All the Bells of Heaven

All the Bells of Heaven is a murder mystery within a spiritual conundrum. JJ, a schizophrenic who has a deep commitment to God, and who may have seen his mother murdered or may have murdered her himself is the lead character. The play opens hours after the mother has been found dead. Jackie is trying to find out from JJ what happened. JJ either cannot tell or will not tell Jackie what happened. Jackie is trying to protect JJ from a wrongful arrest.

JonJon, their older brother, after a 16-year absence, shows up. He is transformed. Years of religious training as a firewalker from Sri Lanka have made him a new person. He has come home to forgive his family. As police zero in on the murderer, JonJon and JJ become spiritual adventurers in belief. They try to do what Cezanne famously said: "The only thing that is really difficult is to prove what one believes."

Will JJ face the truth of his experience?

At the climax, the question is posed: Can a deep love of God transcend physical reality and cure schizophrenia?

As the pharmaceutical houses convince us that moods and emotions are only chemical adjustments to reality, the twenty-first century is setting up to answer a very large question: Who owns the psyche? Science or Religion.

This tragedy is two acts and plays for two hours with intermission.

Mr. Morin wrote All the Bells as a love song to his brother, trying to do what Yeats told Synge to do - "express a life which has never found expression."

Excerpt from All the Bells of Heaven

VOICE OF JACKIE

All dysfunctional families are the same: the kids want to save each other.

VOICE OF JJ

My fingers have been in the five wounds of your son, Lord. No more! I am not a sick man, nor a spiteful man. I have always loved Sally, you, and my father. I'm here to explain the riddle of my life, to show you my innocence. This is my Judgment Day.

VOICE OF JACKIE

That's why I'm a social worker - the world is my family! Oh, I wanted to get away - do something different - be free of the past - but I couldn't leave my twin brother behind.

VOICE OF JJ

I am dead - was dead all the time I was alive - but now dead, I am alive! They said I lived in a delusion - which is the opposite of truth, on earth that is - because I believed in God. After I get into heaven, I look forward to your explanation of why you wrote the DNA code; I mean, don't all my problems go back to the Garden - the first seed?

VOICE OF JACKIE

JJ was an altar boy - he believed in communion - and he couldn't fall asleep until he said his prayers. At seventeen, his brain went into overdrive - permanently.

VOICE OF JJ Only you can make the incoherent coherent. I lived my life in a teardrop. Give me my justice!

VOICE OF JACKIE

That's my brother - confused and tormented. His feet are cemented in the concrete world of schizophrenia but his heart reaches, like an abstract artist, for the universal - only difference is the artist does it consciously, with practice and control.