Upon reflection, I may have conflated the final escapee from the box with the young girl who dared to open it. In my mind’s eye, Hope looked like Pandora herself.1
When I first read MaryAnn’s book and she retold the myth of Pandora’s box, I had forgotten about the last part of the story where hope was the last thing remaining in the box. What I remembered of the story was how all the evils were released from the box. As I read MaryAnn’s reflections on this, I wondered if another way of thinking about it is that there’s a mirror in the bottom of the box and that mirror is hope reflecting back the one looking in.
MaryAnn continues from the quote above:
We, who have unleashed so much misery, are also the bearers of a small bit of antidote.2
Yes, we each have released evils into the world but we each have a role to play in bringing hope in the midst of it.
As I reflected here, I thought of how so many of my photographs have a mirror effect in them. I love times where the water on a lake is so calm that it looks like it is a mirror reflecting the surroundings. I shared a post a few years ago where I flipped the image upside down just to see if anyone would notice.
On this, it makes me wonder what each of us uniquely brings to hope-building in the world? I believe that one of the things I uniquely share is through my photography and reflections here. But there are other things that others share that I cannot or I do not. That is their unique gift, their unique reflection that is the hope to speak into all the evils that we have released into the world.
So, what do you uniquely bring to the work of hope in the world? If nothing comes to mind, is there someone you can ask about what they see you bring?
Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed
McKibben Dana, MaryAnn. Hope: A User's Manual (p. 54). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
McKibben Dana, MaryAnn. Hope: A User's Manual (p. 54). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.