How to Be More Alive with Cole Arthur Riley (Best Of)

Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things.

So here's the deal.

I am a writer.

Yeah, we know.

And at this point on the planet,

everyone who is a writer is expected to have a book club.

It's just like, where's your book club? Why don't you have a book club? It's like is a writer is expected to have a book club. It's just like, where's your book club?

Why don't you have a book club?

It's like, I'm not going to have a book club.

I'm not going to have a book club because club, I feel like there's going to be meetings.

I feel like there's going to be things expected of me.

Plus I treat books like I used to treat booze.

Like I, you know, I read like six books a week.

That's right.

So by the time I'm in love with a book, like I can't wait for everybody else. No, that's right.
No, that's not going to happen. So I am not going to have a book club.
What I am going to have, I'm announcing right now. And only because I read a book that is so effing beautiful that I have to demand that everyone reads it.
We're starting something today called the Next Right Book. Oh.
Because that's how I live my life is the next right thing. I didn't make it up.
It's a recovery thing. Today, I announce the next right book.
Now, no one is allowed to expect anything of me. This might be the only next right book I ever choose in my entire life.
No one's allowed to ask when the next right book is. The next, next right book? The next, next right book.
This might be the only damn next right book you ever get. Okay? So pay attention.
I'm looking at the person's face who we're interviewing right now. And I just realized I forgot to mention to her that I was announcing her book as the next right book.
Yeah. You also forgot to mention who it is to me and Amanda.
No, I told sister. I just didn't tell you.
All right. Today we announced the next right book of the world.
Everyone must read this book. It's not even a book.
It's a sacred text. It's a, it's a spirituality.
It's a, it's a whole thing. The book is called This Here Flesh.
It is by Cole Arthur Riley. Cole Arthur Riley is a writer and poet.
She is the author of the New York Times bestseller, This Here Flesh, Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us. Her contemplation, writing, and spirituality embody her lived experience as a Black queer woman who lives with autoimmune disease.
Cole is also the creator and writer of Black Liturgies, which she describes as a space for Black spiritual words of liberation, lament,

rage, and rest.

Welcome, Cole, to our first episode of The Next Right Book.

Hi, thanks for having me and for calling my book The Next Right Book.

Well, if you have been present in my home and on the Zoom calls with Amanda, you would understand why this is the first. Yeah.
And maybe the only Next Right book. The conversations that we've been having about this book and you are, they will continue beyond this conversation that we're having today.
Thank you for being here and thank you for freaking

you and putting your spirit and your love and your mind into this book. It is unfreaking believable.
Thank you. Sometimes when I love something so much, my entire life is about telling women to trust themselves.
So I constantly doubt myself all the time. So I was reading it and I was like, wait a minute.
Is this as freaking beautiful as I think it is? So I call my sister and I say, I'm reading it. Are you reading it? And before I say anything, she says to me, I think this is the most beautiful book I've ever read.
Glennon, we've been talking about the word contemplative.

We've been calling you that.

I don't really understand it because I am not one. And I need you to tell me what you, what is it? What is a contemplative? I'll tell you what I thought a contemplative was, because maybe some people have this in their minds.
to me. I thought a contemplative was like the people who go off and, you know, sit in silence

in an empty room and just think for hours on end. And I think I had that impression probably because I was operating in a lot of white intellectual spaces that kind of co-opted true contemplative practice from Eastern spiritualities and made it this complete practice of the mind.
So that's what I thought it was. When I went to write This Year Flesh, I started to really have to put language to what does contemplation mean for me.
And the best way I can describe it is a kind of sacred attention, you know, and maybe that happens in thought and in silence and solitude, but I think it doesn't necessarily need to. It can be attention to the body.
It can be a presence. Incidentally, we had this mantra in my family growing up.
My father would always say to us, pay attention. What were you paying attention to? Like, look up.
He'd say like, he would quiz us, like, what was the waitress's name? Were you, were you paying attention, you know, and, or where is home from here? And I think that was so in me that by the time I started a contemplative practice, it really melded really naturally, um, into just who I am because of that kind of family upbringing. I'll also say that there is some kind of connection to like one's interior world and just kind of like a nearness to oneself.
And it's not just attention to the exterior or the interior, but it's kind of like a bridge, or at least that's how I think of it. It's funny because the thinking thing, most people think the contemplative is somebody who thinks all the time, but it's kind of like the opposite of that.
Like the mind is the least contemplative place. It's like, it's paying attention to, is that true? Is it paying attention for you to your surroundings, to your body, to your spirit and getting out of your head? Listen, I'm with you.
I think other people might disagree with us, Glennon, but I'm with you. The mind is interesting to me as like a form of contemplation, but I think there are so many forms and the one we tend to neglect is kind of a connection with one's physical self and one's body and a kind of presence.
I'm an escapist. I've always been an escapist from the time I was a child.
And so I think I was drawn to kind of a false contemplation that was about kind of disconnecting. Let's live up here.
This is safe. You know, I can't be hurt here.
I can be analytical and not feeling because feeling is such a risk. And I had to unwind a lot of that.
And I really did this by thinking about the people who had come before me and the spiritual practices that they contained and had access to. And I talk about this a little bit in the book, having this imagination for the spiritual lives that, say, my ancestors who were enslaved had to have.
And this restraint of expression, this restraint and articulation. They couldn't say what they wanted to say always.
They didn't have control over everything. But what they did have control over is this connection to their interior life and this kind of hiddenness of self that I think is so special and sacred and such a part of my contemplation is this, where are the secret places in me? And I go there not because I think everyone needs access to them, but because I deserve that union with myself.
And so I'm trying to adopt some of that as well. Do you think that secret places in you and that need to protect yourself had anything to do with, you were selectively mute until you're about seven and you have dealt with anxiety over your entire life.
I'm wondering how that all fits together and whether it was kind of an innate protection of what you knew was the sacred in you, not wanting to share it, or was that about anxiety or is it all just a need to pay deep attention and shutting off your voice was a way to kind of keep paying closer attention. Oh, that's interesting.
I think the kind of shadow side, I think, of contemplation can be anxiety, can be like an overactive imagination of what could go wrong or what's at risk, what's at stake. When you're so close to your interior world in your

physical body, you become so aware of everyone else's and what's going on inside you because

I know everything that is going on inside me that I'm not necessarily presenting. So imagination,

it's such a beautiful thing, but there is this shadow side of what can this do when

it's kind of put into hyperdrive and when it's the only way of existing.

and as for kind of silence I think maybe that's

it definitely has something to do with

why I'm drawn to a more contemplative life

is because I've had to honor

that I'm distinct

that I have needs

and that I'm not always incredibly verbal. And I'm not someone who's going to process as I speak.
There are these brilliant people who can just speak and say really profound things that they've never said before. I'm not one of them.
You know, I need that pause. And I think I was resisting that for so long because I was ashamed of how I appeared in the world as this kind of shy and quiet girl.
And I tried to force myself into this caricature of like the witty kind of charming. I did that for a few years in college and it just, it required so much energy that I didn't have to give.

