Good Life Project - Cole Arthur Riley | Reclaiming the Stories That Shape Us

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Cole Arthur Riley grew up in a house full of loud, funny, and loving personalities, but as a kid, she kept her voice from others, barely speaking at all until she was 7 years old. Still, her dad kept finding ways to, as she described, bribe her to share her voice and nurture her creative impulse, often in writing, from poems to stories and beyond. Over time, as her expressive and creative voice took shape, her lens on spirituality also yearned for a more expansive expression, she began to bring all parts of her life together - the creative impulse, life experience, sense of identity and fairness and spiritual inclination - to write her own blended prayer-meets-poetry, modern liturgies. Then, she started sharing them on Instagram under the moniker, Black Liturgies. Almost immediately, the project took off, growing into a global phenomenon. Her work then led to Cole’s debut book and New York Times bestseller, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us, which explores some of the most urgent questions of life, identity, 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 stunning work, Cole 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. And we talk about all of it in today’s conversation. Her journey, her wisdom, the incredible response of the community, and more.You can find Cole at: Website | InstagramIf you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Alex Elle about how to heal.Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKED: We’re looking for special guest “wisdom-seekers” to share the moment you’re in, then pose questions to Jonathan and the Sparked Braintrust to be answered, “on air.” To submit your “moment & question” for consideration to be on the show go to sparketype.com/submit. Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You don't even have the kind of courage to pursue liberation if you don't believe you're worthy to be free. Toni Morrison actually said this, you know, being freed was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another. And I knew, you know, if I'm really going to, in the end, talk about what it means to experience some kind of liberation, I have to start with this origin story of dignity. So Cole Arthur Riley grew up in a house full of loud, funny, and loving personalities. But as a kid, she kept her voice from others, barely speaking at all until she was seven years old. And still her dad kept finding ways to, as she described it, bribe her to share her voice and nurture her creative impulse, often in writing from poems to stories

and beyond. And she began to develop a dual passion for contemplative spirituality and also the work of writers like Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler, James Baldwin, Thomas Merton, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou and others. And over time, as her expressive and creative voice really started to take shape, her lens on spirituality also yearned for a more expansive expression, one that moved beyond words and thoughts and traditions of the past, and embodied more of her lived experience as a black queer woman who also found herself living with an autoimmune disease that manifested in illness, pain, and uncertainty. And throughout this time, Cole also found inspiration and solace in liturgy.

But for her, it wasn't enough to read and contemplate the words and thoughts of others. She began to bring all parts of her life together. The creative impulse, life experience, sense of identity and fairness and spiritual inclination to write her own blended prayer meets poetry modern liturgies. And then she started sharing them on Instagram under the moniker Black Liturgies. Cole describes it as a space for Black spiritual words of liberation, lament, rage, and rest. Almost immediately, the project took off, growing into a global phenomenon with deep resonance far beyond her original intended audience. I have found myself lost in her words so many times, invited to really

think and feel both more deeply and expansively. Her work then led to Cole's debut book and New York Times bestseller, This Here Flesh, Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us, which explores some of the most urgent questions of life, identity, and faith. How can spirituality not silence the body, but instead allow it to come alive? How do we honor, lament, 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 stunning work, Cole really invites us to descend into our own stories. Imagine our capacity to rest, wonder, joy, rage, repair, and find that our humanity is not an enemy to faith, but evidence of it. And we talk about all of this in today's

best of conversation, her journey, her wisdom, the incredible response from the community and more. So excited to share it with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. This book, by the way, gorgeous. Thank you. Oh, wow. Just, just breathtaking. I mean, liturgies that you've been sharing online Thank you. some of the topics and some of the things that you explore. Let's take a little bit of a step back in time, though. I'm really curious.

I'm always curious sort of like of the origin stories and what led you to this moment. You grew up, from what I understand, in Pittsburgh. Your dad was a late teenage dad. You have an older sister. And it sounds like you were in a home where creativity was really encouraged. Like the creative impulse was something that your dad and your grandma really took notice of and encouraged from the earliest days. Yeah, it's true.

You know, my dad, like you said, my dad was a very young dad. And if you meet him, like he's not necessarily a reader. He's not, you know, deep in the literary scene by any stretch of the imagination. But my grandma was a reader. He's not deep in the literary scene by any stretch of the imagination, but my grandma was a writer and I was an incredibly shy child, like one of the shyest you would encounter. And I think my father was really attuned to that and really knew I was going to need a tool for expression. And so, yeah, words were just so important to him. He would have us do these poetry contests or write stories or things like that and have my siblings and I compete with each other, but also just to get

out of chores, which I think is a brilliant parental move. It was like, do you want to clean the baseboards or do you want to write a poem about the sun? And so we often would choose writing, which from a very early age became just kind of the source of my confidence, I think. Yeah. I'm curious whether you've ever had the chance to sort of sit down with him and ask him what was his motivation at that point? Because most parents, when there's a chore list, when there's something to do, it's like, no, this is what you're doing. And your dad had this really interesting take. He's like, there's something about developing creativity at a really young age that's really, really important. Have you ever just sat down and asked him, what was actually going on in your mind back then that led you to sort of like really want to cultivate this in us?

