alter/ altar

To alter is to change, as in to alter a skirt that’s too long or alter your outdoor plans if it rains. An altar is a place that serves as a center of worship.

When you alter something, you change it slightly while it essentially stays the same. If you alter your pants, you modify the way they fit. If you alter your dog, that dog isn’t having any puppies. If you have an alter ego, you have another version of yourself. Here are examples:

I alter bodies, change hair colors and skin tones, give a man a songbird voice, erase agelines, and try to reassure frantic courtiers about how beautiful they are. (The Belles)

The crooked, cobbled street was much altered now from the bustling place Harry had visited before his first term at Hogwarts so many years before. (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

I’d always thought of him as Baba’s quiet alter ego, my writing mentor, my pal, the one who never forgot to bring me a souvenir, a saughat, when he returned from a trip abroad. (The Kite Runner)

Change the "e" to an "a" and you have the word altar. An altar is a raised structure, like a table or a platform, used for worship or prayer. Catholics receive communion at the altar. An altar might have candles and offerings. Figuratively, you could say that a surfer worships at the altar of the tides. Here are offerings of the word in the wild: 

I recall standing at the altar at Easter, amid candles and gold vestments, hearing the Mozart high mass. (Hunger of Memory)

On the right was the birdbath altar with the plaster head of Nefertiti, lovely and gracious in spite of the cracks and chips. (The Egypt Game)

Dad says when he was my age in Toome he served Mass for years and it’s time for me to be an altar boy. (Angela’s Ashes)