A church basement

is the junk drawer of every community

At 9 am on Thursdays the email arrives in my inbox. If I don’t act immediately, I might as well delete it, the “ordering is open!” announcement from United We Eat. This project of the Soft Landing Missoula refugee assistance organization hosts a chef from one of the refugee families each week. Order Thursday - and be quick as it sells out in about 10 minutes -  pick up Tuesday in the basement of the United Methodist Church in downtown Missoula.

But this newsletter is not about the program or even the food.

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This newsletter is about church basements. Heading down the stairs to pick up my United We Eat dinner hauls me all the way back to my childhood, by way of a meandering trip through my own experiences with churches, and with Church.

Let me take you way back, all the way to the 1970s when I spent summers and many weekends with my grandmother. She was a Southern Baptist, a very practical one. Could she help it? Not really – grow up in Chambers County, Alabama in the 1910s and what else are you gonna be? So, Sundays all summer and many weekends, I ended up at Bon Air Baptist Church in Virginia with Granny. I loathed it. The quiet, the hard benches, the droning. Sometimes she’d send me to Sunday school, which was even worse. I’m sure it’s where I picked up my intense distaste for being suddenly thrust into small groups of strangers. I’ve attended almost no church services since I was about 12 and never will again if I can help it.

Wednesday night, though, was a wholly different experience. Wednesday, many of you probably know, is “church night.” Church night is Bible study for adults, loose games for kids, and the best part of every church experience: the potluck in the basement. 

I cry for anyone who has not experienced a Southern potluck, especially one at a church. Tables and tables as far as the 7-year-old’s eye can see, filled with fried chicken and jello salads and the most delectable casseroles imaginable: potato, green bean, tuna, sweet potato, chicken and rice, most made with some Campbell’s cream-of soup

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. Pies, cakes, and cookies too (best not bring store-bought unless it’s from Ukrop’s). Load up your paper plate, careful not to tip it onto the floor, and haul it to your family’s spot at one of the long tables. Hope Granny gets you a plastic cup of lemonade, and dig in. 

Actual recipe card from my grandmother. “Congealed” just sounds so….not like jello. Buttermilk is the key, by the way, to a true Southern jello salad.

These memories are pleasant and warm, like when you visit your favorite auntie’s house and she gives you a Coke and some Oreos and says, “Don’t tell your mom.” They are nothing like memories of the echoey church sanctuary or the other kids giving me side-eyes in Sunday school. Much of the fondness is traceable to the food, yes, but also, the church basement is literally the sweet underbelly of what community service can be. 

It’s not just home to the almighty potluck. It also houses Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, nonprofit orgs that can’t find space in town, kitchen facilities, sometimes sleeping quarters when needed, changing rooms for the choir, and so much more. There’s often an old piano down there, stacks of chairs that other organizations can borrow, bookcases with some dusty paperbacks, and other castoffs. It’s the junk drawer of any community: a place to put stuff you need from time to time that just doesn’t fit anywhere else, and it’s there when you need it.

Walking down the stairs of the United Methodist Church in Missoula to pick up my dinner actually fills me with nostalgia. It reminds me of my Granny, and the kindly families we visited with while eating our jello salad. It reminds me that churches - while certainly perpetuating plenty of hideousness - also provide for communities in ways that other organizations choose not to.

Moonlit walk in December near my home

Since the age of 14, I’ve been an atheist. I couldn’t square what I saw every day, the glittering hardness of the concrete sidewalk, the salty breeze of the wide ocean, the nasty laughs of the mean girls at school, with a hovering, all-knowing presence in the world. They could not both exist: the reality I could touch and a creator that was just an idea. It just didn’t make sense. So, I decided, that was that and God was nonexistent to me.

But if I’m being real about my feelings now at 50, I’ve mellowed some and learned things often are not what they appear. That hard sidewalk seems to shimmer a bit if I squint at it, and those mean girls might be crying instead of laughing. I’ve thought perhaps a spirit might weave its way through tree branches during a moonlit walk, or help protect against harm seeking entry to my home. I’m not about to sign onto a congregation, but maybe opening my mind to a little more beauty in the flickers I see in my neighborhood and seeking a stronger connection to other humans isn’t such a bad idea.

Flicker in my neighborhood

1. …but if you live in Missoula you should give it a try! 

2. Please see Lyz Lenz’s righteous celebration of casseroles here.