Saved by Lael Johnson and
This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
would lie in bed all day, reading and writing and watching documentaries that enhanced my intellectual ego. If I could not have my body, I thought, at least I would have my mind.
Cole Arthur Riley • This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
From a young age, my siblings and I were allowed to travel deep into our interior worlds to become aware of ourselves, our loves, our beliefs. And still, my father demanded an unflinching awareness of our exterior worlds.
Cole Arthur Riley • This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
thoughts and ways were never anything like mine? But each year I know love and belonging—a love that doesn’t require sacrifice at the altar of acceptance—I become more of who I already am. I am liberated into what Merton calls my “true self.” I believe this is my deepest calling.
Cole Arthur Riley • This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
This I believe. That I come from pain as much as beauty. And I don’t have to make the pain beautiful in order to get free. We took the sweetest part of the fruit and we cut it off.
Cole Arthur Riley • This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
Awe is not a lens through which to see the world but our sole path to seeing. Any other lens is not a lens but a veil. And I’ve come to believe that our beholding—seeing the veils of this world peeled back again and again, if only for a moment—is no small form of salvation.
Cole Arthur Riley • This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
He sees people in such a manner that they crave nearness to him.
Cole Arthur Riley • This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
Once possessed, we must steady ourselves habitually in order to see the way we were meant to. For some, stillness will not suffice. The stillness must mature into an inner quiet—the noise of the exterior world ricocheting off your flesh. To cultivate habits of rest, we must discern what noise has found a way to penetrate our soul. And as we detect
... See moreCole Arthur Riley • This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
Labor instead becomes a means to an end, not an avenue for flourishing but a transaction for survival. This is a grim human development, for no one wants to spend their days merely surviving.
Cole Arthur Riley • This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
Even those of us who are not prone to forgetting need this. Sometimes, it is only in the hands of another that a memory can be fully encountered.
Cole Arthur Riley • This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
We are desperate for knowledge of self, but even more, we are aching for the stories that have made us.