And so contemplation was just this form of spirituality that I could just rest and say it's imperfect.

You know, are there times when I'm silenced, not because of choice, but because of oppression, because of insecurity, because of anxiety?

Absolutely.

But are there times where my silence is actually a sacred path that frankly, other people could learn from? I think so.

For sure I could.

We're going to talk about awe later because you have such a beautiful

perspective on awe, but do you ever think that awe and anxiety are connected? Because

it's like, if you're paying deep attention, I get a little bit, just a smidge awkward

Thank you. that awe and anxiety are connected.
Because it's like, if you're paying deep attention, I get a little bit, just a smidge awkward in social situations. Okay.
Abby, just like often cold. My thing is when someone introduces themselves to me, I panic and introduce myself as them.
So like if a person named Joel walks up to me and says, hi, I'm Joel. I panic every time and say, hi, I'm Joel.
And then it's like this moment, it's just off, just, okay. So what I try to describe social anxiety sometimes is it's like being starstruck by everyone.
Okay. Yes.
If you're really paying attention and you're like, wait, look at all these bodies walking around with all of these worlds inside of us just so exposed. We're just looking at each other.
We're just naked out here. Do you think being in awe of things, I guess you would say, the shadow side of that? I'm with you.
I agree that there's something about awe and fear that I think are really intimately tied. If you're a person, I mean, I say this and I've said this in an interview a few weeks ago and the person who was interviewing me was just like horrified.
But I said, I'm a scared person. I don't say that to be self-deprecating, but I think there are just those of us who live with a greater day-to-day fear.
And I'm always assessing risk and I'm looking around. And I was a very scared little child as well.
Of course, fear and anxiety are close. But also, you know, I do consider myself a person of awe.
I'm so anxious to get on this podcast call, but beforehand, I'm sitting here listening to the barn swallows outside and I'm grounded in maybe both for better or worse. But I think there's something about awe and fear that they're operating the same muscle almost.
That sacred attention can do really scary things as well. And isn't that fear and awe, even in the Bible, isn't like fear God, wasn't that original word awe? It's like those are always swimming together, fear and awe.
Yes. Yes.
First, it should be said that your work, you have always said, and your work is clearly for Black people and Black liberation. I thought it would be okay to celebrate your book because you sent it to me.
Yes. I felt like it would be okay.
But what do you think of white people celebrating your book and celebrating your work? What is your reaction to that? There's a tension in me. You know, I've lived with what Toni Morrison calls the white gaze.
I've lived with that over my life, just looming for so many years. And certainly I've lived with that in my writing.
And while I was writing This Here Flesh, I had to keep asking myself, who's in the room with you, Cole? And I'm almost embarrassed to say how many times the answer was some white intellectual man that didn't care about me, didn't care about my body or my words. Who invited you? I'm trying to write.
I'm trying to write something for my family. I'm trying to write something that matters.
And these different people I would find, they're not completely imagined. They're real.
But these kind of specters, these haunts were just looming over my writing. And I had to kind of keep exercising the room and say, no, I know who I want in the room with me.
I want my ancestors. I want my own voice, my own soul.

So anyways, when white people approach Black liturgies or this here flesh, I'm always a bit cautious. I'm a bit wary because I know there are times when the white gaze won.
And I can be honest about that. And I think my journey will be as I continue to write books, hopefully to continue to do better and better and be clearer and clearer about who I'm speaking to.
And so I worry, but at the same time, I don't really feel the need to gatekeep. It would be kind of foolish of me to think that There's not something of my human experience that's worth experiencing by a white body like that.
I'm not really interested in that. I don't really have the energy to gatekeep my work in that way.
Some people do. I don't.
So if I think if a white person can approach either Black liturgies or the book and decenter themselves, like I'm giving them a gift, you know,

you're welcome.

That's how I think about it is this is,

this is a gift if a white person is capable of decentering themselves.

But I, I really, I've had this question so many times,

like, who do you want to write for? Who's your audience?

And at first it was just black, this generalized Black people, you know, because that's what you're supposed to say. It's Black people.
And whatever, that's fine. But when I'm most honest, I'm writing for my grandma.
That's who I want my audience to be. My grandma, my father, those are the people I'm thinking of.
And when I think of particular people and not just this generalized notion of blackness and this allegiance, I think it helps. I think it helped my writing, if I'm honest.
It helped my writing to seem compassionate because I'm not talking to you and I'm not talking to a stranger. I'm writing to honor the people that I love and who have held me.
Hey everybody, it's Hoda Kotb and I would love for you to join me for new episodes of my podcast, Making Space. Each week I'm having conversations with authors, actors, speakers, and dear friends of mine, folks who are seeking the truth, compassion, and self-discovery.
I promise you will leave these talks stronger and inspired to make space in your own life for growth and change. To start listening, just search Making Space wherever you get your podcasts and follow for new episodes every Wednesday.
You said you've always been an escapist, and I really loved your interrogation in the book about escapism, both internally, but also in the Christian faith. So often it's set up as we don't have to worry about now.
We don't have to worry about bodies right now. We are worrying about later and all our efforts are for later.
You just mentioned your grandma. You say, I don't know much about heaven, but I have no reason to believe it won't be made right here.
And everything will smell like my grandmother's perfume. Why do we do that? And what is the power of reclaiming right now the idea that heaven could happen right now? Yeah.
Yeah, I think the kind of illusion of the someday heaven, I don't want to demean it because it's given so many people hope. It's how so many people have survived by thinking of the someday.
But I think it's been manipulated by the powerful and by people who are insecure in the way they are in the world, the things that they do, the people that they're oppressing, the wealth that they have.

And so it's kind of this, yeah, cognitive escapism because you don't really want to pay attention to the very present material injustices that are happening to a person or the really present pain that exists in the world. Some people don't have the practice in attuning to that.
And so the only kind of feasible answer I think is like escape. Let's talk about someday it's all going to be okay.
And we'll be floating blissful spirits around. And you you know, I have no idea if that's true or not.
And so why expend so much energy, so much energy trying to force myself into this someday thing or live for this someday thing?

And maybe that's because I'm just a past-oriented person.

I don't know.

I'm a memory-oriented person.

But, you know, I think what happened when we are able to, I don't know, interrogate that inclination to the someday heaven is we start to—well, I think we get closer to ourselves, you know. We get closer to our sadness.
I think we get closer to our anger.

