If you run into Thom Miller at school or in town and ask how he is, his answer will be, “Living the dream!”

The past few weeks, that phrase could not be any more true. He was recently awarded the 2021 Lilly Teacher Creativity Fellowship, a program to which he had applied 19 times before.

Miller was sitting in a meeting about the restructuring plan for Brown County Intermediate School, where he is a fifth-grade math teacher, when he got the news via email.

Learning that he was accepted for the fellowship was a surreal moment of disbelief, he said.

“It was so perfect,” he said. “Here’s this disruption (in school), and then this peace.”

The entire theme of his project is “peace,” Miller said. His proposal focuses on activities that allow for mindfulness, stillness and contemplation.

The Teacher Creativity Fellowship program began 34 years ago as a way to help Indiana elementary and secondary educators renew their commitment to teaching. It funds proposals for “new experiences, exploration and reflection,” the program website says.

Miller will go on a six-week journey beginning in June. He’ll start in New Mexico at the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque started by Franciscan friar Richard Rohr. There, he will follow the center’s “prayer path” and sit in daily meditations. His wife and two of his children will join him.

From there, he will travel to the Prison Contemplative Fellowship Headquarters in Folsom, California. Miller is also a chaplain at the Brown County jail and has been invited by the founder and leader, Ray Leonardini, to visit and learn the practices of teaching contemplative prayer to inmates.

The third destination is the St. Francis Retreat in San Juan Bautista, California. The facility is designed for guests to spend time with God and nurture their spiritual lives in an environment separate from life’s typical distractions, Miller said.

The last stop is the Deer Park Monastery in Escondido, California. The 400-acre sanctuary was established by Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. Miller will spend nine days there, resting, practicing mindful living and writing.

“This location will be a key component as I intentionally seek to learn and incorporate practices to help me be truly alive and present with those around me,” Miller writes in his blog, “Have an Optimal Day.”

“Our days are filled with moments that desire our awareness,” he wrote.

Miller’s proposal ideas have taken different shapes over the past 20 applications. Earlier, he had proposed building a motorcycle and participating in a triathlon. Being a tennis coach at the schools and teaching tennis camp at Indiana University in the summers, he’d proposed once to visit different tennis academies.

“It’s funny to look back over the years,” he said. “That’s where I was. One of them, I wanted to visit a bunch of zoos.” He was teaching elementary math and science at the time.

Last year he proposed going to the redwood forest to do mindfulness training. “I teach mindfulness with the kids,” he said, “being present, conscious discipline, being in the moment and working on our minds.”

He also teaches mindfulness while working in the jail as chaplain, being able to “calm down and breathe” he said.

After so many rejections, him applying each year became a sort of joke, he said, but that process can be an example for his kids, students and athletes. Things might take a bit longer than you’d hope, but you have to give yourself permission to try things, screw up and fail, he said.

Most summers, Miller will coach at tennis camps. This past year, for the first time in 12 years, he was at home due to the pandemic. “To be home with my family, be outside, it really allowed me to get a taste of what that kind of presence could be,” he said.

“I’m not great at living in the present, but you miss a million beautiful moments if you’re not present. It’s amazing to be present with someone.”

Fred Rogers from “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” has been an influence in his life, he said. The recent movie, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” about Mr. Rogers’ influence on a journalist, was a reminder to remain in complete awareness of the people you’re with and the world around you, he said.

Miller’s father, Joe, also played a significant role in this awareness and added to the depth of his project.

Last spring, Joe passed away, and Miller and his family were blown away by the amount of people his father had impacted.

“Like 700 people went to the funeral and viewing,” Miller said. “He was a mechanic, he went to church, cooked meals, but his impact was great.”

“He always wanted to make people happy. He loved well. To see person after person who had been affected by him, that is a life well lived.”

That was a good way to remind him of his own impact, Miller said, as his father “wasn’t trying” for that. “I’m just a teacher, a coach and a chaplain, but I can have impact in my neighborhood,” Miller said. “We can do that by being around and being aware.”

The perseverance Miller had to keep applying to the Lilly Teacher Creativity Fellowship is just a small example of the advice he offers: “No matter what you’re doing,” he said, “hang in there. Just keep showing up.”

“A lot of times, we think we need to do something flashy or amazing. I think that living a great life is when you just show up, keep showing up, hang in there, and you’ve gotta dream big. I care about people, and I want people to live life well. Don’t be afraid to dream and dive into a dream.”

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Follow Thom Miller’s blog at haveanoptimalday.com. He will keep a journal of activity on his trip this summer and also post to the “Have an Optimal Day” Facebook group.

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