books)
- #261 in Christian Self Help
- #657 in Christian Spiritual Growth (Books)

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Cole Arthur Riley

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Cole Arthur Riley is a writer and poet. She is the author of the NYT bestseller, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us. Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, Guernica, and The Washington Post. Cole is also the creator and writer of Black Liturgies, a project that integrates spiritual practice with Black emotion, Black literature, and the Black body.

IG: @blackliturgies ; @colearthurriley

Twitter: @blackliturgist

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Customers find the book's spiritual truths compelling and soul-healing. They describe the writing quality as thought-provoking, lyrical, and beautifully articulated. Readers appreciate the author's storytelling and experiences that unfold for them. The book challenges and inspires them, encouraging self-love and reflection. It is described as a beautiful gift and treasure to read.

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41 customers mention "Spirituality"41 positive0 negative

Customers find the book's spirituality compelling and soul-healing. They say it connects them to themselves and helps their spirituality feel grounded and awakened. The grace and truth in the book feel comforting, while at the same time calling them to, like, Dignity, Wonder, Belonging, and Joy. Readers appreciate the penetrating insight and "old soul wisdom" that guide them toward liberation. Overall, they describe the book as rich with insight and awe-inspiring.

"...shares her life and parts of her family story in a profoundly intimate way. The tone of this book is so warm that I felt pulled into her family...." Read more

"...The main message of the book is that all of our relationships (with the world, with each other, with God) need to be based on who we actually are,..." Read more

"...her words together in such beautiful wisdom left me awake, held, tender, awed, and seen. I will return again and again to this contemplative work." Read more

"...There is something to ponder on each page." Read more

38 customers mention "Writing quality"38 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the writing quality of the book. They find it lyrical, thought-provoking, and beautifully articulated. The text is described as a memoir written through a spiritual lens. Readers say the words move them and feel a spirit of love and strength flowing through them.

"...The tone of this book is so warm that I felt pulled into her family...." Read more

"...And, the author backs this up with many interesting, well-written stories about herself and her family...." Read more

"...It makes you think, reflect, and really introspect...." Read more

"I found Cole Arthur Riley to be an incredibly wise voice: perceiving, naming, and guiding the reader toward liberation..." Read more

14 customers mention "Storytelling"14 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the author's storytelling. They find the stories engaging and challenging, with beautiful imagery that makes them feel a part of the author's life. The book shares the author's experiences and journey through faith, perseverance, and family ties.

"Riley beautifully shares her life and parts of her family story in a profoundly intimate way...." Read more

"...I need to go back through but this book was simultaneously challenging and healing / Hope building for me." Read more

"...Absolutely. The author does an outstanding job at telling stories, making comparisons and using them to paint a vivid picture in the readers mind...." Read more

"As the stories unfold, and the author's experiences are unfolded for us, we're quietly invited to allow things that may have been tucked away inside..." Read more

4 customers mention "Reflection"4 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the reflection in the book. They mention self-love, memory work, and reflection.

"This book is not for light reading. It makes you think, reflect, and really introspect...." Read more

"...your way through, but rather one that invites a reader to ponder, reflect, and consider at length...." Read more

"...black Christianity wrapped in self-love, memory work, and reflection...." Read more

"Both really great writing and beautiful storytelling woven with deep reflection..." Read more

3 customers mention "Gift value"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the book a good gift and treasure to read.

"...This book is just a gift. Gorgeous writing, accessible and uplifting justice and self-care and community belonging...." Read more

"This beautiful gift was a treasure to read. It is the breath of Life that many conversations around Christianity and spirituality are missing...." Read more

"Such a gift of a book. I can't say enough about how this books is beautifully crafted and theologically engaging. Highly recommend!" Read more

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Britton Carter
Honest and warm
Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2024
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Riley beautifully shares her life and parts of her family story in a profoundly intimate way. The tone of this book is so warm that I felt pulled into her family. The introspection she shares and the conclusions she makes remind us all that we are human and that we are all connected. I feel fortunate to have read this gracefully powerful book.

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Doug D.
Be the best You, not the best Someone-Else
Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2024
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Near the beginning of the book, Cole Arthur Riley quotes someone who claims that it is not possible to be both a contemplative and an activist. And, she took that as a challenge. I believe this book proves that she has succeeded in that challenge.

The main message of the book is that all of our relationships (with the world, with each other, with God) need to be based on who we actually are, not based on who someone else is. Many famous people try to teach us how to relate to the world, other people, or God; and their heart is often in the right place, because it worked well for them. But, what works for one person, with a particular world view, is not going to work for everyone. We all need to improve, we should not be passive, but what that means is different for everyone. And, the author backs this up with many interesting, well-written stories about herself and her family.

Personally, this book was very helpful for me. I have never felt like I fit into any group in my entire life. I have been accepted in groups, but I have never fit in. I always seem to view the world differently than everyone around me (in fact, often this is how I have added value the groups I have been part of). And, I see God in places that other people don't seem to: like moss trying to eke out a life in the crack in the pavement, or a well-posed solution to a math problem. This book, more than any I have read in a long time, made me believe that it is ok, even beneficial.

