Then people learned they could not burn, that bullets bounced off them. They could never get soaked with kerosene or blasted with water, and when knocked on, they sounded like any other door. They did not open for any presidents or prime ministers or kings or queens. They did not open for scientists, not even the ones who spoke gently and dreamed about them. They did not open for the pope or the Dalai Lama or the popular televangelist from Southern California who wrote very dull books that could be summed up as, The only way not to be a sinner was to give him and his church a lot of cash.

One day, a man filled with grief and longing traveled to Australia. His wife had died abruptly (many people were tubing, the inner tubes flipped, some people were lost, it was another horrifying thing buried in the news’ miasma). Every day when he was in grief’s clasped hands, she, the only she in the entire world for him, was always in the periphery. Church didn’t matter any longer. Friends didn’t know what to do with the intangibility of no funeral, only a potential memorial service. His father told him the only answer in times like those was to live. The man’s wife had always wanted to see the Flinders Ranges (her laugh when she saw birds, her sigh when she saw beauty), so he flew to Australia. At the base of a mountain, he found a blue door and prayed. And after the fourth hour of prayers, the door swung open.

He walked and walked through an orange desert until he heard someone singing. He turned and there she was. The man walked her across the desert. Her hand was cold. I will stay with you forever, he said. This is the space where later, at their church, they invited people to testify. To listen to what God had given us: a chance to resurrect our dead. Yes, there were dangers to going through the doors, but this was all meant to be a test of his love.

And some people said his wife had never been truly missing. She had taken advantage of the chaos to run off with her lover but then things with the lover had been boring. The wife refused to talk about the other side. She would not answer questions about what it had been like to drown. She could not talk about what her body was. A blasphemy, some churches said. So, soon, most people ignored them. This is one of the things about living now, if a thing only stays mysterious, doesn’t give a person money or acclaim, only seems to exist as a reminder of the universe’s vast inscrutability, it is often deemed as being worthless or a grift. A minor tragedy of modern times might be how much comfort has become valued over knowledge or kindness or understanding.