Now that my friend Frank Thomas Smith has written his memoirs, or his spiritual autobiography, as he calls it, or the biography of his decisions, I wonder if he knows how many decisions he has made without realizing that with them he has changed the lives of many of us who pass close to him. I have not spent as much time or had as many talks with him as I would have liked; life is like that. We are always have obligations and urgencies that don't let us do what's important. But I have been around long enough to play long chess matches over the course of two decades, where we have had a parity that has allowed both of us to like playing against each other. But chess was an excuse for me to visit him. Now that I am far away, geographically speaking, I would like to play another game.
I met him at the El Trigal school, which is the fruit of many
efforts, but which is a Waldorf school thanks to him. It was his impetus
and his convictions that gave that school its identity. My two daughters
went there and I became a teacher. The years when Frank was on the
school's Board of Directors, he was at the helm of the ship. You could
say that those were the best years of the institution, the golden years.
Then, when he left, citing age and fatigue, it was my turn to take the
helm at various times. I think I did quite well. They were not golden
years, but they were years of expansion, until the sailors lost the
compass and the astrolabe.
With Frank I was in my first anthroposophical study group. We studied
Rudolf Steiner's Gospel according to Luke. I was a young professor of
history and theology of history, and he was an old anthroposophist.
There our destinies crossed forever. The genealogies of Matthew and
Luke, their apparent contradictions, the Jesus of Bethlehem, the Jesus
of Nazareth... It was like finding a lost book under the pillow. It was
my decision. But Frank put me in the dilemma. The new world or the old
world. There I entered Rudolf Steiner's universe.
I remember once we debated a biblical topic. It was about Abraham. I
don't remember exactly what the topic was, but I told him he was right
(which was true). His response, on the other hand, I remember well:
It is never too late to agree with me.
Over the years I have listened many times to his ideas and
thoughts, from the C.G. Jungian pipe-smoking years to the years when
some said he was an English agent or a CIA spy (conspiracy has always
lived in Traslasierra, perhaps the result of the excessive leisure of
certain inhabitants who migrated from the city to the mountains, with
too many resources to think too much and do too little), to the years
when he seemed like a Gandalf or a Dumbledore. He always gave precise
information: about the Anthroposophical Society, about the Goetheanum,
about Waldorf Pedagogy, about politics. Even about people close to him,
or about concrete situations. His pragmatism is overwhelming, but not
materialistic. Many times, against my will (and in solitude) I had to
say to myself: That's right, on this or that subject it is as Frank
said, he is right.
It is not necessary to say much more. When I sometimes argue with someone, I feel like saying, as Frank says, when an interlocutor expresses something crazy: But, please, Queruidou, are you thinking about what you are saying? Of course, in this day and age, everyone thinks he is right, but that magic formula only works for him, who is half druid and half philosopher. Besides, because whoever likes him, and whoever doesn't like him, Frank is (almost) always right.
Hernán Melana, May 2024