"This Here Flesh" by Cole Arthur Riley

For the second time this year, I read a book that I felt saw me. It should not come as a surprise to me, I am not special or unique across the vast expanse of humanity. Yet every time it still surprises me how I can sit and listen or read or look and I can feel resembled, represented, and therefore relieved. One friend said all of life boils down to love, my mom speaks to the necessity of community, another teacher in the long litany of teachers says art is about connecting to one another. I am the intersection of all these people, a garden where all these seeds are planted, the recipient of infinite beautiful gifts in the form of words and images and books.

This book was one of those gifts.

It took me a couple years to come around to it and I think it’s funny how even that avoidance sort of resembles this author’s work. When it first arrived on my doorstep, I immediately scooped it up and dove into the first few pages. But at that time my spirit was not ready for it and I was in no position to force things like it on myself. Faith came easy to me when I was younger. It took no struggle and I breathed it like air into my lungs. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve learned the way in which faith can also mean struggle and wrestling, while also meaning breath (just more like panting or gasping or catching). This does not make my faith weaker (I don’t think anyways), just different.

This book was not lightning to my world, so it took me a moment to find it in my memory so many months after having read it. But it comes up in casual conversation about a long table at the end of days. It sits deep in the dirt of my life and enriches the soil meant to grow good things in me.

…silence and stillness. It has reminded me what an empty spiritual life will manifest from these virtues alone. I cannot sustain belief on my own. And I’m learning sometimes the most sacred thing to do is shout. … People think liberation is a future unfolding before us. But the path to freedom stretches out in both directions. It is what you’ve inherited, your first and last breath. Walk backward and graze your gramma’s face, unshackle your father from the bathroom floor. Go ahead and cry, flip the table, and then repair it in time for the feast. If it’s freedom you’re after, go marvel at the sky, then look down at your own marvelous hands. Rest your souled body with another sacred body and tell each other the truth: Your dignity cannot be chained. -Cole Arthur Riley

In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass.

-Toni Morrison, Beloved