Dear Parishioner,

            Do fairy stories still come true? I mean, imprisoned princesses and dragons and princes turned into frogs and that sort of thing? Obviously not. And certainly not in Blakesley Avenue, but yet, something a little odd did happen the other day as I walked down that road and passed a white van, and as I walked past, I head a faint voice, crying ‘Help!’ ‘Did you hear that?’ I asked my companion. ‘No’, came the answer. I looked around and saw no one, but again there came the faint, plaintive cry, ‘Help!’ an empty street, a white van, and a still, small, unhappy voice. Then I noticed that the side door of the van was lodged at an uncomfortable angle and I listened again, and there was the small voice. ‘I’ve locked myself in’ it said, ‘Can I pass out my keys so you can unlock the back door?’ There followed a tense moment while I attempted to retrieve a bunch of keys through the narrowest of cracks at one end of the misaligned side door, which constantly threatened to end in me having fewer fingers rather than more keys. In the end I had the magic solution to the problem; but where was the lock? It took a good deal of scanning to find the extra lock added to the back door to make it more secure, more secure I think than was intended by the owner, and lo! the doors swung open to reveal….certainly not an imprisoned princess, or even a frog, but a plumber, who had created inside his van a perfect cave to hide and hold his treasury of gleaming tools, and there they were, rack upon rack of them. Think of it; he had a perfect secure place for the tools of his secret arts and locked himself inside it. Now there’s a metaphor to chew on.

            Which, naturally, brings us to this Sunday’s gospel. Once again, the apostles, this time represented by Thomas and Philip, are missing the point. They think that finding God involves some secret knowledge or access, but Jesus puts them right. We cannot come to the Father by ourselves, we lack the ability to percieve or understand what this might mean, which is why we have Jesus, completely God, and yet completely us as well, and we can, sort of, understand another human. And in all those rooms in the Father’s house, there is room for everyone, anyone, who can see the treasure of His presence, not locked away secretly, but there for all to see on every corner, or even, if you can hear the still small voice, Blakesley Avenue.

            Happy Easter.