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PAUL E NELSON

Seattle Subud House

Seattle Subud House

I rarely write about my spiritual community, Subud, because one of Subud’s cultural mores is to NOT proselytize and in practice that becomes NEVER TALK ABOUT IT, which would explain why the membership is aging, not especially diverse (at least not in most U.S. Subud communities) and dwindling. But that is the plight of many organized religious communities in the U.S. and, as my community loves to make clear, SUBUD IS NOT A RELIGION. Yes, for I.R.S. purposes, that is the classification, but the bureaucratic brush is not fine.

I was “opened ” in Subud June 27, 2004, at the very house which Subud has owned since 1974 and will open to the public on July 27, 2019, from 1 to 4:30. The practice most responsible for making me the human being I am today is the Latihan Kejiwaan of Subud and I express my gratitude for Subud every day. I try to attend the annual gathering each year, finances permitting, which brought me to Albuquerque last July 4. I serve as Local Helper at Subud Greater Seattle and Rental Agent for the local “Centerprise” which features four Airbnb listings. I am webmaster for Subud Pacific Northwest and Secretary for Subud’s cultural wing, SICA-USA, the Subud International Cultural Association. (Dig THIS SICA post about Thelonious Monk being opened in Subud. No lie!)

I write all this to encourage you to attend the Open House this Saturday. In addition to some wonderful food and music, I will be performing new poems, “prose sonnets” Matt Trease calls them, which is part of my new series of poems that has given me better understanding of my recent life developments . One of those is being diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. (CLL). This sounds worse than it is, though my maternal Grandmother died of Leukemia. My collaborator will be Jim O’Halloran, Subud brother, flute master and all around noble human being.

As Local Helper, it is my job to help prospective and recently opened male Subud members better experience the Latihan and integrate it into their lives. (In Subud men deal with men and women, women.) I would love to see my friends have the experience of the Latihan Kejiwaan and thus begin understand my gratitude for this practice and community.