* * *

I remember the day that I tip-toed in childlike wonder across the perimeter of our musty basement in late September and called it beautiful. 

To the outside eye, it would appear that I had made an ill-informed statement. The basement was a narrow strip of crumbling walls and debris piles that smelled of dank mold. It was the place where we stuck the trash, hiding the leaking bags away in its corners until the garbage truck came. It was the place that gave some teammates bad vibes to the point where they refused to step down into the space, and a stench that gave others nausea. Before that day in September the basement was a place that I, too, had dismissed as worthless.

But that afternoon I looked around the space with my mouth agape, perplexed as to how I had not seen the beauty of this space before. Where I once saw piles of garbage with pieces of brick and broken metal, I now saw a floor dusted with the years of many occupants. Where I once saw rusty pipes and barren walls, I now saw the beauty in the structure’s honest imperfections. The basement, a space that I had once dismissed, I now saw had mass potential to be a space of solitude as well as a space of community. I rolled up my sleeves and began to transform the space, yearning to unveil the beauty I was gifted eyes to see.

The pegged board I outlined with a red jump rope and transformed it into the prayer wall. Here pictures, art, and quotes could be hung up, serving as a place of quiet centering and reflection. An old giant paint bucket became an end table where you could place your morning coffee as you spent time in solitude—maybe reading, praying, or simply existing. I looked around, knowing that the space wasn't fully transformed; the community space had yet to be created. I placed two bed frame boards together near the back wall, transforming them into a stage for performances. The stage received two microphones—one a lightbulb-less standing lamp and another a broken pool stick standing in an empty five-gallon water jug. A hula hoop was leaned against the back wall with some sticks—stage decorations. “We can have open mics down in the basement and do slam poetry and dance and sing!” I exclaimed to my teammates. I stepped back from my work with a sigh and surveyed the space.

The basement that I once dismissed as worthless was transformed into a space alive and humming with invitation.

*  *  *

Since that transformation, the basement has been a space used for centering and reflection for myself and my team. People have gone down there to collect themselves, to work through conflict with one another, to call friends and to be in a controlled space of solitude. For myself, the space had been a place of creating music, poetry, and dance, finding solace in the crumbling walls after long and difficult days. As for a space of community building, though, the basement had never been used. Over the months my passionate dream for the stage to be used as a form of community building had subsided into a quiet longing. I began to recognize that realistically an open mic would never happen in the basement—after all, even in its transformation it was still a musty basement. The stage became a sort of joke that was brought up occasionally in the house, and I laughed too as the impossibility of the idea.

That’s why on Saturday evening after Community Dinner it was such a shock when I found myself in the basement for over an hour with neighbors and teammates alike, singing and dancing and laughing and creating—together.

I’m not quite sure how it happened, really. Somehow four of us ended up there on the stage—Lateysha, me, and two new young friends. “Let’s make up a song! You two can use the microphones to sing!” Lateysha was the back up singer and I on the guitar. “Dragons, castles, lilys—they grow.” We sang this quirky declaration of transformation over and over, adding on new nuances with each repetition. Others came down to hear our concert, placing chairs on the musty floor. Erin filmed the songs as I kept exclaiming, “I can’t believe this is actually happening!”

After a few songs from our newly formed band, the audience clapped and the stage became open to receive the creativity of the people in that space. Lateysha boldly gifted an improv slam poem, my teammate Joe graced the stage with an improvisational dance full of movements of freedom. Cynthia and Tracy (who had just met one another that evening) came together to sing some 80’s classics that we all ended up belting out together. The rusty pipes and wooden beams amplified and held the rich sound of our voices. 

A half hour later, we found ourselves ending our time by standing together on stage in a circle, eyes alive. “Let’s choreograph a dance!” Lateysha began the choreography, gifting a flowing movement from side to side. Cynthia was next and gave a movement in the form of waves from side to side. We began the dance again, adding the two movements together. 

I looked around the circle as we continued choreographing, soaking up the wholeness and unity I was experiencing in that moment. Together we were crafting a story through choreography, and each had the power of being a contributing storyteller. What I was experiencing was so different from what the narrative that I see panning out around me in the every day. Everywhere I go I see how people assert their storytelling as more important or powerful than another’s storytelling, and how this divides us from a whole people into a fragmented people. I found myself in that circle yearning to invite everyone I knew into this little glimpse of wholeness that was unfolding before my very eyes. I kept thinking that if only people would get a taste of the wholeness I was experiencing in that moment, that we could no longer choose apathy regarding one another. What I was experiencing, what we all experienced that evening during that spontaneous open mic, was sacred.

And to me the best part was that this time of creativity and wholeness took place in a basement once dismissed as worthless. 

“It is the one who is least among you who is the greatest.”

The musty basement is actually a sanctuary, and the beggar is actually royalty. 

In the kingdom of God, everything is upside down.

I am continually being gifted eyes to learn.

A lot of what Mission Year has been for me is learning from people and places that in other seasons of my life I have dismissed and am now seeing with new eyes. When you think of your own transformation and life journey, is there a person or place that you have dismissed that has actually served as an important agent of transformation in your life? Email me at amber.cullen116@gmail.com; I’d love to hear your story!