Jesus’ energy is often referred to by the Greek word “dynamos” which refers to the released energy which makes something happen. It is how we get the words dynamite, dynamic and dynamism. Dynamos is a particular kind of energy in that it is creative and not destructive. Even Dynamite can create a city by blowing up foundations and mining the ore needed for the copper on the stone buildings. Our energy is connected to that of Jesus and we too have that dynamos in us precisely because we have the energy of Christ in us. When we bring that energy to the world and to life we, in effect, plug God into the world in a way which God has allowed and even chosen, personally – radically.
These two new friends I met at the farmer’s market to which I rent to buy some fresh sage, duck fat and new potatoes for a dish I am preparing. They are using their dynamos to create an organic farm and farming community in the Czech Republic. They make vegetarian food in five restaurants around the Czech Republic (the Krishna vegetarian restaurant near my house on 14th is voted one of the best five in Denver and is stunning!) and practice their faith with sung chants and a rule of life to support their mission of bringing healthy food to people from a spiritual sense of mission ( for a short video about their way of life and their work and to see the farm go to http://www.krisnuvdvur.cz/farma-video.html ).
Their gentleness and devotion to the land and its spirituality reminded me of friends of mine like Liz, Tom, Perry and Kris – and many others from whom grown foods and land care are important icons of God’s work. Their cookie stall sells savory and sweet cookies made from whole grains which their produce on their farm – and are delicious. They invited me to visit their farm later in the month to deepen the friendship and to show me their work towards which I look forward. It will be good land on which to walk and ride.
They remind me that each one of us has within us a dynamos. And not just Christians but Buddhists and Muslims and avowed atheists and everyone in between. Smug is never attractive and particularly unattractive on a Christian. We Christians do not hold a corner on creativity and goodness. And sometimes our pride and arrogance at being so sure of the mysteries we call doctrines must, I expect, reek to God’s sensibilities given God’s particular dislike of pride among the messes we humans make. Christian soldiers indeed.
All of humanity is a creative entity. Some create goodness by making beauty, creating acts of kindness, and constructing systems which help people. Others create destruction – be it as large as a holocaust or as small as a lie or an act of unkindness or self-centeredness. Even the lies we tell ourselves are acts of terrible creation because they create un-truth, which is always the most destructive force in life.
Asking ourselves each day what dynamos we are creating out of our energy is a valuable and courageous act. Moment by moment, day by day: is what I am doing and saying contributing to goodness? Is what I am about creating kindness to human bodies?
This couple – these new friends- work the land. They are luminous with spiritual wellness and with one quick glance, one can see their inner peace and beauty and that it is connected to what we see on their human person. They are authentic and gentle and as close to what I consider saints to be as any. They put good, vegetables into the bloodstreams of humans throughout this city. They pray, in their way, and make music while they plant, harvest,cook, serve and sell. They care for some small patch of land. They have no great spiritual posture. They wear no symbols of religious piety. Their souls shimmer as they speak of cumin in this and curry in that and seeds in this other one over here…”Try it!”
It is essential – ESSENTIAL – that we all find our own dynamos and, not just that; but that we find a dynamos which is co-creative with a God of love and compassion for the fragile, mushy, beautiful, tender – often frightened and wounded human and animal physical forms of life on this planet. Perhaps God is less interested in hymns and prayers as God is interested in that man or that woman, eating those vegetables and hearing those chants and coming to life as a result.
