Do you miss it? she sometimes asks. I tell her what I always tell her while she cooks me dinner in my Brooklyn apartment. That I miss having people who come together for a common belief. That the multiple experiences of shunning still sting, years later. That, as grateful as I am for disparate individual connections with highly spiritual, even witch-identified, individuals, I miss the collective experience of calling in the divine. That I miss—that I crave—worship. Religion is meaning-making: something that offers a worldview, a culture, a community.
