We were standing out in the desert. Only, the desert was encased by the building. The walls around us were cement. The ceiling was steel beams. The ground was sand, rock, outcroppings on all sides. It looked like a Disney ride. It looked fake as we illuminated it all, moving our phones from side to side. It felt fake, too, but it was clearly all too real. And in the center, the shrine itself, left as it had been found, however long ago that was.
The air was still down there. You could smell the dust and must, but now mixed with something else. Earth, I would say. History. Of the ancient variety. I’d walked in Jesus’s footsteps, but this seemed more real, as if we were truly stepping back in time.
Each of us aimed our phones dead-center. The shrine was perhaps a dozen feet tall, half as w
