VanCity Idol 2012 Winner- Min Young Hwang (Prince of Wales)
Here is our own Min Young Hwang – winner of VanCity Idol!! She won recording time in a studio and $7,000 academic scholarship monies!
May 14th, 2012
Here is our own Min Young Hwang – winner of VanCity Idol!! She won recording time in a studio and $7,000 academic scholarship monies!
April 24th, 2012
February 22nd, 2012
“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
This is the familiar refrain used at the moment when we return a body to the ground. “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” But perhaps we have forgotten the significance, the power, of the verb ‘return’. Our tradition tells us that we are formed from the earth. That God took some dust and earth into God’s hand and breathed life into it and so formed humanity. If we believe the earth to be the body of God, then to be dust and dirt is to be part of the very essence of the body of God. So perhaps our return is not limited to that moment when we are returned lifeless to the soil. Perhaps return can also mean that even while we are living we are restored to oneness with God. Even while we are alive, especially when we are alive, we have opportunities over and over again, to experience a return, a oneness with the utter peace, grace and goodness of God.
The question then is, during Lent, what blocks us from that oneness? What gets in our way, prevents us from living united, unified with the love and the will of God?
THAT is what we are to give up for Lent. That which blocks us from being one with God is what we are invited to purge from our days. Not necessarily things that we enjoy, but also things that weigh us down. Perhaps insecurity. Fear. A sense of scarcity. Anxiety. Perhaps the inability to believe that we are God’s child, beloved, in whom God is well pleased.
I wonder what blocks you from living in the joy and love and unity of God?
I wonder what it would look like to give that up for the seven weeks of Lent?
And then perhaps we can say:
“From dust you came, and to dust you will return. Hallelujah!”