Really, every felt emotion, I think, is probably amplified when you bring yourself back in to what is happening now. And I wonder if it doesn't also make people more active.
You know, there's a kind of urgency that changes. Oh, I don't love the word urgency, but there is some kind of, there's an emotional urgency whenever you're able to say, I want goodness for you now.
I want peace. I want healing for you now.
I want clean water for you now. I want good relationships for you now.
It creates this kind of urgency in our relationships and our emotions, I think. I think it's beautiful because of the change that we don't wait upon.
Also, you said that that structure of escapism means that they've set up a system where the only holy things are invisible. Because if only the holy things are those things we cannot see, that means that all the things we can see, our bodies, our love, our partners, our people, our planet, are not holy.
And so that reclaiming of no holy is now and these things that I'm looking at, these people I'm looking at, and myself are holy, that was really beautiful. So thank you for putting that in my head.
Thank you. We are addicted to it though.
This whole like,

I'll be happy when I'll be happy when I'm a grownup. I'll be happy when I have a job.
I'll

be happy. So the escapism religion is just like the ultimate arrival fallacy.
It's like, yes.

Okay. How about we'll just, we'll start, you know what we'll do? We'll start living after we're dead.
It's really a bit wild. That's what, that's what it is.
Save yourself, save yourself literally, save yourself till you, after you're dead. Right.
And it also relieves us of doing anything hard, like a fighting for justice. Now it's okay.
Everything will be fair later. The fighting for the planet.
Now it's okay. There'll be some other planet later.
It's fascinating. And so you, your book to me, I think that there's so many books that are about sacred texts or reflections as your book feels to me like a new sacred text.
And as such, people are going to

try to figure it out. So we've been thinking about reading a book is different than planning a podcast.
So how do we talk about your book in a language that all people of all faiths and no faith are understanding.

We started talking about your 15 categories in this book and then how they are ways of redemption salvation now,

not waiting for redemption salvation later.

Does it track for you to also call these ways to be alive?

Are these ways to be alive? Are these 15 things different ways to be alive or are we getting that wrong no i i see that ways to be alive yes and maybe the the beginning we begin with dignity maybe that's the one that's distinct if there's something inherent about it. It's not a way.
It just is. And that can offer maybe some stability as you're approaching the other things.
That's a constant. At least in my belief system, I don't think that your dignity is predicated on anyone else's belief, on your own belief.
I don't think it requires that. It just is.
And maybe liberation

is just the, I don't want to call it the ending because it's not linear, but liberation maybe

functions in the same way. That's the last chapter in the book of, it's this kind of form throughout

the book. I think you're liberated into lament.
I think you're liberated into rage. You're liberated

into belonging. And then everything in between.

I like that language of ways to be, ways to live. And you said dignity is the bedrock.
Can you tell us the story about when your hair started turning gray when you were little? Yes, yes. So I started getting gray hair when I was like, I don't know, early six, seven.
And it was getting worse and worse with each year. And I developed this ritual standing on my little stool in the bathroom and I would part my hair and I would try to find the perfect part where the least amount of gray was showing.
Again, I'm a completely shy child. I'm just praying for my own invisibility.
And I'm already distinct because of my Blackness, distinct because of my silence. Here's this other thing that's making me distinct.
And so, I mean, anytime a classmate would even look at me, I'm trying to like duck and dive. and this thing was just kind of screwed silence.
Here's this other thing that's making me distinct. And so, I mean, anytime a

classmate would even look at me, I'm trying to like duck and dive. And this thing was just kind of screaming out, at least in my impression.
So by the time I was maybe 11 or so, we were getting ready to go somewhere, my whole family. And everyone was waiting downstairs for me.
And I'm upstairs, you know, parting, parting, reparting, trying to pluck out hair. I was using my step-mom's mascara to try to cover up some of the grays.
I do that now. I do that now.
And finally my dad sends everyone to the car and he comes to the bottom of the stairs and very simply, he asks, how much longer is it going to be, Nicole? And I don't know what happened to my little body, but I just lost it. I started yelling.
I hate my hair. I don't even remember what I said.
I threw the comb against

my brother's door and it was just not the kind of expression you would usually find out of me. I felt like spectacle.
And finally, I look at my dad, who's just standing there calmly, face completely calm. And I say, I can't do this anymore.
I have to dye my hair.

And he told me to come down the stairs. And I came down, you know, afraid of what would be the consequence of my, like, outburst.
And he just takes my head and tucks it into his chest. And he says, okay, we can dye your hair.
and I was so confused, so completely confused, and I just stopped crying, and I'm looking at him like, that's not what you're supposed to say, you know? What's the script that we're told that we're supposed to say? We're supposed to try to rally someone's beliefs, you know, tell them you're beautiful, all of the language, all of the articulation. My dad, very wise, I don't think he even understood the moment,

knew that that's not what I needed.

That I needed, that he would do whatever he needed so that I could stand unashamed in front of him and my family.

That he had to do that.

And it was a physical act, right?

He tucks my head into his chest.

He doesn't say you're beautiful, but we draw near to beautiful things, you know? He kisses my head. He puts my hair into the bun himself.
He takes on the labor. He puts my hair into a bun, so I don't have to do it.
We just walk to the car and get in, and we didn't talk about it again. We never went and bought hair dye.
I never asked about it again, which is the strangest part of this story. Something mysterious happened on those stairs where it changed me.
And it's something that you don't know has changed you until after. It's like it comes to you in memory.
You realize that was a real shift. Why? Because I didn't need the the lecture I didn't need the three-point reason as to why I'm beautiful I needed someone's nearness and I need someone to say it's okay what can we do you know what can we do to kind of stop the bleeding before I try to get you to march out and strut a runway what can I do you said sometimes you can't talk someone into believing their dignity.
You do what you can to make a person feel unashamed of themselves and you hope in time they'll believe in their beauty all on their own. Yes.
Just this past weekend, Cole, I gave a friend was staying with me. I gave her your book.

She went downstairs. She came upstairs to the kitchen crying and saying over and over again, God made them close.
They were ashamed. Adam and Eve, who throughout the book, you also switched to Eve and Adam every other time, appreciate you.
Good job.

But they were ashamed of their naked selves and God didn't give them the three-point speech.

God just made them close, like your dad.

Why do you think dignity is the bedrock

of all of the forces of liberation

or ways to be alive in your book?

Why is dignity the bedrock?

Thank you. Why do you think dignity is the bedrock of all of the forces of liberation or ways to be alive in your book?

Why is dignity the bedrock?

If you don't understand that there is something inherent that can't be taken from you, it makes it very hard to even want liberation. and thinking of that Asada Shakur quote that

she talks about, you can become so

used to your chains, you know

that you don't have

an appetite for liberation anymore because you start to think that's what you're meant for. And so how could I take someone on a journey of kind of liberating spirituality if they don't believe they're worthy of that? And that moment, that moment in Genesis with God in the clothes, there's something, it complicates the story in so many beautiful ways.
I was taught when I went to college, this very un-nuanced and frankly boring story about just this curse, this doom, you know, this doom and gloom and the dark clouds rolled in. And there's just this very simple, beautiful line that just complicates everything that's happening in the moment.
Did God have to kneel? Did he kneel down in the dirt? Did he make the first kill? You know, he made the clothes out of skin. What did that cost him? And so it complicates the story, I think, of shame and attunement and care in a way that's really beautiful.

It's tenderness.

It's, yeah, it's tender, but it's painful as well.

Yeah, because your dad, because it cost him something.

