Gospel of the Messiah Widow ORIGIN OF THE PLAY

Stan Peal is a Minneapolis playwright with a history of writing plays with a spiritual perspective, starting in college with a successful production of a one-act play called Eden, in which God was portrayed as a passionate African woman and Satan was an unruly biker in leather. Peal has frequently engaged in spiritual and philosophical debates over the years with his brother, who embraces buddhist philosophy, along with their childhood friend who is a staunch atheist. One of these debates sparked the idea for Gospel of the Messiah Widow by the introduction of the theory that Jesus Christ was married. Peal asked the inevitable question, “If Jesus Christ were married, where does his resurrection leave his wife?” Gospel of the Messiah Widow was born out of his search for an answer. There are theologians who argue that Jesus was probably married As well as apocryphal literature that suggests he may have been married to Mary Magdalene. This has the makings of some interesting historical fiction, however, available sources are so often contradictory that a factual, or even probable historical through line is impossible to construct (very little is truly known about any Biblical characters and sourses are, at best, debatable in their reliability), so rather than a history, the play evolved into a fantasy about the path to Divinity, how it is expressed through the Masculine and the Feminine, through mythologies of God and Goddess, through Legend and History and how we endeavor to discover and grow as people, closer to the Divine and closer to our truest Self. The characters from the Bible became mythological foils rather than products of historical research. The Masculine principle of divinity is portrayed through the familiar Yahwist legends of Judeo-Christianity and voiced by the apostles Peter and James (the latter portrayed as a first cousin to Jesus). The play explores the feminine Divine through the Goddess Characters Kwan-Yin (a maiden astrologer), Hilde (a Valkyrie Huntress) and Gaia (a Mystic earth Mother) as they share with Mary their creation mythology involving the rift between The Sky God of the Word and the Earth Goddess of the Impulse and how the curiosity of the first woman, Lilith, led to the curse of separation. When Mary joins their quest to reoccupy the Garden of Eden her development as a woman is celebrated as she evolves and embodies the aspects of the Maiden, the Mother-huntress and the mystic Crone. The effect of the Church on this feminine development is embodied in the character of Simon Peter. In his desire to carry on the work of Christ, he allows his passion for Jesus to be distorted by his guilt of denial and his fear of the power Mary represents. His relationship with Mary is representative of the attitude the early and Medieval Church  had toward women and sexuality, that is fear and suppression at any cost in the name of God. It is also worth noting that in Judeo-Christian Symbology, the Church is often portrayed as the bride of Christ. Mary’s relationship with Jesus, God and the Christian movement reflects these complex relationships as they are pursued by individuals who struggle with these very same relationships. Mary’s journey in the play is paralleled by the journey of Paul, a narrator in the present day who discovers this new Gospel as it is told through the rantings of a Spanish woman who isn’t supposed to know English. Paul encounters this woman while taking a pilgrimage through Spain to find answers to his own spiritual questions.

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