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Cultural and religious symbols, edifices and celebrations!

Antonio Correia

Well-known member
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Beautiful work, Antonio,

Such pictures of custom, tradition, holiness and faith are amazing, beautiful and powerful.

Faith can be such a great scaffolding for society. But we have to hope it’s on our side!

Asher
 

Antonio Correia

Well-known member
I am starting a project of 6 images under the theme: "Religious symbols" to submit to LensWork.
They will be all in colour and with the size 3/4 in landscape.
Below the first of the set.
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Saint with fish grill and wag and person looking at a black and white photograph where people probably, waiting for food...

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That is so unusual! What is a wag?

Is there a name to this saint?

The B&W picture deserves cropping and enlarging to discover it better!
Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I am starting a project of 6 images under the theme: "Religious symbols" to submit to LensWork.
They will be all in colour and with the size 3/4 in landscape.
Below the first of the set.
i-DB3wMjL-XL.jpg


Unlike the Portuguese saint grilling fish, the gold get and colors look as fresh. Arectgey using tiles in this Buddhist shrine and could they be real gold?

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Images sent to LensWork.
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An interesting combination: 3 church and 2 ? Buddhists Idols/holy sculptures!

The art and passion of the Christian works have a lot of emotion.

Interesting division of theology. Islam and Judaism strictly ban such forms as idol worship.

Do they appear in Methodist and other reform Churches or not?

Asher
 

Antonio Correia

Well-known member
Thank you Doug for your comment. :)

Asher, the walls are blue because they are partly covered with "azulejos", or blue tiles.
And no, it is not the same woman. :)
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Antonio,

This time it has become peaceful.

.....but for a moment I also thought that this would have also have been a choice of Cem Usakligil, who loved spaces with such openings or “portals”.

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I am not made happy! I feel that the Friar who had this passion was lost in a search for meaning of the path of life we have on this earth.

To me it’s a disrespect and dishonor to those who buried their loved ones in dignity, returning them to the earth, secure in the Church’s love and trust.

I had hoped it was, at least a memorial to Rwanda massacres!

But this is in my view a desecration, no matter what beliefs one has!

Asher
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
This particular chapel can only be understood when taking account of the historical context. There is no desecration if we are all going to resurrect from our dead bones.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
That was not the expectation of pious flock “entrusting” remains to a cemetery 6 ft below the ground “until Jesus returns”, LOL!

Imagine their horror at the bones being used as bricks and sticks for the personal weird excesses of a Friar decades after a burial in a paid for grave site with an expensive setting stone that a family had to arrange to be hewn in that person’s memory!

Facebook does similarly with peoples private lives, using it doe their own unrelated whims and goals!

A a Jew, it’s defiling the dead and I am certain most learned Christians would be equally repulsed.

As a humanist, it shows at the least, callous disrespect and breaking a trust!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Jerome,

I have been studying the phenomenon of some Catholic Churches using up to thousands of human remains as building and decorative materials posing as honor to the dead or a warning about the little true value of life.

It surprises me. Read more here.

The pictures will for sure astonish you!



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But it leaves me so distant from any ideas of sanctity!

It might all be an outgrowth of ideas that man is born in sin and is worthless! More, we are tempted by an overarching scheming “force of evil” and even worse, it’s minions in the form of “evil spirits”.

It could be that the “wrapping of the outside of the holy churches with gargoyles”, means that only inside the Church, itself, is a “sanctuary” from malevolence!

.....and the obvious solution to all this evil and resulting failure of man in “sin” is our promised “salvation”!

Still, today, I cannot imagine any modern church leader agreeing to another new structure made of human bones ever again!

The reality today is more hopeful!

Apart from all the “philosophy”, go into any church or mosque you come across, anywhere on the planet and the folk will give the shirt of their backs.

Why? Because we human apes are essentially kind and nurturing

......but admittedly with a residual weakness to be violent at times and often delusional!

Asher
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

But it leaves me so distant from any ideas of sanctity!

Sanctity is a terribly arbitrary concept!

It was invented by homo sapiens after he (that is gender-indeterminate in English, in which I am writing) created God.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi, Asher,



Sanctity is a terribly arbitrary concept!

It was invented by homo sapiens after he (that is gender-indeterminate in English, in which I am writing) created God.

Best regards,

Doug
Sanctity means giving something a status of extraordinary respect.

Examples:

  • Of the marriage bed
  • Of one’s young daughter’s virginity
  • Of the remains of a deceased person
  • Of a sworn oath of fidelity or loyalty

But you could have written that!

Asher
 

Don Ferguson Jr.

Well-known member
''According to legend, these bones once belonged to Muslims soldiers who died at a major battle, or came from Muslims who refused christianization and got killed by Christians after the end of Andalusia .'' [2]
So guess Friar did not care.
Don
 
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