By Diana Castro-Vazquez

On October 28, author Cole Arthur Riley came to Greensboro College for the 62nd annual Jean Fortner Ward Lecture on faith and higher education issues. According to Greensboro College, “The Jean Fortner Ward Lecture Series was initiated in 1964 to bring outstanding speakers and lectures to the Greensboro College campus. This series is made possible through the generosity of the late Mr. William S. Ward … in honor of his wife, an alumna and former trustee of the college.”

Dr. Lawrence Czarda opened the lecture by welcoming all students, staff and faculty. He introduced the Reverend Dr. Robert Brewer, who introduced the audience to Riley. According to her website, “Cole Arthur Riley is, more than most things, a writer. Born and for the most part raised in Pittsburgh, Cole studied writing at the University of Pittsburgh, but traces her love of words back to her father, who would bribe her and her siblings to write poems and stories to get out of chores, or for cold hard cash; and her gramma who was part writer, part sage. 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.”

“What is the spiritual cost of divorcing the mind from the body and how do we resist the social momentum that is training us for a disembodied life?” Riley asked to begin the lecture. She pointed out that there is a notable increase in calls for people to pay attention to their bodies, self-care, wellness, etc. While the message is correct and noble, Riley argues that the “why and the how have become … cheapened by society, which equates to caring for the body [by] buying bath bombs and going on vacations.”

While she states that these things are important and nice, when she talks about reclaiming the body and taking care of it, she means more than numbing or covering it up. She means tending to the body.

“I am talking about the raw, earthy, intergenerational, deeply in the flesh of our bodies and the bodies around us …. To survive, we must locate the spirituality … that has to do with just as much corporeal, with the flesh, as it does with the invisible,” Riley said.

Riley believes that physical and spiritual are intertwined and cannot be separated. To take care of the spiritual is to take care of the body and vice versa. She believes that humans harbor a significant amount of self-hatred. They push and punish their bodies without taking care of their mental and spiritual health first. She believes that this is a result of society.

“Our society is ripe with exhaustion, enslaved by capitalism, addicted to technology, ill-equipped to care for the traumatized. Are perpetually training us towards a different path, endless quest of self-hatred, hatred of the body,” she said.

She acknowledged that we can ask for too much from our bodies, to get over the physical, without taking care of the spiritual. People are trained to believe that “it is more honorable to forget our bodies. Usually, so we can produce more for a society that does not care about them or us.”

Riley stated that if we leave with nothing but one thing, it is to remember that “if you are not in your body, someone else is … To be absent from the body is not leaving the body alone to its own devices … It is not a void. It is an open door to … capitalism, tech oligarchs that control us through our phones, misogyny, every corporation that benefits from our self-hatred … There are systems that have everything to gain from our disembodiment, because empty bodies are easier to use.”

She also mentioned the church and how it can benefit from free labor and disembodiment.

Riley also discussed how trauma can impact the body. When an individual faces trauma and does not address it, their body can deteriorate. She shared a quote from Hungarian physician Gabor Maté, “In the absence of relief, a young person’s natural response – their only response, really – is to repress and disconnect from the feeling-states associated with suffering. One no longer knows one’s body. Oddly, this self-estrangement can show up later in life in the form of an apparent strength, such as my ability to perform at a high level when hungry or stressed or fatigued, pushing on without awareness of my need for pause, nutrition or rest.”

She also mentioned that individuals can suffer from intergenerational trauma that they have inherited from their ancestors.

Riley reminded the audience that it is important to take care of oneself spiritually and mentally so that the physical can also recover and be taken care of. When the body is only taken care of, it is shallow. The root cause is not being addressed.

This lecture by Cole Arthur Riley was very interesting and eye-opening. While it is not something new, taking care of our mental health, Riley approaches it as a non-negotiable. To achieve success in caring for your body, you must also take care of your spirit.