Spirits Stored in the Basement (or The Crime of Spiritual Neglect)
Your soul doesn’t belong in the basement
By Matthew G. Mattson, Author of Cathedrals of Connection
What lies hidden in the darkened corners of your basement? Protected by spiders and dust. What do you keep tucked down in the recesses of your life? Mothballed. Stagnant. Unspoken of.
So many lives are haunted by a basement spirit.
But that spiritual cellar dweller is not the spooky soul of someone who roamed the home centuries ago. It’s a disembodied spirit of the one making the floorboards creak upstairs.
Today’s faith world speaks often about people with church trauma—people who have been abused, hurt, scarred, and shattered by the toxicity that has leaked into too many Christian (and other religious) spaces. And we should talk about trauma. A lot. It’s destroyed people’s lives… and it continues to.
In no way do I want to take the news camera off of that story of trauma, but I’d like to report another crime too: Spiritual Neglect in the First Degree. This crime has left countless spirits hidden in shadowy basements to shrivel and die. I am a victim of this crime.
For most of my life, my soul was malnourished. My spirit left desiccated and dusty. My spiritual body writhed with hunger pangs and remained unfed. For decades.
Yes, of course, there was spiritual food available to me… but it all seemed either poisoned, or at the very least, it all seemed artificial and unappetizing.
The religious institutions and spiritual language I encountered for much of my life seemed only to be serving a flavorless gruel of sin accusations, seasoned with absurd lies, all served with a side of bitter hypocrisy.
And so I simply never stepped up to that sparse buffet. I let my spiritual life go unfed.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t starving for a spiritual meal. That didn’t mean my soul wasn’t aching for just a taste of ancient wisdom casserole or divine connection soup or the bread and wine of everlasting life.
So I shelved my spirit in the basement for decades. Left to collect dust alongside a handful of participation trophies from my youth and a dingy album of old sepia photographs.
There are millions of us. The silent, starving victims of spiritual neglect.
So many people who have taught themselves to simply avoid the topic of spirituality.
So many people who tune out the prayers when they’re at a wedding or a funeral.
So many people who check the football scores on their phone during the Thanksgiving dinner blessing.
So many people who have never prayed out loud because they were told prayer had to sound a certain way.
So many people who learned to nod politely when faith came up, then change the subject as quickly as possible.
So many people who tuck away their deepest questions because they’ve only heard bad answers.
So many people who have written secret poetry, who have stared for hours at their ceiling while lying in bed, who have needed divine comfort but found none.
So many people who have walked by a church and silently wished there was one for them.
It's a little cringey for me to now, at this point in this particular essay, to turn to scripture. I realize that. Especially if you’re one of the folks with a wheezing skeleton of a spirit stuffed in a basement box. But stick with me. This story is about us.
There’s this biblical tale about a guy named Zach.
He had shelved his spirit.
He had simply assumed there was no religious food that could nourish his intense spiritual hunger. He had placed his soul in the basement of his life and very much assumed it would stay there forever.
Zach had made himself successful. He worked for a (admittedly corrupt) government. But he worked hard and was proud. He had climbed the ladder of success and was a boss. Sure, some of the people in town (the extra zealous folks) thought he had sold out, but he was doing his best in a harsh, dog-eat-dog world.
Did he sense something deeper? Yes.
Was his soul left unfulfilled at night while he ate big, delicious, fancy dinners? Yes.
Was he a little lonely, and did he feel a little longing for something… more? Yes.
But he was successful. He was secure. He was fine.
At night, I imagine, he dreamed of the warm embrace of the universe. I imagine his thoughts sometimes drifted to some divine answers to the giant life questions that nagged at him. But he tucked most of that away in the cellar of his heart.
Then he started hearing stories about a man teaching new ideas and roaming around the area. This guy was said to be speaking a language that made sense to Zach. This guy was said to be somehow singing a song that resonated deeply with Zach’s stored-away soul.
He was speaking of love. He was teaching about simple ways of caring for people. He was smiling in the face of the political-religious establishment as he touched, fed, and served the people they had shunned.
He was talking about everlasting life — but Zach sensed that this might be a metaphor for a way to live a transformed life in the here and now.
This guy was inspiring people all over the area to cast off the shackles of typical societal expectations and tap into something grander.