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Psy
Deep and Wide
Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2025
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I’ve not read a book quite like this one before. The way Cole strings her words together in such beautiful wisdom left me awake, held, tender, awed, and seen. I will return again and again to this contemplative work.

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Psy

Deep and Wide

Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2025
I’ve not read a book quite like this one before. The way Cole strings her words together in such beautiful wisdom left me awake, held, tender, awed, and seen. I will return again and again to this contemplative work.

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S. Wong
Enjoyable, Contemplative Reading
Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2024
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This book is not for light reading. It makes you think, reflect, and really introspect. I was assuming the author was 40+ for this level of wisdom displayed and was happily surprised to see otherwise.

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mlegriffith
Makes you think
Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2022
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I read this book through once, but am looking forward to both rereading it and joining a book discussion group. There is something to ponder on each page.

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4 people found this helpful

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Joe Chambers
Elegant Prose
Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2023
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Well, I don't remember reading a book quite like this. I can't say that I "learned" any new truths. I can say that I understand more of what it might be like to grow up in a world that is tilted away from the people you were born into.

There is a gentle yet fierce tone to Ms. Riley's prose that is hard to forget. I looked and tried to find the section where she describes her grandmother holding up the sky. There are images like that throughout the book. I found it breathtaking. It made me remember a line from Rilke:

"He does not always remain bent over his pages; he often leans back and closes his eyes over a line he has been reading again, and its meaning spreads through his blood."

I found myself doing that over and over again in this book. What a powerful book. I wish every white baby boomer would read this book. They would be better humans if they did. It is one of the best books I've read in a very long time.

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Joe Chambers

Elegant Prose

Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2023
Well, I don't remember reading a book quite like this. I can't say that I "learned" any new truths. I can say that I understand more of what it might be like to grow up in a world that is tilted away from the people you were born into.

There is a gentle yet fierce tone to Ms. Riley's prose that is hard to forget. I looked and tried to find the section where she describes her grandmother holding up the sky. There are images like that throughout the book. I found it breathtaking. It made me remember a line from Rilke:

"He does not always remain bent over his pages; he often leans back and closes his eyes over a line he has been reading again, and its meaning spreads through his blood."

I found myself doing that over and over again in this book. What a powerful book. I wish every white baby boomer would read this book. They would be better humans if they did. It is one of the best books I've read in a very long time.

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52 people found this helpful

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O. Oredein
Beautiful book!
Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2025
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Riley hears the soul and writes it down.

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Verts
Incredible read. Wisdom, vulnerability, honest truth...a step toward healing
Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2024
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I found Cole Arthur Riley to be an incredibly wise voice: perceiving, naming, and guiding the reader toward liberation (from our varied perspectives and places). I think this is a word for our current moment as we are in desperate need to move toward real solidarity, confession, repentance, restitution, and re-humanizing one another. I need to go back through but this book was simultaneously challenging and healing / Hope building for me.

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Danielle Strickland
incredibly deep and moving
Reviewed in Canada on September 28, 2024
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Cole writes with such depth and honesty! Every chapter is moving - and invitation to go with her in an exploration of depth and beauty and the sacred in our own bodies and souls and families and failures and memories and life. What an incredible book - it felt full of breath somehow like Cole had breathed it out and I found myself breathing in…. Truly a gift to expand my capacity for more sacred space for more sacred breath. I’m grateful.

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Veronika
poetic and deep
Reviewed in Germany on January 23, 2025
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Loved every word of it. Very poetic and apt, moving and deep.

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Anne Oliver
Spiritual and emotional sobriety at its best
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 9, 2022
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I loved this book and then bought it for several friends. It’s like no other . It’s authentic. Some beautiful explanations, questions and knowing. If you are in any of the fellowships and know the 12 steps this will be especially pertinent to your understanding and recovery. It is also important for anyone thinking about cultural heritage, race, gender etc. I got to the end a changed person and cried it was over. This book will stay with me forever. I quote lines out of it off by heart now and can’t unlearn what it’s taught me. I felt like my Higher Power put this book in my path. The author needs massive recognition but sadly I’m afraid won’t get what she deserves.This book may not change the world but it changed my world . Beyond 5 stars ⭐️.

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Sandy Conrad
Gorgeous writing, rich theology, gripping stories
Reviewed in Canada on June 5, 2022
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What can i say? I learned so much from this book, highlighted huge chunks so that i could go back and read them again. The elegance of the words, so gloriously penned, supports the incredible life stories of family and suffering and transcendence and messiness. Cole Arthur Riley is a voice of liberation to be celebrated and thanked.

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Abby King
Exquisitely written
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 1, 2022
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This is a beautifully written, deeply personal spiritual memoir. Its truth telling moved something deeply personal inside of me as I read.

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Deep and Wide

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Deep and Wide

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Elegant Prose

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Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars incredibly deep and moving

5.0 out of 5 stars poetic and deep

5.0 out of 5 stars Spiritual and emotional sobriety at its best

5.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous writing, rich theology, gripping stories

5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisitely written

incredibly deep and moving

poetic and deep

Spiritual and emotional sobriety at its best

Gorgeous writing, rich theology, gripping stories

Exquisitely written