A collection of prayer, poetry, and spiritual practice centering
the Black interior world, from the New York Times bestselling author
of This Here Flesh and
creator of Black Liturgies
“A true
spiritual balm for our troubled times.”—Michael Eric Dyson,
author of What Truth Sounds Like
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 what might be.