Dragonfly by Jax Hill 

"It’s the Dunkers.”

They were back! We had not seen any of them since that early fall day when Torstein told them they were to go north, south, east and west and tell people that love is the answer and the kingdom of God arrived whenever people dared to love.

We’d heard about them, of course. And we’d seen evidence of where they’d been. They were controversial before, when they were preaching at Nikolai’s goons down by the shore, and when they were canvassing the inner city and telling people to “turn or burn.” But this new message, this message of love, it seemed to spark even more publicity! The Dunkers were fanatics. They couldn’t do anything halfway. They were prone to sharing their message with big gatherings in public areas where maybe they weren’t supposed to be the main attraction. They caused a commotion wherever they went — and they were guerrilla marketing geniuses.

Crazy Eyes started a blog and a FaceBook page about the Dunkers’ new message. He organized the teams of two and sent them out in strategic blocs to various communities. Who knew he was an art school graduate? (Then again, I probably should have known his eyes were crazy from the inside out, too.) He created a fantastic poster with the Dunker’s face, and Torstein’s, in that new icon style they’d adopted. It showed the two idols, and was emblazoned with the words, “Where is love?” The background of it was all muted rainbow colors, like those old playbills from the 70’s. Somehow, he had the thing enlarged and printed by the hundreds.

The Dunkers would go into their assigned area in the middle of the night and slap these posters up, but everywhere! Three, four, five posters in a row on the side of every building. Crazy Eyes had also created the art for new t-shirts for them, dragonfly green shirts of course, with bold fuchsia lettering and line drawings of the Dunker and Torstein and the same tag line: “Where is love?”

They’d come into the streets in their bright green t’s the next morning after the posters went up, and over the next few days they’d literally stop traffic with little dramas they’d created based on what they saw that day in the park and what they knew of Torstein’s life. After a few days of this, they’d swoop down under cover of darkness and replace all the “Where is love?” posters with new ones that said, “Love is here!” Then the poster would give a schedule and locations where more information could be had — places like Starbucks and bookstores and any large events, but with strange little directions like “under the third lamp pole from the front gate.” They’d station themselves at these places, and tell people exactly what Torstein had told them to say. Crazy Eyes had even made up bright green business cards with the gist of the message printed on them, to hand out to people.

Their efforts had always been bold, but now their effectiveness was also quite extraordinary. Several new people had joined us in the park because of what they’d heard from the Dunkers, plus they’d been covered in the newspapers and TV news. Crazy Eyes’ blog was popular — not just in our city or region, but worldwide. He’d report on where some Dunkers might be and what they were doing; remember they’d gone out in teams of two (then Crazy Eyes would send two or three or four teams to each neighborhood), so this was happening in various communities all simultaneously.

It was, frankly, astounding what they’d accomplished. They were used to publicity from their days with the Dunker, but this new message had legs they’d never imagined. Naturally their return to the park that winter afternoon was quite triumphant. Crazy Eyes led the pack, and they ran to Torstein calling out to him, “It worked! People listened! They love this message!”

After our usual afternoon of Story Hour and visiting with the folks in the park, Torstein got all the Dunkers to sit down with us and tell us about their adventures. Their main theme was that, while not everyone listened, those who did were often times quite taken with the idea.

“Tell us, tell us,” Torstein encouraged them.

One by one, the teams reported on what they’d seen and done.