Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Just after our national congress, we discovered that our donation webpage was not working on smartphones. How embarrassing, and how inopportune, given our requests for donations at the Congress!

Donations help us make weekly posts, maintain and add to our galleries of Subud artists of all disciplines, and support our Subud creatives with grants for projects they propose.

Our donation page is now working on smartphones. Please donate today! If you have projects you would like us to post, please contact us. Likewise if you have further web issues, please reach out.

Gratefully yours, the SICA-USA team.

Following the National Congress this past 4th of July weekend, it feels most appropriate to post a gathering of inter-related cultural offerings from our Subud Members:

Connor Ryan

Connor was opened in Subud in Chicago last year. He is an independent film maker of considerable talent with an international flare. His films are all short studies and well worth the 20 minutes of time investment. Here are links to some of his favorites:

Nauðr

An Icelandic fisherman washes to shore — mysteriously unable to speak. He is oppressed by terrible unseen dread, and seeks to overcome his torment through a surreal pilgrimage into the wilderness.

Wilderlove

An impressionistic journey through the joys of childhood lost, and the desire to heal a broken relationship.

Deepwater Sponger

A diver’s treacherous descent into the abyss of a polluted ocean brings him face-to-face with untold horrors, forcing him to decide what he is willing sacrifice for the mission.

If you’re looking for something shorter and more experimental, this could be interesting:
https://www.glasspoets.com/inlight

You can locate his entire body of work at www.glasspoets.com

Benedict Herrman’s Shortish Essay

There are many ways to speak of the one thing that matters on this muddy ball orbiting an unremarkable G type star in one of trillions of galaxies in this universe. It’s the one thing that all the prophets have come to remind us to do again and again over the centuries…Remember to love another. If we do, then the rest follows… feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless, beat swords into plowshares, etc. The world is healed, the balance returns, and true humans can once again walk the Earth.

That doesn’t mean that one should have no boundaries, or kiss random people in the street. (If you do, have sufficient funds available for bail.) It means to remember that we’re all only human, that we often make mistakes despite our best intentions, especially when some people are so damaged that their behavior invariably is worthy of universal opprobrium. (Bapak said that we should love all of Humankind… but that some people should be loved from afar, something that is helpful to remember when the I listen to the news.) Still, the message is there — love one another, as you would yourselves be loved.

I suspect “love for all Humankind” isn’t a heartsy, emotional kind of love, but something far deeper and more profound, like a faint voice that guides you through the maelstrom of human interactions, reactions, and individual traumas we encounter every day. It quietly reminds us that we are all connected in a way that most folks seem to miss in today’s uncivil society.

However, I suspect there is even something more.

Bapak said that there is only one God… and only one Human Being. (Don’t ask me to name the talk, but I did read/hear it.) I wonder if God, wanting to test Its power, created a duplicate of Itself, a mirror image that then shattered into an infinite number of pieces, then scattered across the entire universe. Those shards sprouted life in innumerable forms, in many dimensions, on many planets, in ways we cannot fathom and never will. On the Earth, those Divine Pieces make up the One Human Being, of which we are all a part. (Bapak also said that we each have a spark or piece of the Divine within us.) This image led to another, perhaps less obvious conclusion — that we must forgive and love everyone before this collective “we” can go home. Only then we are whole; only then are we ready.

Of course, this is just my speculation, and I could be, and most likely am wildly off base. Still… all the prophets have said the same thing. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love thy neighbor as thyself… even when you have to love that neighbor from afar.

AI for Enterprise Course with Ethan Harris

SICA International together with SES United States presents a rare and informative online webinar designed to take the worry out of AI applications, led by Ethan Harris.

Register here for AI webinar in English: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__4Mu7hoORJmZVs02FtzL0A

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