IMPORTANT EVENT UPDATE: The weekend of events surrounding Cole Arthur Riley’s visit on October 22, 2022 will be postponed to a later date. Cole is no longer able to join us in person as planned so, we will reschedule for a time that she can be with us and where we are able to experience together the fullness of her workshops. The planning team for this event is coordinating future dates and we will be in touch as soon as both the workshop and lunch lecture are rescheduled.

Thank you for your flexibility as we work to establish a new date. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and look forward to being with you at the rescheduled time.

Thank you,
The Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis and Christ Church Cathedral

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Cole Arthur Riley, author of “This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us,” will offer two sessions on writing, spirituality and liberation on Saturday, Oct. 22. The weekend will kick-off on Friday, Oct. 21 from 6-7 p.m. with an evening of Poetry and Spoken Word Open Mic from local poets and spoken word artists of color who will perform on CCC’s lawn.

Riley is a writer and poet. Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, Guernica, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post. She currently serves as the spiritual teacher in residence with Cornell University’s Office of Spirituality and Meaning Making. She is also the creator of Black Liturgies, an online space that integrates spiritual practice with Black emotion, Black literature, and the Black body, and a curator of The Center for Dignity and Contemplation.

Her first session is a workshop focused on black, indigenous, people of color, young and old, who seek to use poetry as a means of self-discovery and empowerment.

The second session will focus on Riley’s writings and her understanding of spirituality rooted in the past of her ancestors and in present and future liberation.

In the preface to “This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us,” she writes: “… as a Black woman, I am disinterested in any call to spirituality that divorces my mind from my body, voice, or people.” Riley integrates the formative stories of her childhood with the contemplative practice of seeing the sacred in all things.