October 2001
WORLD CONFERENCE AGAINST RACISM
Here we are on the penultimate day of the WCAR! The media has panned this conference, delegates are unhappy, feelings are running very high as interest groups are running against the clock to get their interests protected and represented in the Declaration and Program of Action.
I came into this process not sure if SDI had anything to say to delegates. Amalia signed us up to deliver an Oral statement, and for the last three days we have been waiting in the wings as country delegates, UN agencies and Caucuses had their say. Yesterday, Amalia co-read the caucus statement of the Religious and Spiritual Caucus to a great reception.
This morning, I read the SDI statement out, and I had a complete change of heart about the whole thing. Our statement may not have had any impact on the final outcome of the document, but we certainly caught the attention of the delegates, and we were able to touch people there in some way that amazed me. The Delegate from South Africa congratulated us on what she felt was the best NGO statement of the conference - and that was after hearing 3 days of statements.
Your team here is feeling pretty high, and pretty grateful. As Mufridah said, it gave her hope that people are able to be touched by the right things, and there is hope that we are able to affect people if we do it in the right way. We will send you more news when we get home. We fly home in two days after an exhausting 17 days here in Durban. We have learned a lot about ourselves, about how to interact with others, and how perhaps to tap into serving our members better by these interactions.
With love
from us all, Kumari
(Beck) Chair of Susila Dharma International
Selected from Bapak’s talk on 13 August 1958 in Jakarta published in ‘Bapak’s Talks’ Volume 2.
‘Such is God’s greatness, such is God’s supremacy and God’s majesty, that He can create something to overcome all that can disturb the well-being and safety of humans. His creatures. So in reality, this Subud latihan of worship is a training that comes because God’s power has willed that with it - with the state we always feel in the latihan - we can travel the road, however arduous it may be, to the world that is truly for us human beings, and also to the lap of the One God who created us. Even though you don’t think about it, brothers and sisters, you’re not concerned about it and don’t wish for this or that in the latihan,the power of God, sent down and given to human being at this time, in this age, is always and constantly at work.’