You know, since I started Black Liturgies, I have asked him and he mentioned just this desire to give children agency over those creative parts of themselves. I also dance, but to have the choice of, you know, not necessarily forcing creativity, but to really give us kind of an appetite for it, I think. And to do that well, I think there has to be some fun to it, but there also has to be a nudge that still allows them to make a choice. Like if I wanted to, you know, clean the baseboards, I could, but just planting a broader seed that says what's inside of you matters. It actually, I want to see it. I want to hear it. And the world may want to see and hear that. And at a young age, I mean, how did you get that message as part of what was

being transmitted to you? That's one of the things I think comes to me in memory and hindsight much more than I was able to, you know, apprehend it at the time. There were a few moments along the way. I mean, I have these early memories of my dad's times where I really felt like, oh, you just did something special, something significant that changed, you know, your own father's atmosphere. But on the large, I don't think I truly understood it until later on in life. And when I started speaking about it and telling friends about it and, you know, they were like, that's really strange. And it was in that strangeness that I recognized some of its beauty. Yeah. And as you mentioned also, in the early days, I know you described it as being extremely shy. I know you've also written

that you effectively didn't talk to really anyone outside of the house until you were seven or eight years old, which I'm curious when you reflect back on that window, both your dad saying, here's an alternate channel to express yourself. was actually going on inside of me that led me to make this choice for the early part of my years that my voice wouldn't be shared with the exception of very rare moments with a limited number of people. Yeah. It's called selective mutism and most people think of it as a kind of anxiety disorder in children. And so, yeah, for me, it didn't even feel like a choice. There were times I can remember just kind of pleading with my insides to just say something. I have this memory of getting my hand stuck in the screen door. And I write about this at the end of the book, my hands getting stuck in a screen door when I was about four or five and I needed to yell for help. But there were

people, a lot of people in the house and I just couldn't bring myself to scream. And I think it just felt like this restriction in me that I couldn't make sense of. My sister, I love her very much. It's just the most charismatic, fun loving. And as a child, she was just, you know, everyone was enamored by her and the way she was able to communicate. And I just kind of existed in her shadow very gratefully. And so it's occurred to me, you know, some of that silence was certainly in relationship to the other people in my family who were just very loud, outgoing, fun, charming people. And I, for whatever reason, just had a lot of fear in me from a young age. I was very aware of my own blackness, very aware of a speech impediment I had with ours and aware of just

my distinctiveness. And, you know, children are prone to kind of hating anything in them that makes them distinct. And I think all of that was amplified for me in my early years. Yeah. Do you recall, because clearly we're having this conversation and you speak and you're out in the world very differently. When I think about moving away from that and you describe it as not necessarily a decision, there was just something almost like an impulse in you that said, this is the way I need to be, to be okay. How in your life, how does that shift? I'm wondering always, is there a moment? Is there an occasion? Is it just a gradual evolution, a set of experiments that get run?

I'm so curious about that transition. It was definitely gradual. I think I was very, very quiet up until eighth grade, so about 13. And then in high school, so before that, I just kind of existed in the leftovers of my sister's friend circle. And so I didn't really ever make friends of my own. I didn't really need to speak that much, except for in school. And then in high school, I kind of found some individuality. My sister and I went to different schools, and I was forced to kind of make my own relationships. So I think that's maybe a point where I gradually was stepping into my own voice and stepping into some of, you know, my own written voice in classes. But it really wasn't until college that I kind of was able, began to be able to speak like I'm speaking to you now, just kind of organically and naturally. And so I say it happened, you know, slowly, but all at once. And whenever, you know, someone from high school even encounters my work now, they're just so deeply puzzled by like, how, you know, who are you?

Where did this come from? And even my family has said that a lot to me after I'm done speaking or something like that. They'll say, who is this little girl? Who is this? Because a lot of that happened kind of unexpectedly in college when I was away from my family and the people that had known me growing up. I say it's kind of like once I cross a certain threshold, it just started to kind of pour out of me naturally. I couldn't unstop the stopper. What was done was done and I just started to kind of pour out of me naturally, you know, like I couldn't unstop the stopper. What was done was done. And I just needed to learn how to exist in a new self in a way. I'm so curious about this also, because when you read your writing now, it's deeply wise.

It's also fiercely observant. And that level of observation, in my mind, often comes when there's a certain amount of quietness in a person's sort of state of being that allows them to not feel like they need to walk into a room and fill space, but actually be able to walk into a room and just see and observe and notice. Because that allows so much more sort of like hard and soft data to go in and then process in a way where I feel like a deeper level of wisdom often emerges. I wonder if you sense that that sort of like early wiring has been advantageous to you in interesting ways. I mean, I would say so. I've heard it said that, you know, the more observant

you are, the more afraid you are, you know, like the most fearful people tend to be the most observant because you're constantly trying to make sense of these exterior warning signs. You're constantly on guard. And in a way that's, you know, terribly painful and even traumatic on some level. But out of that, I think comes a kind of beauty and being able to pay attention and have a presence, I think, to the moment, even if that impulse was initially just born out of a desire to survive, you know, a moment, it can yield really beautiful things. So thanks for saying that, because I now consider it a compliment, those observant kind of impulses in me. One of the other things, so I guess two years ago, 2020, you started sharing your own liturgies on Instagram, Count Black Liturgies.

From what I understand, though, and I want to dive into that a lot more, You didn't have an overly religious upbringing. So I'm curious, sort of like where does, along the line, where does your own personal curiosity about faith start to sort of step back into your life? Yeah. I used to say all the time, you know, I wasn't raised in a spiritual home and I've started to shift that language because, you know, our household certainly wasn't overtly Christian or overtly religious. We didn't go to church together or anything like that. But as I get older, I'm starting to piece together these kind of expressions of spirituality that I didn't necessarily have language for, that I have language for as an adult. So it might not have looked like, you know, creeds or doctrine or traditional religious upbringing.

