So far my favorite part of the many things I’m loving about an evolving friendship with a new HoCo pal, Regina Clay, are the looks she gives me when I say things that strike her as a little…out there. She’s connected to the spiritual not just in her life as the pastor of New Queen Esther AME Church in Easton, Maryland, but by her overall vibration, to use a New Age-y phrase for it. Her unmistakable energy, the one that envelops you, holding you tight as tight as a hug when you’re in close proximity to her, is decidedly religious, electric. But she has both feet firmly planted on the ground at all times–the ground in Howard County, in fact, where she makes her home. This down-to-Earth divinity thing is probably the source of the hilarious looks she gives me, in particular, sometimes.
For example, I sat down with her in her mall-adjacent, classic-Columbia-architecture apartment–a style easily identifiable to even a newbie to All Things Rouse like me. As she sipped the last bits of soup from a bowl I said the following to her: “Regina, I have something to tell you.”
“Ok, Robert,” she came back, already sounding sweetly skeptical, in a lovingly maternal way.
“I think you might be an angel,” at which she went from looking at straight at me, to giving me a suspicious sideways stare, complete with a squint of her eye and a duck-shape of her lips.
“Ok…,” she said, almost intoning it like a question. And I couldn’t help laughing out loud then, bowing my head down as my shoulders shook at her continued expression of comic disbelief. I presented my argument for this view of mine, how upon my and Colleen’s first visit to a Chizuk Amuno Congregation with our friends, PaCy (Paul and Lucy) Steinberg, my better half prayed for help in getting our website posts compiled into a book. Only days later, Regina was over at our RV with us. She asked, out of the blue, if she could come to talk to us, especially Colleen, about some ideas she had. One of the ideas was hooking us up with a book publisher she knows to get our articles anthologized. She was in and out that day like a do-good ninja! Colleen and I were breathless. We remained friends with Regina and only grew to love her more, of course. We’re continually struck by how she does kindness tasks, if you will, like that in such an effortless, humble way that you sometimes don’t know it’s happening until it’s over. Your life is just better.
Regular readers of this column will know that Colleen is a Gemini and a believer in cosmic influence on terrestrial matters. I’m not so much, but one of the secrets to our 40-plus-year partnership–which is between two people, of course, in the vein of The Twins that Geminis are named after, remember–is that we’ve always been able to honor each others’ particular ways of seeing the world, to co-exist in love. And while I give my own sideways-stare, lips-sticking-out glance to astrology, I credit Colleen, a Gemini born on June 9th as she is, with showing me how all of us are and are not at once. Regina has the heart of gold a member of the clergy within her and it lives alongside an ability to give some good sass when sass is due. I thought of that when I saw cherubic figurines of children resting atop a fabulously 1980s black-lacquer-and-mirrors china hutch, when Regina was fielding phone calls and answering doorbells, when I caught myself gazing into her two green eyes for what was probably too long. I challenge you to have the chance to peer into them, paired (duality again!) with her cafe-au-lait skin, her full lips and dainty nose, and not gaze upon it all for longer than propriety dictates.
Related: See what transpired during Colleen’s conversation with Del. Eric Ebersole (D-12).
Concept and Content
Just today, at the launch event and headquarters inauguration for the Team Howard slate of Democrats running for office in Maryland, Rep. Elijah Cummings said of Howard County Council member (D-2) and candidate for County Executive Calvin Ball that he possesses the vital political skill of knowing how to “sync up” his concept and his content. So does Regina, and she’s been a leader in progressive HoCo politics for most of her adult life. Most recently she took a central role in planning and executing Jessica Feldmark’s successful bid to run alongside Delegate Clarence Lam, Eric Ebersole, and Terri Hill to represent District 12 in the state legislature. Feldmark’s now a member of the team that put the “pro” in “progressive,” advocating for affordable health care, a robust educational system, and rights of equity and inclusion for all HoCo residents.
New Queen, Old Soul
I wanted to know more about Regina’s generosity. Neither Colleen nor I have ever met a person who has in it as much abundance as Regina. In particular, I’m in awe of her ability to be passionate about her faith, that of African Methodist Episcopalianism (AME), while supporting other people in their own soul-sojourns.
“I am the Pastor at New Queen Esther AME Church in Easton,” she told me when I asked her what her official title was. While Easton falls in Talbot County, Regina’s roots are decidedly Howard-ian. The Clays moved to the Columbia when Regina was in fourth grade. At the time the family belonged to the Baptist Church, but a friend of Regina’s introduced her to AME. She, in turn, led her parents to it.
Regina penned a chapter in Voices of Inspiration: Real-Life Wisdom for Living Your Best Life by Marlon Smith. In it, she notes that her parents laid a strong, solid foundation for her. This must be part of why her engagement with her community started early.
She did “lots of stuff” at St. John’s, including heading up the choir and the greeter’s committee. After completing her undergraduate education at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and moving briefly to New Jersey, she returned to HoCo.
“I loved my World Religions class–I very much celebrate all religions, she said. I’m not one of those people who says, ‘It’s my way or the highway,'” Regina noted. “The diversity here is the main reason I came back,” she said. “It’s also very much a family place. That’s a big reason, too.”
That’s when she joined Bethel AME Church in Baltimore, she told me.
