Home > Topic > the vantage point
1 " Fairies with gossamer wings, Bring forth beauty, grace and joyful things. Fairies of the earth are caretakers of our soil, water and trees,They watch over beautiful creatures such as bears, bunnies and bees.Fairies ask that you breathe in and appreciate the vantage point from which you stand,Then trod carefully and respectfully with each intentional step you make across this beautiful land. "
― Molly Friedenfeld
2 " What has happened to create this doubt is that a problem (such as a deep conflict or a bad experience) has been allowed to usurp God's place and become the controlling principle of life. Instead of viewing the problem from the vantage point of faith, the doubter views faith from the vantage point of the problem. Instead of faith sizing up the problem, the situation ends with the problem scaling down faith. The world of faith is upside down, and in the topsy-turvy reality of doubt, a problem has become god and God has become a problem. "
― Os Guinness
3 " The abiding western dominology can with religion sanction identify anything dark, profound, or fluid with a revolting chaos, an evil to be mastered, a nothing to be ignored. 'God had made us master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savages and senile peoples.' From the vantage point of the colonizing episteme, the evil is always disorder rather than unjust order; anarchy rather than control, darkness rather than pallor. To plead otherwise is to write 'carte blanche for chaos.' Yet those who wear the mark of chaos, the skins of darkness, the genders of unspeakable openings -- those Others of Order keep finding voice. But they continue to be muted by the bellowing of the dominant discourse. "
― , Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming
4 " Ture stories can't be told forward, only backward. We invent them from the vantage point of an ever-changing present and tell ourselves how they unfolded. "
― Siri Hustvedt , The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves
5 " True stories can't be told forward, only backward. We invent them from the vantage point of an ever-changing present and tell ourselves how they unfolded. "
6 " When we look back from the vantage point of sobriety, many of us realize that when drinking we often felt like a fake, a fraud, and a phony. That’s because we were. – p. 74 "
― Ray A. , Practice These Principles: Living the Spiritual Disciplines and Virtues in 12-Step Recovery to Achieve Spiritual Growth, Character Development, and Emotional Sobriety
7 " Looking back on his adolescence from the vantage point of his mid-eighties, George H.W. Bush candidly admitted, " I might have been obsessed with bodies – boobs they are now called. But what seventeen-year-old kid was not? Guilty am I. "
8 " What is the path to wholeness? We will see this path more clearly if we recognize that greed’s ugly stepsister is ungratefulness. Greed always wants more. When we are greedy, we are never satisfied. Whatever we receive from others, we conclude we deserve. And in whatever quantity it may come, it is never enough. Lack of gratitude is a manifestation of an abundance of greed. From the vantage point of the taker, it is his or her justification for always demanding. He is endlessly disappointed in others. No one ever comes through for him. No one ever keeps his promises. Everyone always falls short of his expectations. There is no need for thanks, except thanks for nothing. No truth, no matter how profound, will find its way into a heart that is absent of gratitude. "
― Erwin Raphael McManus , Uprising: A Revolution of the Soul
9 " We spread our sleeping bags on the snow and crawled inside. The vantage point was dizzying. It was impossible to tell whether the comet was above us or we were above the comet; we were all falling through space, missing the stars by inches. "
― Anne Fadiman , At Large and at Small: Familiar Essays
10 " When we know that it's a planet just like this one, only with a better climate and worse people--when we know they're all propertarians, and fight wars, and make laws, and eat while other starve, and anyhow are all getting older and having bad luck and getting rheumatic knees and corns on their toes just like people there...when we know all that, why does it still look so happy--as if life there must be happy?..." ... " If you can see the whole thing," he said, " it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives....But close up, a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the art is, is to see it as the moon. They way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death. "
11 " we live our lives from the " inside" , from the vantage point of our own personal mini-cam on life. This gives us privileged access to what's going on inside our own heads. But sometimes we can be too close to ourselves to see us as we truly are. We lack perspective, objectivity. That's where friends can help. Friends can tell you when you're selfish or rude or making a total fool of yourself. Conversely, they can let you know when you're being kind or generous or need to lighten up on yourself. "
12 " Sometimes I daydream about merging my body with my computer so that I can more fully enter the landscapes of Google Earth, lush surface world without pollution or traffic, planet seen from the vantage point of space and roving surveillance vehicles, a motionless field, magnifying the normal imperfections and irregularities of the earth so that the planet is rendered transparent, misshapen and yet intoxicating in its languishing distinction from the real. "
― Andrew Durbin
13 " God is so cruel," she murmured reflectively, as though answering him." Yes," he admitted, from the vantage point of going blind. " Though maybe people are kinder if He made them that way." " You've run with a different crowd. Rich people are nicer to rich people." " Sure. Yes. That's why I've washed up here. Rich people couldn't have been nicer to me. "
14 " A black agenda is jobs, jobs, jobs, quality education, investment in infrastructure and strong democratic regulation of corporations. The black agenda, at its best, looks at America from the vantage point of the least of these and asks what's best for all. "
15 " Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance. "