But I think my household spirituality was far more about stories. I mean, you see that in the book, myth even. Myth is very big in the Arthur family. And you certainly see that in the book. And this kind of presence and paying attention, which is what we've just spoke about. But yeah, I think specifically a religious interest didn't really come about until I was late in high school. I was out of English class and out of reading, trying to make sense of what I thought truth was and, you know, going on this very existential young first to kind of take over and give me language for things like God and salvation or what have you. And I am grateful for that season, but I've also had to kind of

rewind and reground myself in the spirituality of my origin in order to kind of accept and find these later stories beautiful. Yeah. I mean, so it's interesting. It starts to touch down in high school. It really takes form in college. And you mentioned also a lot of sort of your lens, the early days, especially in college was sort of like the white overlay of Christianity, which was not resonating with you, wasn't telling your story, your history. At the same time, so much of what you write is story-based, is contemplative. So you've got a really interesting contemplative tradition, which is generally old white men writing in a really interesting way. But then also other influences, it sounds like more from the world of literature, that are coming into your orbit at the same time and swirling around to sort of create your own synthesis of what is all of this really for me?

And you know what, I think it was so much about timing. And so I mentioned, you know, encountering a white evangelical kind of Christian space in college. And at the same time, I was studying writing in college. My world was kind of opened up into the Black literary scene. So, you know, I'm reading Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston and James Baldwin and yeah, all of these brilliant thinkers. And then I'm experiencing, you know, a church service for the same time. And so for me, I just couldn't untangle those two very new experiences for me from one another. So when I think about my spirituality, it's very hard to kind of, yeah, to separate those two awakenings.

It's always just been one for me, you know, my Black literature awakening and Christian creedal awakening, I guess. of whiteness and white spirituality. I felt so much expansion and liberation in the Black literary tradition, which, you know, is full of spirituality, is just ripe with spirituality, but it contains a lot more mystery than I was being given in church spaces. A lot more curiosity, a lot more maybes, a lot of, you know of just uncertainty and a lack of precision, which I found really liberating. It was kind of giving me space to breathe in a way that I didn't feel I could in a church pew. Yeah. I mean, that's so interesting because so many people, I feel like, turn to religion, especially when you turn to it sort of like of your own accord a bit later in life because they're looking for answers or rules. Like, how should I live in this moment, in this situation, this circumstance?

What is the appropriate way to say, to do, to act? And they're looking for that sort of certainty. And what you're sharing is there was something that was appealing to faith to you, but it wasn't really that. And it was almost like the Tony Morrison's and James Baldwin's, like the black literature that you're reading was informing, almost helping you understand what is it that I do and don't want to draw from and move forward with on the faith side of your exploration, which is kind of simultaneous. Yeah. And I think any desire I had for kind of a spirituality that was about answers or what's right or what's most true was really born of a desire to impress white male intellectuals who are just so obsessed with, you know, being right. And so, you know,

you choose Christianity, not because of the beauty of the stories it contains, but because it's right. And, you know, I just think that's a symptom of white supremacy really just being enmeshed with every effort that we're trying at every effort, this desire that has to be supreme. If it's to matter, it has to conquer someone else's faith tradition in order to matter. And I just could not be more disinterested in spirituality that's about answers and what you're supposed to think and even what's you know, true or not, what's truth or not. I'm much more concerned with a spirituality that conveys a human experience and that teaches us how to see each other's faces more clearly and to not necessarily make a judgment on those faces, on those bodies, a moral judgment, but instead just

to experience each other in a truer way, which is very countercultural, counterintuitive even to white Christian spaces, I think, and white spiritual spaces. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X,

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Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So as you're deepening into this and then you emerge from college, I'm curious when you're thinking, okay, so how do I keep this going? How do I figure out what does this look like for me?

What does this feel like for me? Where does it take you? Leaving some of the restriction behind, some of the spiritual restriction behind, and also feeling kind of the wounds of racism, of misogyny that happens in church spaces. I think it's very natural and, you know, credible even to want to disconnect from, you know, all semblance of spirituality, all semblance of the divine. And so I think initially it led me into a season of a lot of doubt and a lot of just reworking and becoming honest about what I actually believe or really how I want to move in the world, how I want to experience the world. And at the same time, I started working for an Episcopal church outside of Philly. And it was my first serious experience with liturgy. I hated it at first. I was kind of skeptical of it. There's something, if any of you listening have been in a liturgical church service for the first time, there's something eerie about experiencing it for the first time and hearing these kind of words spoken in unison. And it took time for me to kind of, really,

it took a season of grief and of depression and not having my own language to encounter God and the divine in order for me to really appreciate what liturgy has to offer. And this kind of, yeah, counterintuitive beauty to it, that maybe we were meant to be able to hear, you know, the same words in a multitude of voices without it kind of making a chill run down our spine. And the chill is because we've known like those spaces birth so much oppression, but what if there's a way for that to be redeemed? What if there's something, you know, beautiful about those moments that we can lose and reclaim? And so I started writing my own liturgies. I started, you know, doing that with college students who I was working with at the time, having them write their own liturgies in their own way and really combining a lot of Black poetry, Black art, Black literature with a kind of prayer to God,

