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The Great Unbundling - by Anne Helen Petersen

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When you grow up with a life that largely rotates around the church, like I did, I don’t think its rhythms ever really leave you. This is just as true of secular institutions and practices, particularly if they had any sort of ritual component: hunting, a day of watching football, Girl Scouts, or just the weekly ordeal of having your hair washed, brushed, and braided. Sometimes those experiences felt annoying or boring; sometimes we came to resent them. But when they’re gone, we yearn for them in ways that are hard to describe.

Members of the Barry Retired Railways Men's Choir, c. 1938 Richards/Fox Photos/Getty Images When you grow up with a life that largely rotates around the church, like I did, I don’t think its rhythms ever really leave you. This is just as true of secular institutions and practices, particularly if they had any sort of ritual component: hunting, a day of watching football, Girl Scouts, or just the weekly ordeal of having your hair washed, brushed, and braided. Sometimes those experiences felt annoying or boring; sometimes we came to resent them. But when they’re gone, we yearn for them in…

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