For some reason, Zach knew he had to check this guy out.
When the man came to town, Zach went down to hear him speak. He was a little suspicious of the man… cautious… but optimistic.
A crowd formed. Zach… a shorter fella… was blocked out. He couldn’t see.
His first instinct was to just go home. His malnourished spirit knew how to survive another day, and anyway, he could feed his belly with the rich foods of the empire to cover up his deeper yearnings if he just headed home.
But the gnawing inside was persistent. He decided to give it another chance.
A tree nearby.
He jogged over to its low, sturdy branches. And as absurd as it might have been for a successful man to do so, he climbed. Branch by branch, he ascended until he could see over the crowd… a perfect view of the face of Jesus.
What’s wild is that Jesus saw him, too.
It probably had something to do with a successful, wealthy, grown man comically climbing a tree like a child. But whatever.
They locked eyes.
Jesus says to him something like, “Zach. I see you. Come down. I’d like to come to your home and share a meal with you.”
This story (from Luke 19:1-10) is one of my favorite Bible stories.
It isn’t a miracle.
It isn’t a dead guy coming back to life.
It isn’t in a temple.
It isn’t filled with mysterious symbols.
It doesn’t require seminary, bible camp, or even Sunday school.
It isn’t about sin or shame or guilt.
It doesn’t include serpents or pigs or complicated political identities.
It’s a story about a guy who had felt lost spiritually. A victim of systemic spiritual neglect. A soul left to dry up in the basement.
And then a simple human-to-human encounter. A look of recognition. An invitation of belonging. A spirit saved not through baptism or burning bushes or water walked upon… but through connection, understanding, compassion, and inclusion.
A sacred moment of human connection transforms Zach’s life.
Being seen and invited like Zach was… that happened to me, too.
It happened over coffee meetings with my close friend, who let me wonder out loud.
It happened with a few other friends who were kind enough to be curious about the health of my soul. I was asked about my beliefs. I was given space to process spiritually. I was not force-fed food I knew to be toxic. For me, I was thrilled to pull my spirit off the basement shelf the moment someone demonstrated that I could do it safely, without having to eat some spoiled version of their religious food.
When I was served cups of curiosity… when I was offered plates of wonder and awe… when I was invited to try bites of inter-religious pastries and taste the sweet cream of alternative text translations… when I heard humble faith leaders express deep doubt and watched them behave like normal, flawed humans…
…those were the foods that started to bring my spirit back to health. Those were my Zach + Jesus sharing a dinner moments.
If your spirit is locked in a dark and dank basement, haunting you with its garish condition and shallow gasps… just know that it can be fed. There are spiritual foods out there you may not have known about before. You don’t have to feed your famished spirit the questionable canned meat that happens to be the only thing the people in your town or your extended family seem to be feeding their souls. If their fancy buffet seems filled with synthetic, processed, poisonous ingredients… trust me… there are other flavors out there.
You’ll find nourishment, if you want it, in the space between you and the people around you. If you keep your senses open to it, you just might find hearty morsels of divine truth in your next encounter. There are deliciously organic divine delicacies to be savored everywhere — we’re here to help you sample the ones being served in the midst of your everyday interactions and conversations. But believe me, there are so many others, too.
If it’s common knowledge that people have a “spiritual side” to go along with their physical, mental, and emotional lives… then it is criminal to let people’s souls suffer in the cellar. We must feed each other in new, fresh, fulfilling ways.
Your spirit deserves nourishment.
Your soul doesn’t belong in the basement.
QUESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION & DISCUSSION
What parts of your spiritual life have you stored away in the “basement,” and why?
How might those neglected or hidden parts of your soul be gently invited back into the light?Have you ever felt spiritually starved—like nothing available could truly feed your soul?
What kinds of "spiritual food" have offered real nourishment to you in your life, even if only for a moment?Zacchaeus climbed a tree to see something that stirred his soul.
What might “climbing the tree” look like for you right now—a small, perhaps uncomfortable act of curiosity or hope in your own spiritual journey?If someone in your life is silently suffering from spiritual neglect, what’s one way you might offer them a meal of connection, curiosity, and compassion this week?
What would it look like to feed someone’s soul—not with answers, but with presence?