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Description

Imagining the Lectionary: Our Cinderella Mission (Epiphany 4B)

Reflection accompanying images:
“Our Cinderella mission” “Lost shoe in gutter 1” and “Lost shoe in gutter 2”

Coming across this solitary red shoe in the gutter my attention was held by the strangeness of the sight, and I wondered about the woman who had abandoned it here and the circumstances in which she came to leave it behind. As the father of two daughters I realised that this was a disquieting line of thought and as I looked at the lost shoe I just hoped and prayed that she was alright.
Unlike the fairy tale of Cinderella, the story of this particular shoe is incomplete and its ending is left uncomfortably open and unresolved. Yet the sense of concern for the wellbeing of the wearer and the hope that their story would be one of the redemptive power of love overcoming all that would drag them down and limit them, could be said to be held in common between this discarded red shoe and the fabled glass slipper. The fairy tale charts Cinderella's escape from being an object of other's cruelty, unkindness and self-serving desires, to that of a person whose worth, dignity and selfhood is recognised and cherished.

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