Message from the Chair

by Luqman Katz, August 2021

Fresh off our all-encompassing Congress, we hope you are all doing well. We traveled to our local centers, to the nation, and on to Indonesia, all from the comfort of our home. Now, post Congress, things are beginning to unfurl…

Raina Snyder has become our regional SIHA (Subud International Health Association) representative. She hopes to contact all of us to share the work that SIHA does, and how we can get involved with the Subud health and medical community. As a starting point, she recommends viewing the SIHA website and you can reach her at rainasnotaryservices@yahoo.com.

We thank Ralph Davila, Sanderson Morgan, and Paul Nelson for bringing SICA to California. SICA will have a larger presence in our region, as the SICA board hopes to bring latihan, testing, and conversation on the topic of culture and you, as well as cultural entertainment evenings. Stay tuned for an event coming near you.

Below, we present to you some members of your sweet, sincere and hard-at-it executive committee:

Three members of the Subud California executive committee contemplate their future.

What adorable people they are! I know that I would definitely trust them with my donations to Subud CA, and I am sure you all feel the same way. Please visit our website and click on the donate button. You will make these little guys very happy and will make their jobs a lot easier. Thank you all!

Love, Your Committee

San Diego Center Partners with SICA

As a part of a local event called “Art Around Adams”, the Subud San Diego Center partnered with SICA to host their third “Artists and Friends” exhibit and sale on Saturday, June 1st, 2019.

It was a delightful afternoon of sunshine, music, and food, offering a variety of art by local artists at the Subud House. The exhibit attracted many of the visitors who came to the event, which was happening all along the street. Subud members Renata Reid and Susan Van Winkle displayed their work, along with others from the local community, and many other members of the center helped with setup and logistics.

Here are views of some of the wonderful art displayed for sale:

The Fruits of our Labour – We Humans

By Stefanie Brown, South Devon Group, Subud Britain

In July 2018, Emmanuel Williams (of Subud California) and I co-edited, contributed to, and produced a poetry anthology called We Humans containing poems from 76 Subud members in 17 countries. We stated that proceeds would be donated to the Subud International Cultural Association (SICA). I am pleased to report that on 24 January 2019 we sent just under $400 to SICA.

SICA gave us funding for the project at the outset. I would like to share with you a letter received from Latifah Taormina, a former SICA Chair and outgoing SICA Board member, in response to mine. I had written to her to arrange to transfer the money and I said “A big thank you to SICA for funding our project in the first place. I’m so pleased we have been able to give you some money back, to help towards other cultural projects.” Here is what Latifah wrote:

Dearest Stefanie and Emmanuel,
Thank you so very much for your good work. I want to especially thank you for something you said just now. Of all the grants that SICA has given to people for creative projects, yours is the first project to give back to SICA more than what you were given, and you are the first person to express such gratefulness to be able to help SICA give to other creative projects. I have tears in my eyes as I write this.

Thank you and Emmanuel for such a gift.

A long time ago, when SICA and SDIA were new, Salamah Pope asked Bapak, informally, what was the difference between the two, in terms of their mandate. Her translation of what Bapak said was “we do Susila Dharma to repair the mistakes of the past, and we do SICA to build a more HUMAN future.” You live up to the title of the anthology, We Humans. Thank you for being one. Thank you more than I can say.
With love, Latifah

I reproduce this in the hope that more of us creative types will have a go at a project that could bring in funds for SICA, or that those who are not creative might feel moved to donate. You can do that at: https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/ilovesica.

If you would like to buy a copy of We Humans and donate to SICA that way, whilst enjoying some excellent poetry(!), please go to www.lulu.com and search for either ‘We Humans’ or ‘Stefanie Brown’.

Thank you to SICA!

Stefanie Brown
South Devon Group
Subud Britain

Losing Chairs and Seeking Houses

The recent issue of Subud USA has a delightful story from Latifah Taormina, “The Tragic Tale of the Disappearing Chairs.” Latifah traces how hundreds of Bentwood chairs came from the improv theater group “The Committee” in San Francisco to the Subud Marin Center in 1972 and links it to the importance of contributing to SICA. Read her story here and make you own contribution to SICA here.

