March 28, 2024

Cole Arthur Riley, “Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human” | Special Guest Host: Divya Rosaline David from RLC

52 minutes

Join Cole Arthur Riley in conversation with Divya Rosaline David to discuss “Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human.”

For years, Cole Arthur Riley was desperate for a spirituality she could trust. Amid ongoing national racial violence, the isolation of the pandemic, and a surge of anti-Black rhetoric in many Christian spaces, she began dreaming of a more human, more liberating expression of faith. She went on to create Black Liturgies, a digital project that connects spiritual practice with Black emotion, Black memory, and the Black body.

In this book, she brings together hundreds of new prayers, along with letters, poems, meditation questions, breath practices, scriptures, and the writings of Black literary ancestors to offer forty-three liturgies that can be practiced individually or as a community. Inviting readers to reflect on their shared experiences of wonder, rest, rage, and repair, and creating rituals for holidays like Lent and Juneteenth, Arthur Riley writes with a poet’s touch and a sensitivity that has made her one of the most important spiritual voices at work today.

For anyone healing from communities that were more violent than loving; for anyone who has escaped the trauma of white Christian nationalism, religious homophobia, or transphobia; for anyone asking what it means to be human in a world of both beauty and terror, Black Liturgies is a work of healing and empowerment, and a vision for might be.

About the author:

Cole Arthur Riley is a writer and poet. She is the NYT bestselling author of This Here Flesh and Black Liturgies. Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, Guernica, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post.

Cole is also the creator of Black Liturgies, a space that integrates spiritual practice with Black emotion, Black literature, and the Black body; and a project of The Center for Dignity and Contemplation where she serves as Curator.