Books & Ideas
Eric Metaxas is the New York Times bestselling author of Bonhoeffer: Prophet, Martyr, Spy and Amazing Grace and William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery. He is also a writer for Veggie Tales, a children’s book and TV series that is both funny and grounded in themes of faith.
What can we say, the man has range.
All around the Island this summer, at banks, at libraries, at the museum, at the Polly Hill Arboretum, at the offices of nonprofits and realtors, and at Morning Glory Farm, the pensive self-portrait of New Yorker cartoonist Jules Feiffer has been inviting us to understand the Vineyard. What the mysterious booklet asks us to understand is that the unique character, ecosystem and population of the Vineyard is under constant threat from overdevelopment, underemployment and cutbacks.
Lectures, those events featuring knowledgeable experts discussing their subjects, are such yesterday’s news. How about instead a person actually becoming their subject and acting out the period in question?
During the last presidential campaign, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye had the daunting task of introducing Caroline Kennedy at an Obama campaign event in San Antonio, Texas. The honor was made particularly formidable because Ms. Kennedy’s plane had been significantly delayed.
Breathe, Smile, Relax is the self-evident exercise that Buddhist teacher Lama Surya Das promotes in his new book, Buddha Standard Time: Awakening to the Infinite Possibilities of Now. It’s a meditation that, as he puts it, “can help us collect ourselves and reconcentrate our energy and attention. Learning how to do this prevents the cupful of golden vitality poured into us at birth from being continuously drained away.”
By JULIAN WISE