Dragonfly by Jax Hill 

You wouldn’t think that a message of love would be so controversial. I don’t want this to read like Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, but of the 12 adults on the boat that day, only Jack is still living. (He’s in virtual exile in China, rather like Napoleon on Elba. He’s a political prisoner ... an old man who wrote a tremendous book that swept up millions into the idea that love is the answer, and that we are, all of us, severely, exceptionally loved by God ... and so, capable of loving each other. Maybe you’ve read it? It was a kind of Gospel. In the sense that it was tremendous Good News.)

But the rest of our crew ... as Torstein predicted, they mostly died violently, in proclaiming the most dangerous message known to man — the message of love.

Andy, your narrator for this story, became a priest and got involved in the New Sanctuary movement that you probably heard about. Instead of helping illegals cross the border from Mexico to the USA, they started founding missions, schools and hospitals along the border so that those who were drawn north could find what they were looking for, still in their own country. His dad and step-mom were his bankroll at first, but when people saw that it worked, more money rolled in. Part of the mission was also to monitor the border and try to convince people not to go with the coyotes ... and that’s how Andrew got killed. One of the coyotes shot him.

His brother Pete got shot, too. He went to Washington, D.C. He said the best place to get our new message out was in the capital of the USA. He joined up with the Salvation Army there, and spent a lot of his free time in the parks, talking to the homeless and the drunks, just like Torstein used to do. He really did many of the same things Torstein had done, and he had a great response with literally hundreds of followers throughout the capital. He directed them into other good works, and of course, directed his drunk and homeless friends to the Salvation Army. The other thing he did, in honor of Angel, was befriend a lot of crack addicts. He’d take food to their kids and talk to them about their future. And people listened to him! It was as if, after Torstein appeared to us, there were new light inside Pete that made him stronger and braver, but gentler and more authentic, too. He and Phyllis helped a lot of women and men get the help they needed to get off crack.

They were both found murdered in the tiny apartment they had in DC. Police suspected a robbery gone bad. I suspect the crack dealers were taking back what they thought was theirs. Pete and Phyllis’ kids, the red-headed twins, who by then were both working as marine biologists in Hawaii, came back to DC, moved into the apartment, and started doing the work their parents had done. I’m pretty sure that would have made Phyllis and Pete pretty proud.

Franz and Tawny didn’t have any kids of their own, but they moved to Sudan and started working in an orphanage, so for many years they had dozens of kids. The African people in southern Sudan had been devastated by genocidal attacks from their northern neighbors, and lots of children enslaved and/or orphaned, so there was plenty of business for Franz and Tawny. One night the Janjaweed militia — or some other terrorists — swept down on the village where the orphanage was and carried off a lot of the kids, and killed Tawny and Franz.

Marigold and Maggie joined an organization working to set women and children free from the sex trade. They were fearless. They’d go anywhere, face anyone down, and bring those poor souls into freedom. Through the years, they helped hundreds of women and children get a new start at life. But they were a big thorn in the side of the traffickers, and one day the Jeep they had rented just blew up when they turned the ignition key.

That one hit me hard. All those people had been like parents to me, and to Van, but Maggie especially had given me a new start in life, when I was so small.

My mom, Angel, and Len, my step-dad, took me back to the mountains where the rehab center was. We lived there a long time, and Len eventually became the director. Angel, she had a program all her own, visiting shelters to talk to other moms addicted to crack and help them find a way out. That stuff is bad. It makes nice people into animals. It makes ladies who could be good moms into neglectful, abusive parents. One day Angel was running into traffic after some feral kid — that probably reminded her of me, truth be told — and she got hit by a car.

Van and I were in college then. We were so stunned ... We wanted to be a sunflower like Torstein had asked us to ... but it turned out to be a perilous profession. I’d lost my mom.

Jazz became a missionary. Once I asked him why he’d followed this path, and he told me:

“Jesus said the two most important things in the world are to love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. He said everything else hangs on those two mandates. What better gift to give the next generation?”

He was right.

But it proved to be a difficult path for him He was serving in some backwoods of Russia — in the Baryatia Autonomous Region — where the primitive people still believed in death-wish curses and consulted the shaman about what day to start building a house ... someone didn’t dig this message of love that set people free from the fear of witchcraft. Jazz went missing for about a year. Someone found his body decomposing in the tree tops.

Bruiser hooked up with a compassionate relief organization. He was on an advance team that went to evaluate the needs after that last big earthquake... and perished in an aftershock. He was in some tilting building trying to pull trapped kids out.

Mateo, who’d been there when they killed Torstein, he joined up with a prison ministry and spent a lot of his years behind bars, showing convicts and criminals the way to a better life. And of course, he got killed behind bars, too. It happens all the time.

Van’s mom, Caroline, she got married a few years down the road, to a great guy back in her old hometown. Her parents, Van’s grandparents, became like grandparents to me, too. Caroline lost her husband to cancer when she was about 60. She sold the house and took the little money she’d been left with, went to India. At 60 years old. She said she’d learned to tend sick people while her husband was dying, so she supposed they could use her in Calcutta to help the poorest of the poor. And they did. Fifteen years later, she wouldn’t even come back to the USA when she needed treatment for cancer, herself.

As wretched and tragic as it all sounds ... as wretched and tragic as it all was ... I think Van and I both agree: every one of those dear souls would have wanted to go out the way they did: my mom breathed her last breath helping some other mother’s son to safety. Caroline laid down her life bringing healing to other desperate people. Bruiser’s final act was one of rescue. Jazz’s life ended after a day of telling children how love sets you free. Mari and Maggie, Franz and Tawny, Mateo, Andy, Pete and Phyllis: all of them spent their lives, after Torstein, living Torstein’s message, and it brought them to Torstein’s end. It’s the end I think they would have chosen!

In giving their lives away, they found more life, and more abundant, than ever before. They were becoming like him, becoming too alive for this world.

Between Caroline and her husband, Angel and Len, and Van’s grandparents, he and I had a good few years growing up. You’d have thought that we’d forget Torstein, and the extraordinary events of that year — because we’d been so small. But I think with each passing year, the memories somehow became brighter, and more vivid. Perhaps because of the way the adults lived out his life again and again, before our eyes.

Today when Van and I look back on that time, it’s with a sense of awe ... that we ran and danced and sang and went fishing with Someone not of this world. That he loved us, and held us, and gave us a mission. Neither of us remembers that Terrible Day in anything but the vaguest terms — but we can both describe in great detail how Torstein appeared on the boat on the Last Day, and the way he breathed life, and love into us.

Van and I were too young, like the apostle said, “born out of time,” but Torstein’s impact on us was extreme. We’ve followed our extraordinary group of parents in their extraordinary lives. I figure we’re due to follow them in death, in God’s good timing.

Van never heard from his father, Nikolai, again. But he never forgot him, either. He lights candles for all three of his parents at St. Xavier church, where he’s the leader of our Order. Torstein laughed when Andy first suggested we all start wearing Green Coats in his honor ... but that’s exactly what we’ve done. It’s a vocation now, and wearing the Green Coat lets people know you believe that love is the answer, you’re committed to loving God and people.

About 150,000 of us have accepted the call full-out and donned the Coat ... and millions more are living the lifestyle. We’re all poor as dirt — and as far as I can tell — happy as clams. Our original members may have disappeared, but the legacy they left continues to impact the world. You’re welcome to join us, anytime. Here. Have some sunflower seeds.

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