Because he probably wanted to say, my darling perfect daughter, you're perfect.

You're blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yes.

But he chose you.

And if you hate yourself, what does that mean about me?

Imagine what, my dad, he's a very young father.

He was a teen dad.

What does that mean about what I've done?

I can only imagine the thoughts going on in his head.

So there's two, I mean, my shame, I think this is how shame often works.

Like it doesn't just stay where it's meant to go.

My shame activated something in him, I'm sure, you know, of his own questions. What does that mean about my face? You bear my face as well.
You hate your face. What does that mean about mine? What does that mean about the things I've told you? What does that mean about me greasing your scalp every morning? The shame in a way can be a kind of contagion, but I think there are people out there, wise people like my father,

who are able to take that and de-center themselves in a way that allows them to care,

even though it can be costly. What What do you say to someone who was not loved like your father loved you,

who is needing to find dignity as a bedrock in order to begin living?

There's so many times that you say dignity isn't something we offer to people.

We just affirm it.

Thank you. as a bedrock in order to begin living.
There's so many times that you say dignity isn't something we offer to people.

We just affirm it.

How does someone find dignity

when they haven't been loved well?

Right.

I mean, I'm biased,

but this is where I think that the spiritual

should come into play,

whether or not that's a Christian spirituality.

And I don't really care,

but just an attentiveness to the mysteries of the world. How about we use that word? I'll speak from my own experience.
When I'm drawn into the mystery of being, I don't always need the clarity of someone else's affirmation or my own affirmation. There's this really cruel rhetoric out there that I'm sure you've heard it that says, you know, if you don't believe that you're beautiful, no one else will.
How? How did we get that? How cruel? What kind of strength? I mean, leave it. Leave it to us to decide we'll meet self-hatred with self-hatred.
We'll meet self-hatred with blame. If you don't believe that you're beautiful, no one else will.
You just have to muster belief. I think it's so impractical.
And right now we have a ton of people on social media pretending that that self-love is there. It's a theater because that's what you're supposed to say.
That's what you're supposed to believe about yourself. I just feel so sad about that.
I feel so sad about that kind of theater that we're all kind of forced into. Instead, I think we have a kind of, we can have a kind of mysterious framework for existence that says your beauty, it actually is not predicated on you.
I don't have to believe it when I wake up in the morning. You just are.
You can choose to breathe the air or not breathe the air, but the air is there, you know? It's there. And it's more of an awareness than anything else.
I think that's been so healing to me instead of trying to contrive this really triumphant, you know, this really triumphant form of dignity that says I deserve to be honored. I now say I possess honor.
I possess that. I'm not waiting.
I'm not waiting for anyone to give me the honor that I need. It's in me.
And that changes how I'm able to survive, frankly, in a world that doesn't love my body, that doesn't love Black women bodies. It changes things.
Wow. Cole, you originally thought you were going to write a book of spiritual contemplation.
But you grew up in a family that you call not overtly spiritual, but had a very strong commitment to storytelling. So you had these stories of your family that you were compelled to write.
You wrote those, and now you have this gorgeous book of stories that isn't exactly the spiritual contemplation book that you originally planned. Yet it seems to me that in writing your intergenerational stories of lament and joy and struggle and wonder that you compelled into spiritual contemplation the missing piece, right? The dignity and wisdom of you and your people.
It makes me think of Jesus was called the word made flesh, how it was imperative that the message became the body. And it's likewise imperative that the body become the message.
So faith can't be embodied without the story of our bodies, right? Like it must take on account of our stories and our bodies. What does it mean to you to have your faith integrate and take account of your story and your body and your father's story and your father's body and your grandmother's story and your grandmother's body? I mean, it's terrifying.
It's terrifying. I could have written a book that's just purely contemplation and philosophizing, but this book, there was something about connecting it to the stories that made me, that forced me to tell the truth about things that I think I could have really gotten away with lying about.
People say they believe all kinds of things. We can say we believe all kinds of things.
I think the percentage that we really believe those things is probably really slim for most people when you take account of their lived experiences and their stories. I can go on social media and say, love your body, listen to your body.
But the more honest thing would be to say, I've been outside of my body for over a decade. I'm telling you to listen to yours because here's the story of, I don't share this in the book, here's a story of me having bulimia for 10 years, me living with bulimia for 10 years.
That has the message, there's something behind it that's storied. And I agree with people who say we carry our stories in our body.

So I couldn't tell the stories without talking about the body.

I couldn't talk about contemplation without talking about its effect on the physical material world, including me.

And so, yeah, it was always going to be connected.

But it was hard.

And the body, living in a body, or body, I should say, is another way that you tell that you write about a way of being alive this is so like dignity body is another way of being alive and as you write about and as we all have experienced in different ways we are often cut off from that way of being alive through shame.

So can you tell us the story about your grandmother as a child and this note she got home from school from her teacher? Yes. So my grandma, I can't remember her age, but she was young, young, like this was elementary school.
and

she's

she just had a chest.

She's always had a big chest and she was starting to mature.

She's a teacher, took a, wrote a little note and tucked it in her, in between her sweater and her backpack strap that said,

Phyllis can't run in the playground, you know, needs bra or something like that. Now, my grandma, she was living in a, I mean, all kinds of abuse were taking place in the house that she was being raised in.
But verbal abuse being no small part of that. She then had to look at her, the woman who was not her mother.
She had to look at her face and watch that person hate her even more because of her body.

So she was also enduring sexual abuse, surviving sexual abuse as a child. And she talks about being so, you know, disconnected from her body.
She did stop running on the playground. And even though they bought her a bra, but she said she would sometimes look down and think, is that my hand? Is that hand mine? Because she was so disconnected or she would pass herself in a window and do a double take because she was so disconnected from her physical appearance from the side of her own face and the side of her own flesh for a number of reasons.
Yeah. And her journey was kind of, I want to say to overcome, but I think it's probably more complicated than that.
I think her journey is maybe partially overcoming, but partially learning to exist with what everything that happened to her in childhood did to her relationship with her body. And I think many of us have had similar experiences of the shame that begins at childhood and it finds a place to rest in your body and it just grows and grows and grows.
And there are seasons where you're maybe able to kind of cut out the cancer a little bit and then maybe it grows again. But I think it's just a journey and it was hers and it's mine for sure.
It is an expulsion. It feels like an expulsion.
It's like if being in our body is a way, a force of liberation is a way of being alive. Then the shaming of our bodies that happens so early it's just ejects us it's a it it's like an eden ejection even ejection is that it's a and then we don't get it exile thank you it's an exile yes and then we don't get it anymore the line where you you said that your grandmother was the lone body that

required bondage when they said she has to have a bra. But then your grandmother in that class became the lone body that required bondage and it changed the way she moved forever.
Do you have any clue what the hell bulimia?

