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ROW
YOUR BOAT
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Josh
Miner (undated photo) |
I did
not have any contact with Josh Miner during the three years I was
at Andover, but I met him once for an admissions interview. The words
he shared with me then have influenced my entire life.
It must have been in late summer 1961, just before I began lower year
in Tucker House with Mr. Hallowell as housemaster. My memory of Mr.
Miner does not correspond with much of what has been written about
him. For example, I had no idea he was so deeply involved with Outward
Bound.
We sat in his office in the east wing of George Washington Hall. He
mentioned the 8 (out of 100) that I had scored on the math test but
said I was not to worry about it. Maybe enough people got 7’s
so that I had squeaked by, I thought. He seemed quiet and soft-spoken,
even dreamy. Maybe it was because I was glancing furtively out the
window at the falling maple leaves. Maybe it was because my father
was also sitting there with us.
What he said to me went something like this: “If you are at the
center of a lake, in the middle of a very deep fog, and you do not
know where the shore is or which way to row, what you have to do is
pick up the oars, choose a direction, even if it is completely at
random, and begin to row in that direction, without changing course,
until you reach the shore. Then you can get out of the boat and ask
for directions. Then you can find out where you are. You may have
landed 180 degrees away from where you wanted to be, but at least
you will know where you are, and you can begin to walk around the
shoreline until you get to your goal.”
Since that time, I finished Andover, studied mathematics at Lehigh
Univer-sity, dropped out, studied yoga, studied the I Ching, was in
a mental hospital, worked as a carpenter and a house painter, discovered
a circular number system, which was like having God pop a flashbulb
two inches in front of my face, spent two years in Scientology, got
kicked out for being a troublemaker, began writing, took LSD once
and met Jesus at the sermon on the mount. I took up painting again,
became a Christian, which is an entirely different trip, worked in
a wire factory, expanded the number system to an infinite series of
two-dimensional mandalas and became a groundskeeper and cook for room
and board at a New Age healing center in Western Massachusetts. Next
I began to study medicinal herbs, met my soulmate and future bride,
moved to Silver City, N.M., to study western herbs, continued to write,
got married, began compiling a dictionary of edible and medicinal
herbs and plants of the world, wrote a book about Judas over a six-year
period and received more math information that took the mandalas into
an infinite series of infinite series in multiple dimensions. I continued
to write, learned that my father was dying, went through that experience
with him and with the help of people online, joined AA and Overeaters
Anonymous to get my eating and weight under control and began to face
my own mortality and limitations. Now I am here with an oar in my
hand, and what feels like one foot in the boat and one foot on a muddy
shore. It is like I want to shout out, Where are you all on the shoreline?
Where is everybody? What parts of the shore have you explored? I just
now landed. I am still trying to get my life together.
And Josh Miner is gone.
I rowed, sir, as hard as I could. I have done the best that I could;
it may not be good enough by some standards, but it is what I did,
and I thank you for telling me to pick up the oar, because if you
had not I might not have even begun, nor made it this far; maybe I
went in the “wrong” direction, maybe not. There are many
things I still need to learn. Do we ever stop learning?
I need to learn how to earn money, to be practical, to get my writing
in a readable form, to make this number system at least known, and
perhaps used; to be practical, to land the fish, to be practical,
to bring something back from parts unknown, to be practical, to grow
up, to stay on the shore now and to be a genuine human being. It is
for this last goal, and for the journey, whatever it may mean, that
I wish to thank Mr. Miner. May he rest in peace, wherever he is that
people go when their search is over.
Amen. |
John
Michael Dunne-Brady is an author and artist who lives with his wife,
Jane, in Silver City, N.M. His recently published book is titled The
Gospel According to Judah. Josh Miner, former dean of admissions at
Phillips Academy, died in January 2002. This article originally appeared
on the Class of 1964’s
e-mail list serve. |
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