This Spring, artist and theologian Julian Davis Reid led the Prayer as Resistance 2.2 retreat, held by Princeton Theological Seminary’s Center for Contemplative Leadership. The gathering explored the relationship between prayer, rest, and resistance through the Bible and Black music in Notes of Rest, an initiative founded by Reid.
Reid kicked off the two-day retreat with a riveting jazz concert featuring his band Circle of Trust. They invited the audience to remain in the tension and struggle of this broken world while simultaneously discerning beauty and hope. Group sessions focused on prayer as a resolution to rest in God and reflections on jazz music and scripture. They also included “Practicing the Scale,” which introduced eight “notes” (Sabbath, Sleep, Simplicity, Silence, Stillness, Solitude, Slowness, and Sanctuary) drawn from the insights of jazz music as an analogy for the spiritual journey. “Playing in Time,” invited participants to discern how their rest might either foster or jeopardize the rest of others. While in the last session, “Listening Back to Rehearsal,” Reid reflected on the praise house tradition as a way to connect our rest with the living memory of our ancestors.
The retreat concluded with a poetry night, co-sponsored by Goldenwood NYC and EcoTheo Collective with poems by Alysia Nicole Haris and Anastacia-Reneé. The poems recited included Of Course She Looked Back by Natalie Diaz, Gazing by Anastacia-Reneé, From Where I Stood Standing by Alysia Nicole Harris, and A Blessing by James Wright.
Here’s what a few attendees shared about how Prayer as Resistance 2.2 changed their outlook on rest, healing, and reflection.
Julian invited us to consider our rest as an agent of healing and an agent of harm. His invitation to reflect on when our failure to rest has negatively impacted other people challenged me to look at rest from a new perspective and with a more critical eye. In considering rest in its right place, we are then able to experience restoration and wholeness.
PhD student Febrianto, 29′, had a similar sentiment on how one’s own rest can have an affect on those around you.
The conference challenged me to reframe rest as a collective practice; how we rest impacts the community, either inviting others into rest or jeopardizing their ability to do so. Julian led the participants to see poetic forms of prayer in Black music to cultivate this new way of seeing and becoming.
Program and Community Coordinator at the Center for Contemplative Leadership, Wesley Tenney-Free reflected on how the retreat allowed for the community to come together in unity.
This year’s Prayer as Resistance 2.2 retreat offered a unique opportunity to rest together, in an expression of solidarity, against the many pressures of this current season. It was beautiful to see ministry leaders, artists, and activists alike coming alongside one another in a rhythm of prayer. One moment from Saturday really stands out to me. After a full day on retreat together, a participant shared a prophetic word of encouragement with others in the room. In a slow contemplative progression, various members of the audience began to reply, “I receive this,” one after another. I truly believe that for these few minutes, dwelling in the presence of the living Word, we all were given a glimpse of beloved community.
Watch clips from Prayer as Resistance 2.2: Notes of Rest below, and for more information on the upcoming series, subscribe to the Center for Contemplative Leadership’s newsletter.
