Encountering Truth, Encountering Liberation: A Review of This Here Flesh and Black Liturgies by Cole Arthur Riley
This was originally published for Fidelia. You can preview it here and read the rest by clicking the link here or below!
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.
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.