How do you understand bulimia with your contemplative self? Yes. Yeah.
Yes. Well, here's the thing.
It begins with the body, but it's not solely embodied. Of course, it has to do with shame.
We know this. But I've been pretty, I had a pretty distorted relationship with my body from the time I was a child, even before I had developed bulimia as a way to kind of cope with the world.
I already was kind of living in my head and leaving my blackness behind in certain spaces or feeling kind of alienated because of my bigness. I was a chubby child.
So there were all these, and I mentioned this very briefly in the book, but I also survived ongoing sexual abuse as a child. so I'm I learned at a time when kids are learning how to move in their bodies how to their agility

this is the age that they were learning how to be free and that they can jump from here to there. I was learning how to leave my body to survive.
That was my strength. You need to leave.
And I'm certainly no expert, but we know that that's a very common and necessary trauma response. Dissociation gets a bad name, but in the moment, it's a mercy.
You know, in the presence of trauma, it's a mercy. Sadly for me and for many other people, it just happens to be that we take that mercy and we extend it even though the threat is no longer there anymore.

You know, we extend it, even though the threat is no longer there anymore.

You know, we extend it.

And I think that happened for both my grandma and I.

And we learned to dissociate even when we don't want to and we don't need to necessarily for survival.

So I was already at a distance, you know, at a distance from my body.

And that was my gift.

That was my strength to leave, to escape if you want to connect it there.

Then as I go into adolescence and I'm dancing and I'm in front of a mirror, however many hours a day, pretty much every day of the week, I'm in front of a mirror.

I can't escape the sight of my own face.

I can't escape the relationship with my body.

So what do I do?

I turn against it.

Thank you. Pretty much every day of the week, I'm in front of a mirror.
I can't escape the sight of my own face. I can't escape the relationship with my body.
So what do I do? I turn against it. That distance becomes then, you know, really disdain, self-hatred.
I mean, maybe it begins with neglect, but it ends with self-hatred. for me at least that's what my I think that was the story of my bulimia, a hatred of my body.
But more than that, a hatred of me, a hatred of myself, which I think is so sinister and it's so imprecise that I think it's really difficult because it felt so necessary to my survival. In the same way that leaving felt necessary to my survival, this new ritual of purging felt necessary for my survival.
And so I wonder if you resonate with that kind of desire to leave becoming a desire to annihilate, you know? Yeah. I mean, you just said distance can become disdain.
That's it. I feel like I've figured it out now.
So, and I'm going to have it figured out until at least you get off this podcast and then I'm going to forget again. But yes.
And I'm wondering if that's why the only things that really truly helped me besides my medication are practices where I'm in my body. Presence becomes love for me.
When I'm forced to be present in my own body. And that makes sense, right? Because the truth is love.
It's there. Like you said, we don't have to earn it.
We don't have to have self-love. We don't have to feel self-love.

It just is.

So when you're forced to be present, it is. But when you stay distant, hate grows, which is true for everybody and everything and every place.
Being divorced from, which gets us to place. so place you talk about as you write about as um another way for us to be alive that we have been separated from in a million different ways.

and one of the the lines you introduce the idea of place being something we need to reconnect with in order to be alive is you say, did you know that birds do not land because they are tired? They know, and they have always known that their liberation depends on their ability to recall the ground. I still, I've read it 60 times.
I still get, because it reminded me of immediately, which then you wrote about my, all of my strategies with my therapist and all the people like about when I'm freaking out or any sort of panic or big anxiety immediately go to, okay, what's one thing you smell? Tell me what you can hear. Fear, that kind of anxiety or fear is a way of not being alive.
And a way of returning to life is to remember the place I am in, where things are usually okay, right? And so you say there is a mysterious entanglement between our welfare and our capacity to ground ourselves in a certain place.

So can you talk to us?

Because we often don't think about where we are at all.

So what does place to you have to do with being alive, like being liberated?

Yeah, I mean, I think it has to do exactly what you're saying with the sensory,

the very real sensory.

What's one thing you hear? Tell me three things you see. But for a long time, I kind of was reflecting as if it was only people who were forming me.
More than that, I would say circumstances. And when I left home, and I mean, I didn't go far.
I went to school in Pittsburgh. I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, but in very different parts of Pittsburgh.
so when I when I left home and I mean, I didn't go far. I went to school in Pittsburgh.
I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, but in very different parts of Pittsburgh. So when I left home for college and I was in this new place, I think I knew that something in me had shifted, but it really wasn't until I started to return home.
And I, for the first time in my life, had experienced this homecoming that many of us experience that I realized just how much of me comes awake depending on the place that I'm in. And I don't think it means I'm faking it at college.
It just means I can access. There's an entrance into parts of me that I don't have easy access to when I'm in a room full of academics.
But when I would walk the streets of Brookline, when I'm walking down the boulevard, there's some kind of nearness that I'm able to, I don't know, kind of move toward. But I think it's easier not to pay attention.
I'm kind of, the jury's out really on why this is. I'm sure it has to do with dissociation and so many people living in their minds or living to kind of play out whatever conversation they thought they were supposed to have or kind of consumed with each other, consumed with their own thoughts and lack a kind of awareness of, okay, where are the lights in my room? You know, what are the shadows doing to that wall? And it's a very kind of privileged thing to be able to pay attention to, to be able to take a minute and really ground yourself and see where you are.
And for different people, I think I'm sure that grounding and that attunement is costly in a different way. And I can say this for myself, not all the homecoming, it wasn't all warm, fuzzy feelings, you know, those entrances, it wasn't going to necessarily beautiful places in myself.

I was going into hard places and realizing, oh, that's the reason.

Maybe that's the reason why you flinch.

You know what happened to that door.

You remember someone pounding on that door.

That's why you don't like loud knocks.

I'm passing the door.

And now I have a little bit more of an awareness about who I am in the world. Wow.
You're saying it's a way of being alive. Nobody's promising that being alive is all touchy-feely good stuff.
I mean, I have had moments where I walk back into my childhood home and I find myself in the pantry shoving food in my mouth in the first 20 minutes. And I'm like, how did I, like binging like that? And I'm 45.
Like I've, it's just awakens, it awakens for better or worse, you can be alive in different places. Yes.
And it absolutely has to do with your body that I've completely resonated with you saying where I just end up a place and I'm like, how did I get here? I've started to tell myself, Cole, if you're not in your body, someone else is. And so who is it? Who is it? You know, how here? You're not just walking around empty.
Who's at the helm? It's not you. You're not leaving behind an empty vessel.
And something about that, I think, has really changed me to think, hello, it's risky. Are you sure? Are you sure you don't want to eat until 6 p.m.? Are you sure you want to, you know, because someone else, you know, something else.
And I think that that something is probably different for different people, whether it's capitalism or the patriarchy or whatever, you know, a white supremacy. If we leave our place, if we leave our bodies, if we lose our connection to the sensory, you know, it might seem like survival is what I'm learning.
It might seem like survival, but really it's a death and it's very dangerous. Changes, changes how I relate to it now.
I feel this kind of fierce protection over my body in a way that maybe I didn't before. One of the many gorgeous things is that it feels like every chapter that you have or every way of being alive seems to be discussed as a way of being personally more alive and then also a way of responsibly living among other people or the planet that is a shift in our understanding of that thing.
So for example, you talk about place as a way for us to be personally more alive. And we've just discussed that.
But you also talk about respecting place in a way that shifts our understanding about our relationship to place. For example, when you fell in love with Wisewood, your home, and you buy this place, you have land ownership, whatever that means.
You said of Wisewood, it never felt as if it belonged to us,