which later, much later, became what Black liturgies is about. Yeah. Talk to me more about liturgy. Some folks will hear the word liturgy and know what you're talking about. Other folks who are listening to this conversation will have no sense of what you're actually talking about. Share a bit more about what the experience is. Yeah. So liturgy, I think at its heart, it's just a form for a spiritual experience. It gives you a form for a spiritual experience that usually is practiced in a collective. So it can contain prayer, but it's not all prayer. It can be songs, it can be, you know, chants, it can be silence even, which is a beautiful part of most liturgies. But really, it's a group of people who are committed to sharing space and experiencing the divine in a

kind of agreed upon way. And often you don't, I mean, sometimes you do, but you don't immediately understand who has written the liturgy. You don't get a lot of context or explanation or anything like that. You just kind of experience it. And I always say that it's a really important practice of solidarity for me. Like, what does it mean to read words aloud or even read words internally that you didn't write that don't immediately even make sense to your own experience? You know, sometimes you come across a phrase in a liturgy and it just doesn't resonate with your experience. And I think especially if you occupy a body with a lot of power in social spaces, it's an interesting practice of solidarity to say, this doesn't resonate. This isn't about me. It doesn't center me. And yet I'm being asked to

stay in these words, you know, on behalf of those in the room that this does apply to. So I think, you know, liturgy isn't the only way, but probably because of my background in words and feeling connected to my own selfhood in terms of words and written words, it has been really special for me and a special spiritual practice for me. Yeah. It's like you stepping into the place of writing your own liturgy allows you to reclaim the form, the impact, the feeling, the access to however you define the divine, but on your terms with your language in a way that really deeply resonates because it's for you and coming from you in a way that it sounds like it just wasn't often the case when you were sort of like step into a space

where it was almost the exact opposite. Exactly. And, you know, I started Black liturgies in the wake of the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd and the resurfacing of the murders of Breonna Taylor and Elijah McClain. And so, you know, I was entering these liturgical spaces and reciting words written by dead white men who really didn't care about me or my Blackness on many occasions. And I was encountering also leaders, spiritual leaders, who just didn't feel capable of speaking to my Blackness, to Black grief, to Black anger in a meaningful way. And so when I started Black Liturgies, I was just hoping that, you know, I could recreate some of that feeling of community, of the collective, sharing words and sharing emotion with each other. And I was just going to be happy if it was, you know, like a dozen of us all practicing this together. And so it's been exciting to see other people and even non-Christians and people who don't immediately identify as spiritual even resonate with the work and

find some of themselves in the work. Yeah. I mean, it really is incredible. So this is something you started, I guess it was mid 2020, right around there. As you said, in response to a lot of the violence, to your desire to express what you needed to express, and in your platform, in your space. So this starts as an Instagram account, and your sharing has kind of exploded with now a really large following. And as you mentioned, so I'm a middle-aged, white, Jewish, straight, cis-gen male, and I read what you write, and I'm so often deeply moved. And it's interesting for me because, you know, I may have a different set of beliefs, a profoundly different experience of my own life, of my history, of my ancestry,

and yet what's coming through just moves me. It lands so personally, so often. There's something really beautifully, even though it's very specific, and there's something so universal also that you're sharing with what you're putting to the world under the rubric of black liturgies, but there's something that feels so much bigger. I'm wondering if you've had conversations with other folks where you've heard similar things. I have, and I'm always touched by it. And it's complicated, especially people of other faith traditions or people who have left a Christian tradition because of violence. It's always complicated because Black liturgy is, like you said, it's so particular, it's so specific that I almost hesitate to do it sometimes because I know the violence of Christianity historically. And because I know the tension in myself around belonging to a Christian tradition right now. So it always makes me feel, you know, a little bit of tension when I

hear, you know, that other faith traditions are resonating with the work. And when other white people find themselves in the work, I'm just fascinated by it. But it makes me think of really a lot of artists have said this, that, you know, the closer you zoom into the human experience with particularity, you know, the truer it feels. And so it's easier for other people to find themselves in that experience, not because all facets of it, you know, translate, but precisely because it's so specific that it feels real, that it feels like you're communicating something more real. And so, yeah, I'm very, you know, unapologetic about it being Black liturgies and the fact that I have a Black woman, a Black queer woman even in mind when I'm writing these liturgies most times. And so there's something really mysterious and I think beautiful when it is able to transcend that, you know? Yeah, no, I was curious about that. Because it, as you said, like, you're writing for a very particular person. And I'm not that person. And yet, so often,

I feel like, like, I am just, I transfer into the moment with you. And I've been curious about it also. I'm like, what is happening inside of me, in that moment in time, that it's stirring something so deeply. And it's sort of like a seed that I planted in myself that I keep coming back to. I'm like, huh, it's almost like this recurring provocation, you know, to just think a little bit more deeply and more openly, but it's really powerful. Over a period of a couple of years now, you've talked about a lot of different things. You don't shy away from what's happening in the world. You don't shy away from your own experiences and your own lens. And that sometimes puts you at odds with what might be more traditional doctrine, or you might describe as more traditional white Christianity. I guess it was probably the middle of last year, June of last year also, when one of

the liturgies was about you being queer and saying, if you're enjoying this and if you're learning from it, if you're feeling a lot of this, you should also know that I am a black queer woman. And for anyone else who identifies similarly, God loves you. And there's nothing you need to do to change. And this is a space of safety and open arms. And it's interesting because that particular post was really powerful. And again, you weren't writing to me, yet I see that and there's something that is so deeply powerful and moving. I'm wondering when you share a post like that, how do you feel when you put that into the world? What's the intention?

