IN the Fairy Tale of the Sleeping Beauty the Wicked Fairy gate-crashes the party and condemns the Princess to death.

The Good Fairy arrives at the party after the Wicked Fairy. She cannot re-write the past: nor does she think of harming the Wicked Fairy. Her approach is entirely constructive and helpful.

She does everything she can to transform the situation and bring about a successful outcome.

The Princess will not die but rather sleep for 100 years until awakened by the Prince bringing her into his life, after his heroic struggle to disentangle the weeds, thorns and bushes that have imprisoned and protected her for 100 years.

So it is that in the drama of life, Goodness overcomes Evil in its own way.

This points the way to our vocation in life, captured in the last few lines of “Middlemarch”:

"For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on un-historic acts and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the numbers who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited Tombs’.

Michael Jackson

Altrincham Interfaith Group