but my own sense of belonging became magnified. Something was restored in me.
I am reconciled to the land by this place and I have no greater reconciliation to date. And then you go on to describe your ownership of that land being your responsibility to nurture it.
Not that this land is mine, but this land is my responsibility to nurture. I love this so much.
Can you talk to us about that and that shift and how all of us in this Western world, because this is part of the reason why our planet's on fire and everyone's moved off their land, right? So talk to us about that shift in thinking about land and place. Yes.
I was raised in the city. You know, I never, I know people say this.
I truly never had an imagination for land ownership. It was the furthest thing from my mind.
The reason why we were drawn to the house actually wasn't the land. It was the beautiful brick of the house.
And it just happened to come with eight or so acres. And we're like, what are we going to do with this? It used to be orchards.
It's so interesting, the shift that's occurred. And really, yeah, the whole household's heart is really toward the land.
I started to walk around in the kind of reeds that lead to, we found a pond during the pandemic. We have a pond on this land and a full on pond.
It's not a small thing. I'll walk through the reeds and I'll discover something new or I'll stop at a tree and I'll think, man, you are allowed to be here.
And I thought, how interesting that my first thought isn't, I own this. This is yours.
I didn't, I mean, I really didn't have that thought in my mind. Other people would say that to me.
Can you believe you own a pond? I thought, that's interesting. That's not really the first thing that came to my mind.
I thought, you can be here. You're safe.
No one's going to kick you off of this land. Which I think is really, I mean, that in me is maybe some of my own formation, but that desire to kind of get away from the idea of owning and possession, I think is far more rooted in kind of indigenous wisdom than my own.
And knowing that this house exists because this land was stolen, that's complicated when you're walking down these halls. And because the house is so old, it was built in 1840.
We have some historical documents. So we're a little bit closer to the story because we have it in writing.
This land was granted to, you know, so he who shall not be named for serving in this war. They just gave away land as if it was something to be owned.
So here I am kind of walking through this tragedy. I have to find a way to contend with my own like shame, guilt, whatever you want to call it.
But I also have to find a way to engage the beauty in the way that the land demands and to kind of take, not completely take the human experience away, but like, are we able to de-center humans for just a moment, you know? Like we truly are small and not in a self-deprecating way, not in a degrading way, but there's a smallness to us and there's a youth to us. In the grand scheme of history and the cosmos, there's a youth to humanity that I think we're not really aware of because we're kind of just a little bit, I'll say human-centered.
Whenever I go outside and I'm walking around, walking the perimeter of my house or walking to the land, I need to find a different word besides smallness. But that kind of, it's perspective may maybe a better word.
It allows me to connect in a way that I never, I mean, never thought I would. And it doesn't just extend to these like really beautiful landscapes in the pond.
Now when I go to the city, I was able to go back to Pittsburgh for a while. I'll look at the buildings and I'll think, what a miracle.
How did we do this? How were we able to construct these things? There's beauty here. The sidewalk, not a huge fan of sidewalks, but is there beauty there? Is there history? Are there little marks? Are there people's names written in it? But going back to Wisewood, it's hard to put language to it.
But so this house was, the land was given in 1820. The house was built in 1840.
We all know what was happening to my ancestors in 1840 and 1820, right? What is, like, when I think about a kind of intergenerational self, not just me, what a beautiful kind of mysterious thing. and I'm not trying to romanticize it, but to think that I now am able to belong to the land that I live on, not out of bondage, that I get to choose, that I'm safe, that I'm free to be here, I'm free to leave.
But whenever I prune the path, whenever I bend down in the reeds and start picking the reeds to clear the path, I do that out of my own love. It's a very mysterious restoration, I think, that happens.
I'm all for Black land ownership because I've seen it in my own life. I never thought it'd be someone who just sits outside and listens to birds.
Like, what is that? Like, who, why, you know?

But there's this connection and there's this responsibility that I feel that I've never felt before. I was so taken by this part in your book in that what really jumped out at me was the impermanence of it all and how, because as me in my white body, it has been my goal in life to be an owner of things.
And this completely shifted my mindset around that, that, oh no, I don't, and I can't own anything. It is all impermanent and I will have to let this go.
And so the idea of nurturing this thing for whenever I'm here, however long I get to be lucky enough to be on this land or in your case at Wisewood, that is my joy. That is my responsibility.
And you only take as much also as you can nurture and you can be in wonder about you can't that's a it's a huge responsibility which takes us to wonder oh wonder cool your discussion of being alive through wonder you talk about how wonder includes the capacity to be in awe of humanity even your own. Can you talk about that, the way that we have set up our worlds to kind of like an amusement park where this is stuff that is worthy of wonder, this is just normal stuff that is, and how you so beautifully integrate that.
Yes. So when I, I have done some traveling and, you know, I hiked in the Himalayas.
I, I try not to brag about it, but yeah, I hiked. I'm like trying to find a different way to say it.
I'm like, just say it. Cool.
And a beautiful, one of the most beautiful experiences that I've had, seeing the snow on the mountains and watching the transition from warmth to cold. So beautiful.
I started to review my journal from that track. It was about three weeks.
I was just talking about people. I was writing poetry and the images were so often about the people that were with me.
You know, the image of this young girl picking these purple flowers that would kind of burst through the earth. It's a zoom in moment.
I wasn't writing the image of the majesty, the mountaintops.

I wrote very little about on the days that we were at a peak and we were camping at a peak, very little written, so much attention and so much interest in the people that were around me, the people we would bow and say namaste to as we passed and the tops of their heads, their images that were just as much grounded in, you know, the earth as they were humanity. It makes you wonder what is it that we see in like a landscape that we're so unwilling to see in each other.
I had this friend tell me one time, he was joking, but he said, let's look at each other like we're art for 30 seconds. Everyone look at your neighbor.
I'm like, oh my goodness, it's one of those weird. Intimacy exercises.
yes like no thank you um i didn't do it of course but i started to do it on my own in practice i'll find myself just drifting off someone and think, wow, look at the way their hair grows or look at those spots. It's very, I mean, if I'm honest, it's difficult to do it myself.
But what a practice to believe that whatever is in the mountaintop is also in the face of your neighbor, in the face of your child, in the face of the person you love or the person you hate that there's something beautiful in that do you think cole that it has something to do with the same discussion we were just having about ownership because i feel like people and their bucket lists and their acquisitions of places and majesties and it's as if we're collecting I've done Hawaii. I.
I've done da da da. Right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're collecting them for our ownership, for our own portfolios.
And so therefore it has to be things that are on that list and not things that can be found in the everyday because that isn't something worthy of ownership and acquisition. Yes.
I think it's absolutely. I think it's absolutely tied.
We're just, we, man, not everyone. I think this of whiteness.
I think whiteness loves the conquering of beauty, loves the collecting. I've seen that in white supremacy.
I mean, it wants to be supreme.