“In Isaiah 11:6 it says, ‘And a little child shall lead them,'” in her sweetly raspy voice, with her inimitable, matter-of-fact confidence. Her readers were perched on her nose as she looked down into her immaculately kept, notated Bible. I hoped, then, to one day to meet the undoubtedly glorious pair who raised her. Her cell phone rang then, and she excused herself to take the call. It was her brother, Reginald. They had some airlines and flights business to discuss, so I let my mind wander for a few minutes. I thought, “This is so Regina.” One minute she’s pontificating on how Scripture and her own life intersect, the next she’s laughing warmly as she and Reginald hash out the details of a trip to Dayton, Oho. Regina’s a rare mix of metaphysical and real-world, high-minded but low-maintenance, at once lofty and approachable.
I asked her then how despite her church’s location in Easton, it was affected by her HoCo-ness. As soon as I asked, I realized that because her deep, firm roots in this county infuse her being, answer to my question is that every Sunday sermon, every piece of clergy counsel, and every act she performs as the pastor at New Queen Esther is imbued with HoCo.
Her good friend and fellow HoCo activist Tina Sheets Horn agreed with this assessment Regina and I came to together, in that oh-so-Regina way where she doesn’t tell you something, she shows it to you. It’s still your realization.
“Growing up in Columbia, which was structurally integrated from its founding, has a profound positive influence on a person,” Tina said of Regina in a rapid-fire Facebook Direct Message conversation with me later that evening.
Meaning and Being
“A poem should not mean but be,” wrote Archibald MacLeish in his classic of American verse, Ars Poetica. Replace “poem” with “pastor,” and you’ve got a perfect description of Regina, I thought. She lives by example, reaching out in acts of simple–but not small–giving. This is the essence of virtually every devotional path, to give without expectation of reward. She wants to make the world a better place, and she does it from her home-office in downtown Columbia. There’s a plush couch, a snazzy television, and a desk that’s neatly kept but also clearly a place where stuff gets done. Not only does she study scripture for her weekly sermon at New Queen Esther there, she makes appointments, introductions, and magic at it.
Regina knows and has been living by two of the threads Colleen and I have seen interwoven throughout the tapestry of traditions we’re discovering every week in this place called Howard County: all politics is local, but all spirituality is universal.
“The Inner Arbor in Columbia would not exist without Regina. Her leadership on the Columbia Association Board, including making the crucial motions to get Inner Arbor approved, will have an impact that will last generations,” said local politico and activist Tom Coale. He’s known Regina since she was the Constituent Services Liaison during former county council member Ken Ullman’s legendary progressive political tenure. When it hit me that Regina, Tom, Jessica, and even Candace Dodson-Reed, another local activist cut their politico teeth in the Ulman era, often side-by-side, I had to lean back in my chair across from Regina for a moment. Respect, as the kids say, at the collective progressive street cred.
When God Closes a Door…
…he opens a window, goes the old saying. In this case, however, it was Regina, one of his ambassador’s on Earth, who bid me a typically warm farewell and closed the door behind me. As I walked back out to my car, I thought about how I wanted to put a finer point on how Regina’s work at New Queen Esther AME Church, despite its physical distance from HoCo, is nevertheless deeply informed by her local residence. Yes, we had decided that as Tina said, her entire life here, of course, has a profound influence on her daily work as a pastor. I just wanted a more tangible answer for RoCoInHoco readers. As I remembered what I had just thought to myself earlier about how spirituality is universal, I leaned back on her door for a moment and closed my eyes. Howard is Talbot is Maryland is U.S.A is the world. Regina’s above petty nationalism–it never even comes up when you talk to her–and she’s of course above similarly nitpicky labels of HoCo or TalCo or what have you.
Regina’s gives her warm, loving energy to all she encounters.
“While I honor other faiths, I want other faiths to honor mine. That’s very important to me,” she had said to me back at her apartment. “What I believe doesn’t put you down.”
No, it doesn’t. In fact, I realized, as a powerful energy perked me up, straightening my spine in my car seat as I thought it. That’s it, that’s the vibe Regina gives off that I was having such a hard time putting my finger on. She knows and lives and gives this: our differences, including those of faith and spirit, don’t fracture or splinter us. They make us stronger. Talbot County is only more powerfully Talbot County because of Regina. That, readers, is called love. Pure, simple, and complete.
“New Queen Esther is where I elevated to, but Howard County is where I got my start in leadership, in public speaking, and that’s been really important to me,” she’d said to me. Lead us, little child, lead us, I thought. As I’d learned earlier, in the African Methodist Episcopalian babies are consecrated, not baptized, because the church wants each consecrant to come to his or her belief in Jesus as Christ on his or her own. That, I said to myself, must be where Regina’s particular style of supportive leadership comes from.
Despite her busy schedule, given that she also provides executive services to entrepreneurs, I hadn’t been able to resist asking Regina if she might consider a run for office herself one day. She played it slightly coy, delivering a careful–methodical–yes. A political tease, I thought–genius! And hopefully, she’ll follow through with it, for the good of HoCo–and beyond.
Thanks for reading! Check back with us each here at rocoinhoco.com every week as Robert, Colleen (and pup, Moses) get to know the many facets—one each week–of this prismatic place called Howard County. We want to take you along with us, so follow us on Twitter at @rocoinhoco, join our Facebook group, and follow us on Instagram at @rocoinhoco.