Salt, Ink & Soul — Humanity Through Food Series
There’s a special kind of magic that happens when a community decides—quietly, without fuss—that everyone needs to be fed.
Not in some grand, official sense.
Not with grants or committees or agendas.
Just fed.
Fed the old-fashioned way:
On a folding table in a warm room that smells like memory, grief, pride, and somebody’s auntie’s best Fried Chicken.
I’ve always had a soft spot for potlucks. Maybe it’s because people bring their best selves to those tables—literally. Every dish arrives covered in foil and hope, carried by someone who has spent the whole morning stirring and tasting and adjusting because they wanted to show what they could do. Not to brag. But to share.
A potluck is a quiet confession:
This is the dish I trust to speak for me.
And there’s something beautiful about the way people place their food on the table and then pretend not to watch. They hover from a distance—not out of ego, but out of longing. Waiting for that smile. That small nod. That moment when someone tastes their dish and closes their eyes, just for a heartbeat, because something familiar touched them.
You can’t buy that moment.
You can only feed it.
Church basements have their own flavor of truth.
The ceilings are low. The chairs wobble. The lighting flickers. But none of that matters, because the food—the real food—is honest. Greens cooked down until they surrendered. Cakes that lean to the left but taste like heaven. Macaroni and cheese that could heal almost anything.
People don’t come to impress in those spaces.
They come to belong.
They come to be held by the warmth of a room that has seen everything: baptisms, funerals, heartbreak, and survival. And in every season of life, the table stays set.
Long before the world used terms like mutual aid, this was it.
This was the safety net.
This was how communities kept each other alive.
No one asked, “What can I bring?”
They asked, “Who needs to eat?”
And somehow the table always balanced itself—one person bringing meat, another bringing bread, someone else bringing something sweet, and a few saints making sure the greens showed up so the ancestors wouldn’t fuss.
It wasn’t organized.
It was instinctual.
Care doesn’t need a sign-up sheet.
It just needs a kitchen.
I think about those aluminum trays—the ones that bend if you hold them wrong. They don’t look like much, but they’ve carried entire histories. Weddings. Funerals. Reunions. Wednesday nights where people just needed a reason not to be alone.
Aluminum trays are our generation’s scarred cast-iron skillets: humble, overlooked, essential.
And they remind me of something I fear we’re losing in our digital, curated world:
We were feeding each other long before we were performing for each other.
A potluck isn’t content.
It’s a community.
It’s generosity without ceremony.
It’s survival disguised as Sunday comfort.
That’s probably why I love them so much.
Because in a culture obsessed with individualism, a potluck is a rebellion.
It says: We do this together.
It says: Come as you are, and bring whatever you can.
It says: There is room for you at this table, even if life hasn’t been kind, even if you feel small, even if all you could manage today was paper plates.
Food has always been the language that makes room for the parts of us we don’t know how to name.
So here’s my love letter—
to the potlucks, the church basements, the community centers, the too-small living rooms, the aluminum trays carried in trembling hands.
To the people who show up with their best dishes and their quiet hopes.
To those who feed others before feeding themselves.
To the tables that held us long before we had the words for what we were carrying.
May we never forget how to gather like this.
May we always remember that survival was never meant to be a solo act.
And may we keep spreading these tables—wherever we can, with whatever we have—so no one has to face the world hungry, unseen, or alone.
Kyle J. Hayes
kylehayesblog.com
Please like, comment, and share
Resources for Hard Times
If you’re looking for practical help, food support, or community resources, you can visit the Salt, Ink & Soul Resources Page.
Salt,Ink, & Soul 
Leave a comment