And when you're sort of pushing the edge of what people on the sort of faith side might be feeling, how does that all land with you? It lands hard. It hurts. And I'm naturally a very private person. And I enjoy secrets and I enjoy the power over my own story and, and who, you know probably have noticed there's not much of, you know, my face on the Black Liturgies page or my stories like you would find in this here flesh where it's very, you know, revolving around me. So anytime I share something like that out of the space of my own present experience, I just feel raw after, you know, I just don't go, I just don't open my laptop for the rest of the day. Quite honestly, I put in 45 minutes after I post to respond to people. And then I just kind

of check out because I need to recover and care for myself. And that particular post up until that point, every day of, since I had started Black Liturgies, I had been gaining just a lot of followers. And we looked back on that date in our analytics, and we found that was the first date since I had started that I lost followers. I had a negative net of followers, which, you know, doesn't really seem to matter in the big scheme of things, but it was just kind of this experience of rejection, of alienation, and of disappointment that I know is, you know, untrue. Well, I was being rejected by people I want to be rejected by ultimately, but it was in experiencing that it revealed so much in me. It's like, even if you cognitively understand

all of the kindest, most generous things cognitively about yourself, there's something just about the experience of sharing it that always is going to leave you a bit raw and you're still experientially going to be working out that truth in yourself. So yeah, it's very complicated and very costly, honestly. I've had to really be careful about my own vulnerability online and how far I'm willing to take that and really be strategic and gentle with myself as I'm figuring out what to share and what to withhold. Yeah, because at the end of the day, I mean, you have something to say, but you've also got to live your life and feel like okay and safe and well and seen and held and not unsafe in your own presence, in your own body, in your own words.

Yeah, so powerful. So Black Liturgies starts to build a really substantial following. I'm sure that had no small part in you then sort of saying, okay, let's take this to a completely different level and then devoting yourself to a book, which you wrote largely over the course of the pandemic, This Hair Flesh, which is this stunning book. And I guess the title derived from a Toni Morrison line. Yes. And, you know, it's interesting because the book, and I want to dive in, I kind of want to dip into some of the specific topics. But as I'm reading the book, I mean, the thoughts, the language, the ideas, the shares are all gorgeous and deeply wise. And then something else sort of like zoomed out to me. And I had this moment, I'm like, the way that you structured the book was really similar to Khalil Gibran's The Prophet. And I was wondering if there's even like a semblance of you saying, huh, like this is like, I'm aware of that work. Like, I'm familiar with it. And this is an

interesting structure to dip into. It's sort of like, and tell me about this and tell me about this and tell me about this. You know, I have not read The Prophet. Ah, no kidding. You know, I have not read The Prophet, but I'm smiling because someone else, I believe, mentioned, like referred to his his work when creating the format. I was more so thinking about this kind of story that I feel like a lot of faith traditions trace of kind of origin, the entrance of that which is not okay or that which is not supposed to be, a phase of healing and then this kind of liberating phase and not to say that those don't overlap over each other but that's how i thought about the arc of the book the arc of the chapters yeah so the book basically has 15 chapters each focusing on a single thing a single idea a single a single topic. You open with dignity. And I was curious about that as sort of like the opening move. Clearly it was intentional.

Why is this centered as sort of like, this is where we begin? You know, I've read a lot of things and I've been in a lot of spiritual spaces that I think focus far too much on suffering and pain or in a way that can reduce, I think, oppressed people to just that. And I think there's something so much more interesting and true about our starting point being this place of dignity and worth and value entirely separate from our experience of suffering. That was important to me because as a Black woman, this country really likes to devour my pain. And there's a lot of pain in the book. There's a lot of trauma in the book. And I knew I needed to counteract that in a way that, yeah, felt like I was telling the truth and creating nuanced people and making sure I'm expressing myself as nuanced and more than that.

And ultimately, I knew I wanted to travel toward this theme of liberation, the final chapter of liberation. And I knew I couldn't get there without starting at dignity. You can't, at least in my experience and in my opinion, I just think you don't even have the kind of courage to pursue liberation if you don't believe you're worthy to be free. Tony Morrison actually said this, being freed was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another. And I knew if I'm really going to, in the end, talk about what it means to experience some kind of liberation, I have to start with this origin story of dignity. Yeah, you're right in that chapter. Our liberation begins with the irrevocable belief that we are worthy to be liberated, that we are worthy of a life that does not degrade us, but honors

our whole selves. When you believe in your dignity, or at least someone else does, it becomes more difficult to remain content with the bondage with which you have become so acquainted. You begin to wonder what you were meant for. Really powerful opening words that really speak to like, this is where it begins. Because we can't imagine anything else until we can actually own our value, our right to inhabit space. Yes. Yes. It really does give us an imagination for something better. Being aware, being able to live into your dignity or accept that or name that or claim that gives you an imagination for so much more, I think.

