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