As a new Ensign, I was assigned duty at the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, and carpooled to work with a veteran Marine sergeant. One afternoon, I showed him a pair of brown shoes I had purchased to go with my khaki uniform. He examined the leather carefully. "Let me take these home," he said, "and I'll show you a real Marine Corps shine."
The next day I wore my old shoes, expecting to switch them with the ones the sergeant was polishing. From a grocery bag, Sarge pulled out the right shoe, shining like glass. "This is the way a Marine shines a shoe," he said. "Now all you have to do is polish the left one to look like it."
"Thin religion is religiosity reduced to a single symbolic gesture. And once you reduce religion to that... you can project everything that you want onto that... thin religion isn't textured. It doesn't have depth. It doesn't have relief. It doesn't rely on a long history of that religion with all the varieties of reflections that have gone on in the religion."
A group of junior-level executives were participating in a management training program. The seminar leader pounded home his point about the need to make decisions and take action on these decisions.