It wants to loves the collecting. I've seen that.
I've seen that in white supremacy. I mean, it wants to be supreme.
It wants to have the supreme. But you see this in whiteness in general, just like this desire to reach the mountaintop.
That's the goal. Here I am.
You can reach the mountaintop and that can be a beautiful thing. Nothing against hikers or people who trek in that way.
But what do you feel when you're at the top of, I want to ask people, what do you feel when you're at the top of that? Does it feel like a conquering? Why, why, why do you need to feel like you've conquered something? Or the people who kind of, they're able to practice wonder, but only so that they can, like you said, acquire it. They want the beauty.
They want the beauty for themselves as opposed to bearing witness. It's not enough to bear witness.
How can I have this? How can I take it?

you know so the the discussion of wonder is life-changing um and and there's a a few different levels of what wonder can do for us and for the world in your discussion of it. And one seems to be a personal liberation, right? A personal way of being alive.
And you use the description of, I think he used the color purple, right? Talk to us about that iconic moment in the color purple and what she was doing, what she was reclaiming in that moment. Yeah, that iconic line, I think it pisses God off anytime you walk past the color purple and don't appreciate it.
I mean, talk about a complicated character. You know, talk about writing a very human character.
There's something in, I mean, the story, the color purple, if you've read it or if you've watched the film adaptation. So much tragedy, right? It would be very, very easy to reduce that story to mere tragedy.
And I think we're inclined to that sometimes, especially in relationship to Black stories. We're inclined toward the traumatic.
I think there's a really sinister curiosity around Black death, around Black pain. Everyone, I mean, even if you don't necessarily crave it, there's this interest, right? What does it mean to have a spiritual practice that's grounded, that doesn't begin at the site of trauma, but begins at the site of beauty and attentiveness? I mean, how liberating to be able, like I said, to listen to the barn swallows outside of my room instead of getting wrapped up in what, you know, you really smart people will think of me.
That's an act of, that's a liberating act. That's liberating access that I have to the beauty of the world, that it's not escapism in the way that I think you can use it as.

It's not escapism.

It's actually really unapologetic presence

to the nuance of the world,

that there are terrors, you know,

but there is also beauty.

And to be unapologetic in witnessing that

and communicating that, you know,

I think is what Alice Walker was doing.

Yeah, it's like wonder.

Every time we behold, you say we behold something, we look at it as a piece of art or we just feel the aliveness in us that comes when we have wonder, we are asserting what you say that we are more than a grotesque collection of traumas. Right? It's like suddenly you are something else.
And then you talk about wonder as not only a personal way of being alive, a personal liberation, but a way to save the world really. Because you talk about, I think you said, we can't destroy things that we're beholding.
Something like that. Yeah, I think it's really difficult.
I mean, if you're witnessing beauty, I think you're going to be inclined to protect it. You know? You could be inclined to take ownership over it, claim it, acquire it.
But there's this other, you know, very true, I think, whim in us that wants to protect beautiful things. If you're witnessing beauty in the world, that's what's going to kind of cultivate a love in you and cultivate the sense of how can I, how can I keep this safe? You know, how do I protect the flame? Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know.
We went back and forth about the most beautiful lines in this book and we have 40 million, but one of them has to be, the northern lights are one thing. But when I die, tell them I went to Nome, Alaska, only to find God in a Minecraft parody.
And you'll just have to read to understand that. burst out crying burst out crying when I read that

yes she did

okay I want to

by the way cole if you ever need a full reading guide of your book please just email me because i have all 15 but what we will do is end with calling because that's the next one um oh, it was just as a complete control freak

who was always talking about God

and not even ever sure she believes in God.

Like, I'm just like, am I, what am I talking about?

Am I, am I making all this?

I don't know.

Okay, so you're talking to your brother

about your lucid dreams, okay? And these are dreams in which you are. Okay.
So you're talking to your brother about your lucid dreams. Okay.

And these are dreams in which you are making, you know, you're dreaming. So you're calling the shots in your own dream.
Yes. Okay.
You're changing your dream. You're deciding what's next.
You're controlling your dream. And your brother says, you live and sleep in control.
I want to know how to know.

And you say to him,

I want to know how to know. And you say to him, I wanted to know how not to know.
How to feel like there is a calling from outside of you driving you to that door until you walk through it like there is no other way. Sometimes you want to believe the dream.

I'm not one given to belief.

I don't know if I'll ever love anyone as much as I loved you after those lines.

Because to me, I just felt like, okay, sure things are beautiful and magical because I make them that way.

Like I want God, this God that I'm a great PR agent for to show up and do something so blah, blah, blah, blah, that I will feel called to that and know that I'm not controlling all of this, that magic is real. Yes.
And that was the first, the first one I ever got like that was this one, was Abby. When Abby walked into a room and I suddenly, God was like, here she is.
And also, you're queer, honey, surprise. I was like, this is a plot twist that I can say for sure I didn't control.
That was a calling from outside. That was a calling from, but was it? Because then I'm still reading from Cole, right? Then I'm like, you know what? What if it wasn't even, I mean, because one of the things that's so important to me about your work is your refusal to decide whether God is just outside or inside or because in the Christian, people get so freaked out if you ever even begin to consider that the deepest self is God.

Do we even have to decide whether it's coming from outside or inside,

or whether it's God on some phone call in the sky, or whether God is the self calling to itself. Yeah.
What, whether going into yourself, isn't going toward God, going toward the divine. Howard Thurman talks about that beautifully.
I don't know if I quote him in the book, but he talks about that beautifully. The sound of the genuine in you.
He says, who are you? You have to find out who your name is. And he connects that to, if you're not, you're just going to end up like some marionette on the strings that someone else is pulling ultimately.
Who are you? And that call to self being a call toward the divine, I think it's one of those mysterious things that I don't feel pressured to distinguish. If it's true, it's If it's true, it's true.
You know, my dad says this. The truth is the truth.
Whether or not you're prepared to tell it or you just tell it. If it's true, it's true.
Any kind of fidelity to something that's true in me, I think, is a fidelity to a truth in the divine and to a truth in who God is. So yeah, maybe the call, maybe the call was both

