I am not yet home in Seattle from the Midwest from the first SICA-USA Board retreat during my tenure as Chair and the first Subud gathering at CoPlay in Muncie, Indiana. I wanted to relate some of my perceptions of the retreat, last weekend with appreciation for the Subud process and for our host, CoPlay Founder Susannah Rosenthal.
We had difficulties starting from the Sunday before the retreat when one board member Lauren Stanley emailed to say her testing had indicated she should step back from being on the SICA-USA board. (We will miss her perception and calm demeanor and wish her well in her personal pursuits.) Then, the day after Lauren’s resignation, Monday, May 16, Michal Brownell, our National Helper Liaison, discovered she was unable to attend to personal issues. I was in near constant contact with her to attempt to fill her position and talked to many potential women helpers, including a Canadian, a former International Helper. I was getting a little desperate to fill the slot but was looking for someone who could be in-person and not via Zoom or FaceTime.
When I called California Regional Helper Helena Mertens, she assumed I wanted to talk to her husband Robert (frequent SICA-USA blog contributor.) When I told her no, I was interested in having her be the Helper Liaison for the SICA-USA retreat at CoPlay, she said she “would be delighted.” I was silent for 15-20 seconds (quite unusual for me) as I deliberated in my mind whether I should break down and cry, or thank her. She later confessed she did not know if my immediate reaction was a good or bad response and I quickly let her know that it was a blessing. It seemed to me that to have her accept in such a way was evidence that we were guided in our efforts. I made sure there would be a time during the weekend during which she could do her movement workshop. She talked to me about how she received this during Latihan and I instinctively knew it would be good and that it would be the kind of material that would be perfect for the much-discussed SICA-USA Cultural Conversation. (An idea first offered by Board Member Lawrence Pevec.) I was not disappointed.
She was a matriarchal presence the whole weekend. She saw progress when I was extremely frustrated and helped to guide the proceedings in such a way that it turned out better than I could have ever engineered. Jim Dehner operated in his warm, Midwestern way and when he says he is going to be somewhere at a particular time, you can count on that. It is this kind of dependability and integrity that helps drive positive outcomes.
The frustration I felt was centered around two main challenges, but we were able to go to a place of “deeper listening” according to our newest board member Kristiana Kalab and being in person had a lot to do with our ability to go to a deeper place. Sometimes we tested with Sanderson Morgan via speakerphone or FaceTime and that had wonderful results. He was not able to attend in person and was there for the visioning that happened in the post-lunch session Saturday, our most productive session.
In Bird of Paradox: The Unpublished Writings of Wilson Duff there is information about his extensive study of Haida culture (an indigenous culture from British Columbia) and their theory of art which:
…brings together depth psychology and structural analysis in a single dynamic system; and, second, a method of analysis that relies on intuition (poetic, mystical, hypnogogic and even shamanic) as well as formal logic to generate hypotheses, and on unstinting self-examination and self-knowledge as well as scholarly methods in attempting to test them…
Of course the intuition referenced above surely is available to those who know how to test properly in Subud. The more board members trust each other, can surrender to the process and are willing to review their own limitations to board harmony, the more a board can achieve. This is what the afternoon session accomplished with Sanderson Morgan attending via FaceTime:
On Sunday morning my plan was breakfast in our pajamas (or comfortable clothes) an opening circle and the movement workshop and a closing circle. We did manage the workshop, which Helena completed in 45 minutes, with enough time to do testing on a question that came up during the opening circle. Another aspect of Helena’s brilliance was her time management. The workshop got us back into our bodies at a perfect time. It is the kind of experience deeply tied to her own Latihan practice and exactly the kind of experiential workshop that I believe to be part of what I envision the Cultural Conversation to be.
We came back for a partially-attended closing circle while attendees from the Subud Midwest Cultural Congress began to arrive.
CoPlay is a warm, inviting place that was founded with a mission of creativity and I hope our retreat will be the first of many Subud events. I could even envision a Subud community based there. Here are a couple of photos I took and I expect we will share many more here in the near future:
To be in service to Subud in this way, as you likely know, requires complete submission, ability to improvise and a dedication to group harmony. One key moment for me was getting a new song in the Latihan that happened Sunday morning after the movement workshop. That seemed particularly auspicious. Stay tuned to this space for more details on the emerging Cultural Conversation. If you have a desire to get involved, we could use new blood, though thanks to Lawrence, Sanderson, Susannah, Kristiana and our National Helpers, we have a deeper harmony and clarity moving forward. Please contact me directly if you could be on the board or on a SICA-USA committee.
With appreciation for the opportunity to be in service to Subud via culture,
Paul E Nelson
SICA-USA Chair
This retreat sounds so rich and full of latihan. My congratulations to all. The co play facility looked so so beautiful and enchanting. Thank you Susanna for your humongrous and ingenious efforts for on this. Thank you Paul for such a heartfelt moving description!