“Driving Home” (Chapter 1) by Caroline Rothstein
Chapter 1. Augusta. I have never known church. Church is what the Christians and the Catholics do. Church is what is allegedly separated from the state. Church is the overarching metaphor for what it means to feel and see god. But I have known god. I have long felt some semblance of divinity scorching through my veins. I know I have a soul. I know I have felt the presence of the dead. I know that it was god—or G-d, as I like to call it—who had something to do with my making it back to Chicago from Philadelphia on a Sunday evening the day my brother was dying in a hospital bed. My father taught me this when I...