coming from inside the house and outside. And there's beauty in both and you don't need it to come from outside in order for that to be valid.
You don't have to wait for that to seem like it's, although I want that. I want the magic.
People say they hear God. I'm like, I'm waiting you know hasn't yet happened to me, but have I met the face of God? Have I met the face of God in a person I love? Yeah.
You said, I've accepted that the whole of my life will be a pilgrimage toward the sound of genuine in me. But also, if practiced right, your calling into selfhood may enhance the sound of selfhood in someone else, meaning, like this is a kind of God pyramid scheme I can get into.
Because usually, right? Because usually it's like, oh, I'm collecting people for God. And it's just like, kind of like Mary Kay.
It's like a pyramid, you know, I brought him and I brought her and we're all getting points. But maybe this is a sort of evangelism I can believe in, which is like the closer we get to God, which is the closer we get to our deepest self, frees somebody else to get the closest they can get to God and to their deepest self.
And this is a sort of real ripple liberation. Yes.
In that speech that Thurman gives, The Sound of the Genuine, he gave it to Spelman College, there's this line where he says, it's possible if I go down in me, go toward my true self, if I can go down in me and come up in you and having made that pilgrimage, I can see myself through your eyes and you can see yourself. And there's this intimacy with the self.
There's this intimacy with another person. Like, is that not what love is? I can go down in my true self, come up in you and make that pilgrimage of mutuality, of mutual love and mutual beholding, you know? Mutual beholding.
And in fact, maybe that's the only way. Because as you say, can you describe your father looking in the mirror and your revelation about what he saw versus what you were able to see? Yes.
I don't know. Maybe someone listening has like, if you've seen someone else's face in the mirror and you just know it's not lining up quite right.
And I don't remember how old I was, but I had this experience with my dad. He's doing his hair, getting his curls with this VitaPoint.
I'm looking at him and I'm like, do you think that's what you look like? And he's looking at me like, what are you talking about? I'm like, that's not your face. That's not what you, I'm sitting there just, I want to shake him and say, that's not, that's not your face.
And what I wanted to say is your, your face is way better than what that mirror is translating, what that mirror is communicating. But instead I just kind of grabbed his face and stared at him in the way that like a very queer little child would do.
I just kind of grabbed him and stared and was like, that's not your face. Because I mean, even with mirrors, you know, you're seeing this projection, you're seeing everything kind of new and out of alignment.
It's not actually showing what you truly look like. It's showing an iteration of it maybe, but not your true face.
And I think, I mean, how mysterious that we were made that we cannot see our own faces. I will never see my own face the way that you're seeing it.
I will never get over it. I will never get over you telling us that we will never see our own faces.
It's scary. If you could see me, Cole, like literally crossing my eyes, trying to find some way.
How beautiful is that? It's the most beautiful thing. We will never see our own faces, which is why we need to see other people's faces for them.
Yes. And why other people need to see our faces for us and why we need other people to see the face of God because God is made in our image, which we are not able to see.
Yes. I need you.
you know I need you to look look at me, you know, for all the people who want to, you know, live in invisibility, all the little children. I needed other people to behold my own face.
My dad needs that. You need that.
I think that, I mean, it's the best case for belonging that we have. These, you know, pseudo wise people who think they can live a solitary life, like, it's just not true.
There's something missing. People always say, you have to know yourself.
They say these things. It's the same with the beauty.
They say, you have to know yourself. You have to really know yourself before you can be with someone.
I'm like, okay, yes, and you have to really know how to be with someone in order to really know yourself. It's not either or.
I have to really be able to stand and not cover my face while I'm talking to my spouse. I need to be able to stand before them and have that very strange and scary, strange and, you know, scary experience of being seen in order for me to go into, you know, our nice little meditation space and then try to encounter myself.
It's not how it works. I reject that.
I'm a big evangelist for belonging in the sense that I think, you know, we were made for that kind of mutual witness. And it's not right that we, you are, it can't be that we know ourselves before we go knowing anyone else.
It's like place. People are like place.
They will bring stuff up in us that we don't even have never seen of ourselves before. They will show us part of our face that we have never seen before.

Every new person.

You cannot know yourself.

Just like every place brings us, brings a new part of ourselves out.

Every person does.

That's why it requires presence and aliveness.

It's like the first time I've struggled with faith, religion, Christianity, being brought up in the Catholic church, being a little queer kid, didn't have the language for it until I was in my teenage years. And Glennon has allowed me, and I'm now kind of putting these pieces together throughout this conversation, you've allowed me to see God because I see it in your face.
And it has allowed me to feel God inside of me. And I don't know.
I just think that this is one of the most beautiful things that a person can experience, especially when you feel like you have to reject God because they rejected you first. So I'm like, no, I reject you first.
And so to be able to come back into it in a witnessing way, when I look at my spouse and I can see God, I can see the divine in her. And it's my job to kind of mirror that, for lack of a better term right now, back to you.
You just mentioned belonging, which is a whole nother unbelievable way of being alive that you discuss in the book. And you said, each year I know love and belonging, a love that does not require

a sacrifice at the altar of acceptance. Okay.
Pod squad, did you hear that? Belonging is a love

that does not require a sacrifice at the altar of acceptance. What parts of yourself, Cole,

do you continue to feel that the world wants you to sacrifice at the altar of acceptance? I mean, my Blackness, my queerness, but I mean, in a different way, I think my silence, my nature, my disposition, you know, I'm a writer, I'm doing podcasts. How can you be interesting? My intellect.
But there are so many, not all belonging is good belonging. And I have belonged to spiritual spaces that were so concerned with what I thought about God, with any given belief or any given doctrine or creed,

that if you fall out of line, then you're bad. You're the bad one.
And your belonging is at

stake. How terrifying for young people trying to grapple and make sense of who they are in the world and who their people are in the world to demand a kind of belief that means you belong.
So anyways, I've decided that if it's a kind of belonging that demands I believe any given thing, I don't want it because I know what that does to us. I know we'll say that we believe all kinds of things, you know, if it means that we can have a place at the table, a place, you know, a warmth, if it means we can have company, you know, everyone's looking for that.
So I'm very skeptical of spiritual spaces in particular that are like that. And I think that's why many Christian spaces probably wouldn't claim me even because I don't have an allegiance.
I don't have an allegiance to Christianity that terrifies people. A prophet has nowhere to lay her head, Cole.
A prophet has nowhere to lay her head. I have an allegiance to the questions of what it means to be human and what it means to be a spiritual human in the world.
And Christianity is one way I make sense of that. And I might wake up some days and think, yeah, God exists.
Maybe it has something. And I might wake up many other days and think, no way.
But my fidelity is to the questions. To the questions.
It's finding the people who are okay with that. Not just okay with that, but welcome that and know that they actually need that in order to be whole.
And not whole, be full themselves. Ooh, be full.
I love that. Cole Arthur Riley.
Thank you. Just thank you.
Thank you. the rest of of you your next right thing is to get the next right book and you might want to do this because i don't know that there'll be another one the next right book which must belong in any any human being who who loves life who loves life, who loves other people, who loves spirituality, who has a fidelity to the questions, I was just going to say that, um, must have this one, this here flesh, Cole Arthur Riley.
Um, thank you, Cole. Thanks for helping us do the hard things, the hardest thing, which is fully being alive.

Thanks for inviting me into your space and trusting me with your people.

The rest of you, get the book, and then we'll see you here next time. Bye.

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