Julian Davis Reid (M.Div., Candler School of Theology) is an artist-theologian who uses words and music to invite us into the restful lives we were created to live. A musician, speaker, and writer, Julian offers his contemplative-musical program Notes of Rest across the nation and he plays internationally with various musical outfits including The JuJu Exchange and Isaiah Collier & The Chosen Few. He is a Fellow of Theological Education Between the Times and consults with the grassroots organization Fearless Dialogues. Julian writes about faith, music, Blackness, and rest on his Substack “Julian’s Note,” and his work has been featured in Sojourners and Downbeat. He and his wife Carmen live in his hometown Chicago.

Along with The JuJu Exchange, Julian leads contemplative retreats called Notes of Rest, where he places meditations from a Bible passage or piece of Black writing on a bed of music for the sake of promoting rest, contemplation, and creativity amongst communities. This ministry emerged out of his growing sense that the Global North needs to rediscover the liberating possibilities of stillness.

Additional Presenters include

Susan Alexander

Susan Alexander is the author of two collections of poems, Nothing You Can Carry, 2020 and The Dance Floor Tilts, 2017, Thistledown Press. Her work has won multiple awards, most recently the Vancouver City Poem Contest, June 2022. She also received the 2019 Mitchell Prize. Susan currently hosts In/Verse, the monthly reading series for the Federation of BC Writers. Her poems appear in anthologies and literary magazines in Canada, the U.K. and the U.S., and have ridden the bus as part of Poetry in Transit. She lives on Nexwlélexm/Bowen Island, B.C., the traditional and unceded territory of the Squamish people.