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Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. One of the other things that you speak to fairly early on is the idea of wonder. And this really builds on that, right? Because we're talking about we start with our belief in self-worth, but then we've got to imagine, and how do we actually step into the world? But your lens on wonder is, you actually write wonder as a force of liberation. It makes sense of what our souls inherently know we're meant for. It's a bigger sense of wonder than I think the typical, oh, like what a delightful moment type of

sort of like understanding of wonder is. Tell me more about this and your lens on wonder. You know, I think as our access to information increases, you know, with every generation, we have access to more stories as they're unfolding, more pain, you know, the terrors of the world. We can just scroll past on any given day. And I think it really atrophies our ability to see beauty in the world because we're being conditioned to see pain primarily. We elevate that in conversation and it's certainly elevated in the media and

sometimes rightfully so. But when you're constantly experiencing that, you know, on a daily basis, I think it really does something to you. And to create or really to experience these moments or perceive these moments as beautiful that you wouldn't ordinarily find beauty in. I think I'm very curious about that kind of wonder, about that kind of awe and how that forms us and also serves as a protective force when we're going out to encounter the traumas of this world. Yeah. I mean, use of wonder also, sort of like in the context of holiness. One of the things you also share in that chapter is to encounter the holy and the ordinary is to find God in the liminal, in spaces where we might subconsciously exclude it, including the sensory moments that are often allegedly spiritual. There's something bigger. There's something more vast. It's almost like wonder to you, the way you describe it, is a conduit to the divine.

Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, how boring to only encounter the divine, like in a church pew or, you know, in a hymnal. And those are, you know, worthy and fine ways to encounter the divine if that's your choice. But I just think, imagine how life opens up when you experience, you know, the soap bubble in your kitchen as a little piece of the sacred or the way the lights coming through your window as a little moment where the sacred is just kind of winking at you. I think the more we're able to train ourselves to see those kind of allegedly spiritual moments as moments where we're encountering something divine, the more we're going to trust ourselves when people tell us that we ourselves contain the divine or sacred, if you prefer that language or have inherent worth and significance,

the more we're less likely to just kind of disregard a body as just a body and to find something just mysterious. And I think we really are prone to trying to protect mysterious things. And so the more we're able to kind of see that in moments, the more we're going to protect those moments, preserve those stories and also preserve each other. sort of expansive reframe when you said divine or sacred, if that resonates more with you, which I'm curious, is part of your aspiration or the work that you feel like you're doing to try and also, while you are, yes, you're speaking to one particular person in one particular way, in one particular topic, that reframe feels like it's intended for expansiveness and inclusivity beyond. It's like, you may not use the word or you may not use the word God or divine, but I still want to invite you to this party, to this exploration, because use whatever language

you want. The notion is relevant and resonant. Yes. I mean, absolutely. That's something I hope to do. And I think I'm paraphrasing James Baldwin, but he said, you know, the concept of God is to have any use. It's to make us freer and larger and more loving. And if that's not the case, then, you know, away with it, away with the concept. And, you know, I agree with that. I

think there's something really credible about a lot of people who, A, just might not experience spirituality like that, but also people who are skeptical of, you know, traditional religious language. I think that makes sense to me. And I'm not, I don't ever want to be a person who's just so threatened by someone else's belief system or way they experience the world that I'm just fighting for my own, you know? I think good spirituality, a good understanding of the self means you're not going to be threatened by what someone else thinks. You're not going to be threatened by someone else's freedom. And so, yeah, but I think this is not that book. This Your Flesh, it's not that book where I'm going into it with the desire to teach anyone anything in a similar way of what I said in the beginning. I'm trying to convey an intergenerational experience. And I just happen to currently find myself located in a Christian tradition. So I'm using Christian language, but I would never

demand that of someone else. And I actually think it would make me as a person less whole and less capable of a writer if I was only experiencing people who were using the same language about sacredness and what it means to be human. Yeah, you can feel the intention underneath it. It feels more like here's an invitation. Here's an idea. See how it feels. Play with it.

Work with it. How does it land for you? And make it yours. Own it. Express it. Wrap whatever language you want around it, which is powerful. One of the things that you also speak to, there's a chapter about the body. In the beginning of our conversation, you said, even at

the youngest age, you were just very aware of the fact that you inhabited the body of a black woman. And that awareness has certainly not diminished over the course of your life, especially in the context of the way the world is. And at the same time, in addition to that, not too long ago, you also went through a window where you're realizing, okay, so there's actually something else going on with my body as well. And you became chronically ill. And it's something that you live with to this day. And you've written about actually one of the liturgies that you shared was, I guess it was June of last year as well. June of last year was an interesting moment, right? Because that was the liturgy where you sort of said, you know, like about queerness.

And that was also the liturgy where it was about chronic illness. I'm just piecing this together right now. This is like a deeply, for somebody who, like you said, is actually, you keep most things to yourself. This was, it must've been a really interesting and deeply exposing month because you write this literature about chronic illness and share it. Like, actually, this is something that I live with. And in the chapter in the book, you also share that as you're trying to figure out what's going on with you. The reception to you saying, I know my body and I know what it's telling me and I know things aren't right. The reception to that is not good and it's not open and it takes a very long time. And really for people to say, oh, you actually get to inhabit your body and you do now.

