Encountering Truth, Encountering Liberation: A Review of This Here Flesh and Black Liturgies by Cole Arthur Riley

Post Author: Shannon E. Sullivan

While I was drowning in grief, I wondered aloud to a friend what kind of pastor and activist I could have been if I weren’t in so much pain. She wondered what the Church would be like if more leaders were vulnerable and told the truth about their struggles. Theologian and liturgist Cole Arthur Riley proclaims, “If we have any interest in representing a liberating spirituality, we must adopt a spiritual psyche whose deepest concern is not enlightenment or education but doing our best at telling the truth” (This Here Flesh, 187). Her books This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us and Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human are books that tell the truth. They imagine not a Church, but a spirituality that awakens freedom in community through the sharing of our stories and telling the truth about our bodies. 

The words within the book are gorgeous, and the covers themselves are works of art.

What truth do you need to tell? Truth is not valued much in a world in which politicians and billionaires have and are shaping our nation through lies. Many of us are so overwhelmed by the magnitude of work ahead that we struggle to function. Riley helps us learn to breathe so we can focus and regain our hold on our own truth again. Riley tells the truth about herself, about the love that has shaped her using her own story in both This Here Flesh and Black Liturgies. This Here Flesh is a love letter to her family and to the places she has lived. Black Liturgies continues her story, particularly her story of disability, and it situates her truth alongside the words of Black prophets and poets and alongside Biblical wisdom. 

Her work is deeply contemplative, asking us to really listen to our ancestors, our bodies, and even in the places in which we live. Her work is continually focused on breath, as she includes breath prayers throughout Black Liturgies; breathing is also a common theme in This Here Flesh, as she focuses on community.She writes in This Here Flesh, “I am distrustful of spiritual people who are not roused in their bodies on behalf of justice” (125). Her work challenges us to listen and then follow the directions of marginalized people, particularly Black women. 

I have been seeking to write a review first of This Here Flesh and then of Black Liturgies for a while, partially because I think the most important thing to say is just “READ ANYTHING BY COLE ARTHUR RILEY,” and that is too short for a Fidelia review, but partially because these books are not for me. I am a white woman with plenty of class privilege, and while I have been a caregiver I myself am not disabled- Riley writes as a Black, disabled woman. She offers this specific blessing for trans and nonbinary lives: “May their liberation be multiplied in all who encounter it” (10). In reading such a blessing, I am encountering their liberation, a witness to the liberation of another- she is not talking about liberating me. In reading her work, I have to decenter myself and learn to be a witness to others’ truths.

Riley writes for all of us wishing to stay human, and for people of privilege that means that we witness her tenderness for others. In her prayer “For Black Women who Were Taught They Were Responsible for Saving the World,” she writes, “Too often we are expected to rescue the world from its own ugliness…We are used as teacher, prophet, priest, and therapist, all without compensation. We are tired. Let us reclaim ourselves” (160). Such a prayer is an indictment for me, as a white woman, of the times I have gone to even Riley herself as a writer to rescue the world from its ugliness. This is not a prayer for me, but I can read it and check my privilege. I can read it and hear the truth that I need to decenter myself. 

What truth do you need to tell? Riley leaves room at the end of Black Liturgies for readers to write their own liturgies, reminding us that we are  freed  in our truth-telling, together. Reading both her books together, even without the guiding questions and suggestions in her template, provides a blueprint for embodied living focused on liberation that creates community. She continues to do so on social media, offering liturgies to a hurting world and encouraging us to continue to breathe. She shows us that in our breathing, in our connection with wisdom and ancestors, we can be strengthened and emboldened to speak truth even in the persistence of the world’s lies. For those who are privileged, it means creating room for others to breathe. For those who are not in the center, it means claiming stories loudly and telling the truth. What could our communities look like if we told the truth about our struggles? Riley’s work invites us to imagine- and then speak into being.  

Riley’s body of work, including both books and her social media presence, multiply liberation in those who encounter it.