Secular saints, folk saints and plain old celebrities

[guillaumeb]

From the article:

On a recent Sunday in church, the officiating priest invited us (as he does every Sunday) to pray. We prayed for those you might call the “usual suspects”: for the bishop, for those in positions of political authority, for the recently departed.
But among those we also prayed for was “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – and for all the other saints … ”...

If you’re looking for more politically loaded saints, the online handcraft marketplace Etsy has plenty of sellers hawking “progressive saint” candles depicting St. Barack Obama, St. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Robert Mueller and even “Notorious” Ruth Bader Ginsburg, heralded as the “angel of everlasting dissent.”

To read more:

https://religionnews.com/2019/01/31/secular-saints-folk-saints-and-plain-old-celebrities/

[Act_of_Reparation]

1. I guess by the time you're writing articles for ReligionNews, everything is religious to you.

Hammers are religious. Sandwiches are religious. My irrational fear of wicker furniture is religious. If writing articles about religion is your thing, it sure helps to have such a deep well from which to draw your inspiration, I guess.

[trotsky]

2. And to paraphrase the villain from The Incredibles...

When everything is religious, then nothing is.

[Bretton Garcia]

3. To a man with (only) a hammer ...

... everything looks like a nail.

Reminds me of some president too. Hammering constantly.

[trotsky]

4. Tsk, tsk.

We're supposed to be building bridges with that president, BG! Guillaumeb is very disappointed that we aren't reaching out more to Republicans.

[Act_of_Reparation]

5. If only we knew what such bridging would look like.

[MineralMan]

6. Good thing there was no train on that trestle.

Yes, indeed!

[guillaumeb]

9. Interesting that the 2 of you have the same approach to dialogue.

Even to the ".." response that you excel at.

[MineralMan]

10. Is it?

Doesn't seem interesting to me...

[guillaumeb]

11. Perhaps you are too close to the forest to see the trees. eom

[MineralMan]

12. Or, perhaps, cliches are not useful.

You might try harder.

[guillaumeb]

13. And you might want to step farther back and look again. eom

[Act_of_Reparation]

18. Do you see yourself as performing well in this particular exchange?

I am curious to know.

[guillaumeb]

20. I see 2 frequent posters engaging in the same behavior,

and obviously both feel that their behavior demonstrates something. What that something might be is another matter.

And you?

[Act_of_Reparation]

22. I think you might consider looking up the definition of the word "parody"

[guillaumeb]

23. I disagree.

Unless you feel that they are engaging in self-parody, or that they have no real interest in actual dialogue.

Is that your contention?

[Act_of_Reparation]

29. Of course you do.

[Voltaire2]

14. You mashed that metaphor.

the correct phrase is “cannot see the forest for the trees”.

The point is you have to step back from the tree to see that it is part of a larger entity, a forest.

You literally cannot be so close to the forest that you cannot see the tree. The closer you get to the forest the more individual trees you see. Eventually you are so close all you can see is one tree. Which was the point of the metaphor.

Please try again. You need more practice with this metaphor thing.

[MineralMan]

16. Understanding the concept of metaphor isn't all that easy, really.

I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt in this case. I doubt he understood what he was saying.

[guillaumeb]

21. I assumed that you would understand my point.

My misunderstanding.

[MineralMan]

24. You assume many things that are incorrect.

[guillaumeb]

25. Do you ever make that mistake? eom

[MineralMan]

26. Probably.

[guillaumeb]

27. There is hope.

Probably is a bit vague, but it is a better response than "never".

[MineralMan]

28. For some, there is hope, at least.

[MineralMan]

17. Here's "can't see the forest for the trees" in many languages:

https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/cant-see-the-forest-for-the-trees.1533197/

The French expression is: Impossible de voir le bois pour les arbres

You have misconstrued the expression, thus losing its meaning. Perhaps reading it in French will clarify its meaning for you.

[guillaumeb]

19. No matter the language, n'importe quelle langue,

you are incorrect, z'avez pas de raison, vous.

Step back and look harder.

[Voltaire2]

30. If you step back from the forest it continues to look like a forest until you are so far back

that it instead looks like its containing geographical feature.

You truly don't appear to understand what "can't see the forest for the trees" means.

It is a metaphor about sets and elements of sets, or if that is too complex for you, the whole thing, and the parts that the thing is made of.

So to re-iterate, to see the trees, step closer to the forest. To see the forest, step away from the tree.

You however should step away from metaphors.

[guillaumeb]

32. Your explanation was missent.

Again.

[trotsky]

33. Would it really kill you to just give an "Oops, my bad" and move on?

Why are you like this?

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1218&pid=304549

[trotsky]

7. We all know the bridge isn't important.

Even if it's on fire, there are some who think the people who refuse to use it are the problem, and not the folks who set it on fire.

[Major Nikon]

15. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do

because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. -- Susan B. Anthony

Doesn't sound like someone who wanted to "build bridges".

[Bretton Garcia]

8. At most, secular "saints" are probably deliberate religious parody.

Like Pastafarianism.

But if religious folks fall for it?

Hmmmmm. What does that tell us?

[Voltaire2]

31. Jesus is toast?

That's my guess and I'm sticking to it. Literally. There was peanut butter on the toast.