Yeah. I mean, the world just doesn't take seriously the bodies of Black women and they don't try. I mean, it's fascinating that we would not be trusted when we probably more than any population has had to be so aware of our bodies in order to survive and has also had to numb things in our bodies in order to survive. But yeah, I wasn't taken seriously. And doctor appointment after doctor's appointment, I actually spent a little bit of time in this one clinic and I read the notes. I don't remember how this happened, but I got to read the briefing notes of the doctor after. And they said, speaking in monotone voice, calm. And I thought, I wonder if that has something to do with how they're perceiving me when I'm talking about my pain. And to me, I thought, I can't be hysterical. I have to be calm and intellectual and kind of like feverish for black pain, but doesn't actually

honor it, you know, that's the medical system. I learned that if I cried, which I'm not, you know, prone to doing in settings like that, if I cried, the room kind of stopped and everyone just was so much more concerned. It's like my words weren't enough and me saying I knew my body wasn't enough. They had to experience black tears and feel like some kind of savior in order to take me seriously. So it's been a very long journey, as you can tell even now. And I knew that I wanted to talk about it on some level in this book, but I was surprised by how much it came out on page, surprised by how much I couldn't manage to talk about spirituality without talking about the body and how I couldn't really, I was unable to talk about my father and my grandma without talking

about our bodies. And I'm thinking of this ocean of long line from Honor for Briefly Gorgeous. And he says, I'm writing you from inside a body that used to be yours, which is to say, I'm writing as a son. And that recognition that you are not your beginning, you know, your flesh is not in its first life and it will maybe live many lives past you through generations. I think it really helped me to get at this intergenerational bond that has its home in our bodies. Yeah. That line from Ocean's book stayed with me as well. Such a powerful writer and book and just human being. Yes. Come on now. You want me to tell you a prayer. You'll find it in the blood beating from heart to head to toe and home again, which really just brings home this notion of let's not just talk about ideas and intellectual sort of like syntheses. Let's own the fact that the body is part of this whole conversation, you know, like, and let's look to it for signs of everything. Yeah. I'm very, I'm very suspicious of a God who's not concerned about my body,

not concerned about the body. Anyone that tries to sell me on a portrait of the divine that's disembodied, I'm always going to be really skeptical because I think, you know, for me, whiteness has known that the more disembodied I am, the more successful it will be at its pursuit of conquering me and conquering my body. And so I want a spirituality that brings me home, brings me home to myself and reminds me that it's not about how much I'm able to read on Sunday or even always about the beauty in the written word. Sometimes it's in the sound of my voice, a physical, a tradition that's attached to my body in some way. And I don't mean to get too off topic, but in some ways, that's why reading, narrating the audio book was such a powerful experience because I'm so used to detaching my words from my body and, you know, kind of giving it away as a form of self-protection, which is fine. But this was one moment

where I'm like, these words are attached to my body. It's the sound of my voice that I'm going to have to learn to love as I read these words again and again and encounter my grandma's words in my own voice. And yeah, a beautiful embodied experience that I think reminded me why I wrote this book the way I did. Which is so interesting also, given that on the Black Liturgy's account, as you mentioned, it's very rare that anyone actually, I think over the period of two and a half years or so, there are maybe two or three posts which actually show you. And this was a moment where you said, no, like I actually need to make this connection, um, in a very visceral felt way. And audio being in my mind, the most intimate medium, um, is you're also choosing to do it in a very

intimate way. You're when you're literally entering the headspace of a person, you know, which I think has a direct line to the heart space of an individual. Yeah. One of the other things that you explore is the notion of lament, which I thought was really interesting because it's something that we tend to not talk about and not honor and not want to see any reason for. And you have a really, you have a different lens on the experience of lament. Yeah. I think for how enamored we are with the pain of other people, we're really not formed well, many of us to actually sit in it and remain there, you mean, what does scrolling past these headlines do to a person? You're hearing this tragic story and then in the next breath, you're scrolling past some comedian's special airing on Netflix. And it's this really strange world that we're living in where we're being rushed so quickly out of emotional

experiences. And because of the role that guilt plays, because of the role that I think even pleasure plays or wanting to feel good plays, it really can be difficult to get people to just stay and commit and allow for an expression of sadness without rushing to fix it, rushing to resolve it. We're not people, I would say, who have a lot of patience for things that don't resolve. We want the resolution. We want the comfort. We want to be comforted. And so anyways, I have depression. I have had depression for

as long as I can remember, but it was diagnosed when I was in college. And I really had to be careful to surround myself around people who aren't quick to try to fix my emotional experience, but know how to just let me breathe, let me be, let me be, you know? And I think what's complicated is, you know, there is something somewhat compassionate about it, wanting to resolve someone's pain, but there's also something really self-centered about wanting to be the person that resolves someone else's lament and pain and wanting to be the person who makes someone smile through the tears or what have you. And what we mistake for empathy, I think, is really just this vacuum in ourselves that are needing to resolve some pain in us. And so you're

not really approaching, you know, my lament. You're not really approaching my grief, but you're approaching your suppressed grief that you aren't prepared to make sense of. And so you're trying to, you know, resolve that in me so that you don't have to see your own face, you know? Yeah. It's like a transference of lament so that it serves as a distraction from sitting with your own and your own wounding, your own trauma and your own need to heal, to repair. Along the way in the book, you speak powerfully also to notions of rage and justice, which I feel are sort of like intertwined in really powerful ways and necessarily so. And framing anger as the opportunity for it to be holy. I thought that was a really interesting concept. And justice as something that sort of like must be a part of the evolution of that experience.

Yeah, I think every emotional expression has the capacity to be sacred. It's about the directions of our emotions and how honest we're capable of being about them. That really is what makes them beautiful. anger as a Black woman because I'm so terrified of only being seen as this trope of the angry Black woman. And what I've done is really limited myself, limited other people's ability to care for me. And I read this speech, which is, I think you can access pretty easily online now by Audre Lorde, who wrote The Uses of Anger. And she talks about, you know, the anger of the oppressed, in her case, Black queer women, that anger being a gift of knowledge, that it's not what makes you guilty. You know, guilt is a response to your own wrongdoing. What anger does is kind of illuminate that for you. And so I've started to try to think and reclaim my anger as this, you know, undeserved gift of knowledge, you know, to say, you're welcome. You know, you don't really deserve this, but I'm going to allow you to know that this is not okay.

