Eden In Limbo

Under review: Ms Jan Peregrine's 1999 EDEN IN LIMBO: A THREE ACT PLAY IN SPIRIT. Its Dedication: "This novel is written for all the marginal people of society. ... I hope to inspire reflection and compassion through these words." *** An introductory Verse "Eden" asserts the reality of a paradise that all of us can hope to find; "if it is not shared, though,/it is Eden in limbo." In a page and a half "Prologue" the unidentified third-person narrator places stage center a character called "Third God ... or rather the Third Emanation of God." He has been given yet another assignment by "Boss, the First God." Third God is to assume human form, gather together some humans and answer their questions. Why? "Nothing else seems to be working, anyway. So few people inhabit the spirt and the soul of God." *** How assemble the right people? By "advertising on the Internet." Third God will go in the door of many who reply to his Internet invitation (they are hoping for an encounter with Jesus the Good Shepherd) in order to come out Third God's own door: namely, to realize how "he is much more than Jesus, yes indeed, more than one religion's concept." Third God finds the perfect scene, "a quiet lovely meadow in the hills," to encounter his human auditors and is made welcome there by its inhabitants: oak trees, a cooling wind, flox and buttercups. *** The rest of EDEN IN LIMBO spreads for a few hours of an afternoon across three Acts and 20 Scenes, an Epilogue and three verses. 25 additional verses in the Appendix then "show you why I wrote EDEN IN LIMBO, how it came to be. You will also see my dreams in a very real way," says author Peregrine.*** The Third God, God's Holy Spirit, sets up folding chairs for his guests. After they arrive in cars, he reads the thoughts of the dozens of people whom his Internet invitation has persuaded to the meadow, invites their questions, joshes with them and tries to make himself and "Boss" unnecessary to their daily lives! Boss kindly makes the sun stay above the horizon a few hours longer than usual, so that there is time enough for divine-human interaction before Third God falls silent and eventually goes away. *** The author singles out a few humans in the crowd for attention, including a male homosexual couple, two ailing, believing Christian women, an East Indian couple and others. But the principal human heroine is a tall, angry, emotionally damaged Sioux Indian woman named Felicia. Whites have confined the Lakota to reservations. Circumabient Jesuits have killed the Indian Gods. ***Third God first tells how Boss, a female, created the known universe -- not from nothing but from pre-existing tightly packed, dazzling, annoying, noisy, congolomerates of lights -- by Boss's breathing and spreading the lights out far and wide where they can be seen to be beautiful. The rest of the afternoon is given over to dialog between Third God and his visitors. *** The message that Boss wants the Holy Spirit to share (In a nutshell, spirit and soul are what is important, not organized religion) is laid out most unequivocally and powerfully in Scene Five that concludes Act II. People have to learn to think for themselves. Third God: "My job ... is to make it so you don't really need me! Yes to work myself out of a job." Speaking to Felicia and her new friend Kyle, Third God asks: "Has Jesus changed your life, Felicia, Kyle? If you hadn't heard of him, would your life be any different? Same thing with God. If you hadn't heard about God, would you be the same person?" ***The bottom line: EDEN IN LIMBO is a well constructed novella or short play. In its narrative and through her 28 poems author Jan Peregrine of Omaha, Nebraska, presents a vision of God(s) meant to cut across all organized religions and empower the marginalized and humiliated persons of Earth to live in soul and spirit. This they could never do when simply obeying divine decrees laid upon them from without. Third God can be flippant, patronizing, generally superficial compared to an Aristotle or a Thomas Aquinas. But his message of self-confident individualism undeniably provokes thought by readers. And that seems to be a large part of what the author wants. -OOO-