This week I finished the excellent book This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us by Cole Arthur Riley. It's a fantastic book of essays on just what the title suggests, spirituality, liberation, and the stories that make us. Cole Arthur Riley is a talented writer who uses words beautifully to convey hard truths and profound insights. I'm sharing some of my favorite passages from her book. Tonight's invitation is to pause with her words and insights a bit longer, with more intention.
I love the practice of Lectio Divina, which Macrina Wiederkehr, in her book A Tree of Angels, describes as a practice that helps us move from being informed to transformed.
"We do not always realize what a radical suggestion it is for us to read to be formed and transformed rather than to gather information. We are information seekers. We love to cover territory. It is not easy for us to stop reading when the heart is touched; we are a people who like to get finished. Lectio offers us a new way to read. Read with a vulnerable heart. Expect to be blessed in the reading. Read as one awake, one waiting for the beloved. Read with reverence."
-Macrina Wiederkehr (A Tree Full of Angels: Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary)
There is so much wisdom! I, for one, am an information seeker and gather! I love to cover territory, learn new things, and look for new connections. Something important happens when I slow down and read for formation and transformation rather than information gathering. It's slower. It's more intentional. It's challenging. It's often uncomfortable!
In the following passages from This Here Flesh, I hope you'll slow your reading and read to be formed and transformed. Read with a vulnerable heart, a heart that is open, unprotected, and willing to be shifted and sorted. If there is something that you have a strong reaction to, notice that. Stay with it and explore why you feel threatened, judged, or challenged. If something resonates deeply, sit with that and explore why. Slow your reading flow to read with intention, purpose, looking for formation and transformation, rather then information gathering and debate preparation.
"In lament, our task is never to convince someone of the brokenness of this world; it is to convince them of the world's worth in the first place. True lament is not born from that trite sentiment that the world is bad but rather from a deep conviction that it is worthy of goodness."
― Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
"Audre Lorde said, "I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings…. Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge."
― Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
"Seeing a person or piece of creation trampled should always disrupt something in us. It should always do something to the soul. And when you trace that trampling back across generations and systems and powers, a quiet sorrow is born in you."
― Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
"In justice, everyone becomes more human, everyone bears the image of the divine. Justice does not ask us to choose."
― Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
"You cannot trust a society that makes judgements on the morality of a person without taking responsibility for how its own morality has instigated the conditions that call for such desperate decision-making."
― Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
"Our question of calling tend to be more aspirational than introspective. We spend a jarring amount of time asking young people what jobs they might have one day, compared to how often we ask them what is true of them right now. Both questions are worth asking, but I do wonder what I would’ve found true about myself earlier if someone had asked. The question of calling is not primarily a question of what we might become, but a question of what is already true-not least of which is what is true about the self. Ask me what I want to be, but not before you ask me who I want to be. Ask me who I want to be, but not before you ask me the more searing question of who I am."
― Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
“Far too many people are incapable of bearing witness to someone else’s emotions without centering their own.'“
― Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
…when Christ goes tearing through the temple, flipping tables. He confronts those meant to be bearers of belonging in the world and calls out the culture of exclusivity and exploitation they’re perpetuating instead. It all made sense when I learned that fig tree was the private preface to the very public force of anger in the temple. A place to encounter the divine had become a place of scarcity, emptied of the most vulnerable.”
― Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
Our dignity may involve our doing, but it is foremost in our very being-our tears and emotions, our bodies lying in the grass, our scabs healing. I try to remember that Eve and Adam bore the image of God before they did anything at all. This is very mysterious to me, and it must be protected.”
― Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
A Blessing for Reading for Transformation
May the words you read, in books, on social media, in essays, and in articles become seeds of formation and transformation. As you let potent words and ideas find a fertile place to land in your heart and mind, may they unfold and unfurl. May ideas find depth, growth, and sunshine to transform and form you in your love and service to yourself, your people, and our world.
When you read this week, read for formation and transformation rather than just for information gathering purposes. Notice how a change of posture and intent changes how you consume information.
Last night when I was putting my 11-year-old daughter to bed, I said, "You forgot to change your sheets!" She said, 'But I wasn't home all day!" I replied, with some confusion, "but we were home all afternoon."
She had been reading all afternoon, and when I said, 'oh, you were in New York with the Vanderbeekers." She smiled sheepishly and said, "yes, I was!"
She is loving The Vanderbeekers series of books by Karina Yan Glaser. These come highly recommended if you have a young reader in your life. Delana has described them as "heart-warming" and "like comfort food."
Two books I have on next on my reading list that come highly recommended.
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters by Priya Parker
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund
This week we learned that Fredrick Buechner died. He has long been one of my favorite writers. He leaves us a rich legacy of his words, that will live on for many generations.
Maybe a line or phrase will be an encouragement or invitation for you this week.
“Stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the lives around you . . . remember that the lives of others are not your business. They are their business. They are God’s business . . . even your own life is not your business. It also is God’s business. Leave it to God. It is an astonishing thought. It can become a life-transforming thought . . . unclench the fists of your spirit and take it easy . . . What deadens us most to God’s presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought. I suspect that there is nothing more crucial to true spiritual comfort . . . than being able from time to time to stop that chatter . . . ”
― Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets
“Go where your best prayers take you.”
― Frederick Buechner
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
― Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC
“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
― Frederick Buechner, Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation
Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.”
― Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC's of Faith