KtBlog
“I Only Desire”: Poet Monks
Running into a monk at a hostess bar in Kyoto was as jarring to me as bumping into a rowdy rabbi or Baptist minister at a strip club. Though all may marry, there is still something incongruous when holy men revel at establishments where women are the entertainment. But maybe I shouldn’t have been so…
Flood
An illicit afternoon hike on a sunny day. What could go wrong? A short story from KtB’s new contributing editor.
One Variety of Impiety
There are lots of ways of being disrespectful during church, especially if the church is Catholic. The rules are a lot easier at your average megachurch, where shorts, t-shirts, and Starbucks are as welcome as Bibles. Basically, there, whatever’s clean and decent outside is good also for glorifying the nondenominational, American Protestant God. But Catholic…
Curious, Obscene, Terrifying, and Unfathomably Mysterious
I am going off to write about people. An ordinary proposition, it would seem, particularly for a person who makes a living writing for people and, typically, about people or the things they think about and create. For the next month, I’ll be joining my friend Lucas Foglia in Costa Rica to spend time with…
The (One, True) Way to Go
I stand corrected. Quince Mountain (whose racy memoir “Cowboy for Christ” appears in our forthcoming book Believer, Beware) wrote in with a note about my Memorial Day post from yesterday, in which I had made the mistake of calling biking and hitchiking the eminent forms of travel in the United States. I appreciate the Memorial…
A Country to Die For
Memorial Day has never been my favorite. In Arlington, Virginia, where I grew up, it always meant the roar of Vietnam Vets on motorcycles all day. And the occasion can bring out our most jingoistic spirit. As I passed three separate suspension bridges across the Hudson River today, each with a giant American flag hanging…
A Crook for Souls
Today I arrived in Wyoming to visit a dear friend. On the way, while in what she approvingly called “the Wyoming part of Colorado,” we passed the Benedictine Abbey of St. Walburga and decided to stop. On the road in we passed a magnificent little canyon and a pair of smiling alpacas. We were greeted…
The Collector’s Lair, part 1
An atheist descends into the underworld of the Israeli antiquities trade.
Getting Godly in Mysore
We’ve come to the hilltop where the Chamundeshwari Temple overlooks the city of Mysore, India, but we can’t pass up the free admission to the Godly Museum across the parking lot. It feels like the love child of a Hindu goddess and L. Ron Hubbard, midwifed by a Jehovah’s Witness. I’m a little frightened, but maybe…