When chatting about this story, Latifah mentioned another tale from the annals of Subud California, from the time when the region began its search for Subud houses. Here is an excerpt:

“Because of the work I had done with the San Francisco group’s housing committee, I was able to attend a most interesting meeting with Bapak during his visit to California in 1968. It was with the regional helpers and committee with regard to the ownership of future Subud houses in California.

At one point I asked Bapak, “If San Francisco has $5,000 in their house fund, but Subud Los Angeles finds a property first and needs our $5,000, that Subud San Francisco would have to give it to them?” Bapak smiled and nodded. “Yes,” he said, in English.

Of course, he would say that. Gotong-royong is a core tenet of Indonesian life. It means mutual cooperation to achieve a shared goal. While we may not have known that particular phrase that was how we worked when we started The Committee (an improv theater Alan Myerson and I started in San Francisco in 1963). But as soon as Bapak said that, I overheard a member who’d been cooking dinners to raise money for the San Francisco group mutter to herself, “That’s the last dinner I’m cooking.” Yes, we were all in Subud, but none of us were saints.” (excerpt from Ha Ha Among the Trumpets, © Latifah Taormina, a memoir still being edited).

Since then, Subud California has established a regional housing fund that is only used to provide loans to centers that want to repair or purchase a Subud hall. Centers have developed successful enterprises which enabled them to pay back the loans and maintain their properties. Our region has come a long way!

The Culture Compass

Wandering around the Subud Village at the 2018 World Congress in Freiburg provided something new to discover and enjoy at every turn. One of my favorite things to ponder each time I passed was a set of related displays about the “Subud Compass,” which came in several formats. The first component of this was a series of posters prominently placed along the main walkway, which highlighted this Bapak quote about the four stages Zat, Sifat, Asma and Af’al which together comprise “a sort of compass” for life.

However, if one wandered over to the adjacent section of the Subud Village devoted to activities of SICA, these four stages were presented in a different format which used the acronym IDEA, short for the four stages of Intention, Direction, Effort, and Achievement:

The view of the four key elements was then further expanded and specifically identified as a CULTURE COMPASS, as below. What I found to be most intriguing (and indeed illuminating) about this version is that this compass incorporates the Subud Wings and shows a way of thinking of them as integral parts of a whole:

This view of the compass suggested that by first knowing and appreciating your intention, then identifying your direction of service, using that direction to establish your creative effort or work, and achieving outcomes and results, each of us can attain well-being and balance in the world.

To me, this was a profound expression that the purposes of all four Subud wings can be manifested by each of us in a meaningful, essential and personal way. Creativity is found in every area of endeavor and culture is expressed through all kinds of work.

Sadly, I missed a presentation about the Culture Compass by SICA Chair Sebastian Flynn. I hope to read a summary or notes about his session to learn more about this view of the world and of Subud.

— Elizabeth Trudell

Subud Youth Launching SICA LatinoAmerica

Contributed by Latifah Taormina, SICA Board of Directors

I am delighted to share with you a new film, which is a lovely tribute to Bapak and to Subud. It shows that Subud is alive and thriving with many young people in South America. The film made by Marco Agredo and Konrad Muñoz of Colombia, is Travesia Kejiwaan (Spanish with English subtitles).

But the film isn’t the whole story. Now, these same young people are working to grow SICA all across Latin America. They’re part of a whole team of passionate, creative young people who are meeting once a week by Skype with our brother, Juan Felix Prieto, Vice-Chair of SICA. They’ve been meeting like this for several months now. They are talented, enthusiastic, innovative — and they just love Subud.

Team members from Mexico, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Cuba are now working to create SICA LatinoAmerica, a new and inclusive branch of SICA that can be the energy source of growth, engagement, and creative enterprise for SICA — and Subud — throughout Mexico, Cuba, Central and South America.

If you would like to help support this effort, click HERE to give to SICA’s General Fund and dedicate the gift to SICA LatinoAmerica.

With love and gratitude,

Sebastian Flynn, Sandra Harrington, and Latifah Taormina,

Finance and Development Committee, SICA Board of Directors

SICA film about World Congress in Puebla

SICA invites you to enjoy this beautiful film about the World Congress called Mountains and Rivers. It is a little over an hour in length so watch it at a time when you can fully enjoy it! Note that you will need to enter a password to play the film – be sure to use the capitalization as noted.