by Julie Skurdenis

To me, it’s always been one of the most vivid passages in the New Testament.

It’s Herod Antipas’ birthday celebration. Salome, his stepdaughter, dances for him. Herod, entranced, swears he will give her anything she asks for. Salome, prompted by her mother, Herodias, who hates John the Baptist because he has denounced her marriage to Herod (she was divorced from Herod’s brother), asks for the Baptist’s head. John the Baptist is beheaded and his head brought...

East of Amman, Jordan’s capital, stretches the desert, a seemingly endless empty expanse of land wedged in between Syria to the north, Iraq to the east and Saudi Arabia to the south. It’s mostly flat, dotted with low-growing shrubs, bushes and cacti. There are few roads here, but there are dozens of desert tracks crisscrossing the expanse. They’ve been used for hundreds of years by pilgrims en route to Mecca and by caravans carrying goods from one trading post to another.

It was here...

by Julie Skurdenis

My most recent trip to Guatemala, in January 2006, began with the popular television reality program “Survivor.” The show is now in its 12th season, but it was the 11th season, which aired in fall 2005, that set me on the road to Guatemala again. In that season, the series was set in the Mayan archaeological site of Yaxha in the remote Petén jungle of northeastern Guatemala. Here among Mayan pyramids, some of which date back more than 1,500 years, contestants...