An Arcata Subud Center Newsletter, September 2023
THANK YOU, MUHAMMAD SUBUH FOUNDATION
Our Subud group received a one time grant from the Muhammed Subuh Foundation for $15,000 for the purpose of replacing the roof on our Subud house. This was accomplished over the summer. Thank you to Dave Carter for writing the proposal and landing the grant!!!
The work was coordinated by our property manager, Rosada Martin. Many thanks to Rosada negotiating the work with the roofing company and timing the work with Stepping Stones (our tenant) during their week off.
SUBUD VISITORS
Visits from beyond the Redwood Curtain are always a happy event. In August we saw Hannah Kusterer from Oakland in the area just for fun, Bachrun and Mahalia LoMele from Pinehurst, CA, and Ruth Arietta from San Anselmo, CA. Bachrun and Ruth have an art show at the Morris Graves Museum. Please see Sanderson’s review below.
MEMBERS
by Aminah Herrman
Stewart Sundet was an active Subud member in Arcata, a helper and chair of the Art department at Humboldt State for many years. He urged our group to buy the property on Zehndner Ave over 40 years ago. The vision was to have art students from Humboldt State bring art projects that helped facilitate learning basic subjects in an art based/creative way.
Samuel Dolson was largely responsible for orchestrating a great deal of the renovations needed to bring the building up to code to house our first Subud school, Centering School (K-8). Samuel ’s then wife, Lisa, started the Centering Preschool on the house side of our building. Aminah Herrman was one of the first preschool teachers for the preschool. Several Subud members were actively involved in both the elementary school and the preschool.The school was the talk of the town with a long waiting list for several years. Unexpectedly after a thriving school was established for several years, the school closed because Stewart left and the vision was unable to be sustained by others. Working together as a Subud group, we all became close as a spiritual family. We worked hard, laughed and shared stories, had many communal dinners, beach bonfires, our children became good friends and to this day still have some connections with one another. Working together for a common interest brought us together. It was a rich life for our group.
REVIEW
by Sanderson Morgan
Over the past two years, I have been developing two outstanding art exhibitions that are now on view at the Morris Graves Museum of Art in Eureka, California: Ruth Arietta, “Narrative Paintings and Fanciful Sculpture” and Bachrun LoMele, “Burn Pile – The Andromeda Mirage.”
While both installations are remarkable for their content, we were also able to have our area’s excellent arts writer Gabrielle Gopinath publish two reviews in the North Coast Journal and also, for Bachrun, in the premier magazine in its field, Sculpture Magazine.
It has been a pleasure to bring these presentations to fruition and to help both artists gain a wider and more discriminating audience. Ruth has basically sold out her exhibition and had a wonderful opening night that was attended by so many of her new audience plus many who came up for the opening from the Bay Area, including a Marin County art critic (who purchased one of her works!). Her talk the next day was to see a usually retiring person open up so nicely to a good audience who had a lot of good questions and comments about her paintings and sculptures.
Bachrun’s installation presents a lot to look at and understand for the large turnout of people at his opening. His pieces have multiple layers that reveal themselves to the serious viewer and with so many ideas about the nature of truth and contemporary American language. I think the first realization that every part of the massive piece called Burn Pile is handmade invites the audience to engage with the ever more revealing assembly of parts before them. While everyone will walk away with their own understanding of Burn Pile, the review and commentary by Dr. Gopinath very efficiently brings together all the elements of the installation and is good to read prior to seeing or re-seeing anew the massive assembly of fascinating objects.
The day after the opening Bachrun gave a very full informational talk revealing the amazing studio he has at the Hatchery near Miramonte, CA in the southern Sierra and later led the audience into the gallery for a more detailed discourse about the actual installation.
That all of this came together in the marvelous way that it did, with harmony and solutions at every turn, made it an experience very much carried along on the wings of the Latihan.
The CASE FOR REGULAR LATIHANS
By Benedict Herrman
Bapak always told us to do two latihans a week, with the possibility of a third one at home by oneself after being opened for a while. Most of us, I’m sure, started off with that intention, and steadfastly kept at it over the years. Going to the center to do our latihan became a regular, predictable part of our lives that we embraced and looked forward to, except for those times the kids were sick, we couldn’t get a sitter, or we had worked a 16 hour day and needed to rest. All understandable.
Since Covid, however, the temptation to skip a latihan, or just stop going altogether has been showing up here and there across the Subud world. Not everywhere, and certainly not everyone, but enough where some words about it might be useful, and that is to remind folks what the words ‘latihan kedjiwaan’ mean… latihan means ‘exercise’ and kedjiwaan means ‘spiritual.’
“Well and good, I know that,” comes the response. My desire is to draw attention to the word exercise, as it might be useful to liken going to latihan as going to a gym. A person goes to the gym to work out their body, strengthen their muscles, and keep themselves fit. The object isn’t to just be stronger in the gym, but to be stronger in one’s everyday life. Our spiritual exercise is the same — the object isn’t to just receive at the gymnasium of the inner, but to strengthen and feel one’s inner guidance in one’s everyday life.
If one goes to the gym two or three times a week, one gets stronger. Once a week is okay, better then nothing, but once a month — well, maybe better than nothing, but how effective is it? In the long run, Bapak’s advice is sound — latihan twice a week, with a third possibly at home for some if circumstances warrant.
Why am I writing this? Because I need to remind myself as well as anyone still reading, that no matter how long one has surrendered to God through their latihan, that there’s so much more to go, even after we leave this world. You see, I’m as human as anyone, and sometimes I’m just too tired, too busy, or too lazy to go to the gym and surrender to my Maker. Yes, Bapak also said that eventually the life of a Subud member will become ‘automatic’ — that the sense of things unfolding as they should without conscious effort on one’s part will occur, and I can attest to that personally. However, that doesn’t mean I can stop going simply because my latihan is present all the time. Stop going to the gym and one’s muscles get weak. Stop doing latihan, and those muscles can get weak, too.
Please forgive me if anything I’ve said has offended anyone. That is never my intention. Love to all, Benedict.
