In response to our February 9, 2019, email, former SICA-International Chair (& improv legend) Latifah Taormina sent this:
Latifah Taormina
Hi Paul,
Great work! It’s incredibly heartening to see SICA USA really taking off. Once SICA is Alive on the ground everywhere, the international organization will make more sense. Yay.
By the way….you can include lots more categories of people working according to their creative gifts and talents. SICA is not just for artists. Bapak was very clear that culture is very wide and includes all kinds of things. So SICA is for people in all kinds of fields when what they are doing is really coming from their innate creativity — their jiwa. And, Bapak most specifically included technology! He predicted back in the 80s that technology would become quite a driver of culture in the world.
The Indonesian word for culture is kebudayan. It’s from two words: Budhi, or the Essence of God (as in Susila Budhi Dharma) and daya or action. So it’s the action of the essence of God within us. I think of it this way: If God is the Creator of the whole Universe and all life, the essence of the Creator within each of us is Creativity.)
Years ago, when Bachtiar was Chair of SICA, he created these categories for SICA: “Education and Training; Music & Performing Arts; Visual Art, Architecture & Design; Writing & Film; Health & Healing; Human Values & Development; Intercultural” something….and some others I can’t think of.
So next issue, you can expand categories.
Lots of love,
Latifah
What a high compliment Paul. Latifah is one of the most sincere, hardworking people
I ever met, in or out of Subud. My best, your brother Reynold
Great message from Latifah! You might want to interview Antoine Predock for the newsletter. He is a long time Subud member and world renowned and respected architect. His Subud story is very interesting if you have not heard it.
Regards,
Rachman