And I'm going to try to say it with the passion it demands. I'm going to allow my body to experience it in a way that I've kept it from doing for so long. And also, I mean, along the way, when you allow that, at the same time, I would imagine, I guess it's a curiosity, knowing that depression has been a part of your life for almost as long as you can remember, knowing that you're also living with a chronic illness, which means you really have to take care of yourself. It's got to be an interesting balancing act, right? Because how much of this expression that is true, that is real, that is felt, that is valid, that is in me, do I let out? How do I acknowledge it and give it space in a way that also allows me to be healthy?

Or is it in fact the acknowledging and the allowing for space that actually is one of the ways that you actually become more healthy? I think you're right to name this kind of tension because that post, for example, during Pride Month that explained that my liturgies are written from my queerness as much as my Blackness, you know, it was equal parts love for those like me and rebuke for those who would dare try to kind of interrogate our dignity. And so there was some anger in there too. And I think that day that I posted that liturgy, it was so costly to experience that part of myself to allow some anger to be released in me, but it's a well-discerned cost. And I think you really have to decide. I don't think

every angry whim, however justified, needs to be spoken, needs to be shared, and certainly doesn't need to be shared with other people. And, you know, I tell my friends, no one's entitled to your pain, but I think no one's entitled to your anger. It's a gift, as Audre Lorde would say, a gift of, you know, undeserved knowledge. And so if I choose to share it, it's because I'm aware that it might cost me something on some level, but the cost feels greater if I were to silence myself. And it's always kind of a balancing act, a tension in discerning those things. Yeah. We've been talking a lot about kind of the struggle side of a lot of what we experience. You write also a lot about things like rest and joy and rest in a really interesting way, I found.

You write in sort of like the conversation around rest that it seems like anytime God is talking about salvation in the Bible, he makes a point to name rest. A peace once stolen, now restored. This is our journey. Yeah. You know, I wish people talked about this more. I think so many people know that verse, be still and know that I'm God. And there's this psalm that's very famous. It's used in a lot of art and film that though I walk through the valley of shadow of death, I will fear no evil. And what isn't always spoken about in that Psalm is these beautiful lines of, you know, He makes me lie down. God makes me lie down in green pastures. You know, God prepares a table for me. And in the presence

of my enemies, God prepares a table for me. And I think, you know, for those of us who are, you know, part activist on some level, it just seems so strange, so subversive that in the midst of our enemies, there would be this moment of lying down to rest in green pastures. That's really just kind of puzzling, but significant, I think, that maybe speaks, I think, that maybe could be saying, you know, that the journey is not toward triumph, you know, or a conquering or this kind of achievement or defeating one's enemies, but like actually the journey and the entrance of the divine is about giving us the ability to rest and care for our bodies and care for ourselves and attune to ourselves in the midst of, you know, all of the pain in the world. And so, yeah, my spirituality has a lot to do with rest and withholding and silence and pause, because I think that out of that comes good contemplation. And the more we rest, usually it means the more acquainted we are with our interior

lives, which can only mean good things for the people in the world who desire justice and liberation, right? Yeah, I get you closer to the truth, to your truth, sort of building on the notion of rest also. And we'll start to sort of like come full circle on a conversation is you speak to joy also, which I love. There's a line that you share that says, we were made to be delighted. And tell me more about this. Yes. I think I say that in response to this wonderful story my dad always tells about my older sister choosing him at this dance and wanting to show him off to her friends. And I was interviewing him a few years ago and I asked him, what's the happiest, what's your happiest moment? And he, you know, without even hesitating, was able to trace it back to that beautiful moment of being chosen. And I mean, this isn't his language, but it was a moment where he felt delighted in. And I think that's so important. I mean, it's so important to delight in your own face. And, you know, there's a lot of

self-love talk out there right now that I think is important, but can also leave behind this significance in having someone else marvel at you, someone else delight in you, and how that kind of can either expand your experience of your own dignity, but also it just, I think, is a kind of joy in and of itself, that feeling where you know that someone is just so in love with something that you've done or created or just who you are. And I, like I said, I couldn't talk about Black grief and not talk about Black joy. It's like, it holds us together. I think like, oh, my family is, they're just all so funny. I know if you're listening to this podcast, you're like, well, what happened to you?

Because I'm not funny. Well, not traditionally so, but my entire family, they're just so funny and humor is such a spiritual heartbeat for a family. And so I dedicated a whole chapter just to joy, hoping I could honor some small piece of that. Because it's so important, especially when you're speaking to Blackness, when you're a Black woman writing to Blackness, it's like, we know. We know when our pain's being used, even by our own people. And I think one of the things I'm hearing a lot in the people that I'm around is this just hunger for more stories of Black joy, more stories of Black bliss. I love that. And it feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So sitting in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

To live a good life, we have to know our stories and know the stories that have formed us. Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, say that you will also love the conversation we had with Alex L about how to heal. You'll find a link to Alex's episode in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you did since you're still listening here, would you do me a personal favor, a seven second favor and share it maybe on social or by text or by email, even just with one person, just copy the link from the app

you're using and tell those, you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better. So we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen, then even invite them to talk about what you've both discovered. Because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. We'll be right back. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

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