September 10th: All About UUCC, With Senior Minister Paige Getty

Dear HoCo Diary,

“Do you know Paige? Everybody loves Paige.” A new friend said these words to us recently. When we concurred that both Robert and I did, indeed, love Paige Getty, Senior Minister at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia (UUCC), our friend noted that she hadn’t even met Paige. She could tell, however, that she was an incredible person. Wait until you hear all about her and her parish!

Paige agreed to sit down with me to talk about UUCC and how it fits into the vibrant, varied spiritual life of Howard County. After this, a Paige-and-Colleen-related antic, a comedy of manners in miniature, took place. I showed up at Paige’s office at the wrong date and time, almost in tears on the way there, thinking I was 30 minutes late, and the bewilderment I glimpsed through her office window on her face as she sat in a meeting with someone else…well, it was, frankly, hilarious. Her eyes became as big as saucers as the confusion registered on her face, her mouth hanging agape. All wordlessly–and thanks to her capable and solicitous staff members–we communicated that I was supposed to come two days later. I was so relieved, but not because I thought Paige would be angry or belligerent about my time-management oopsie, but because she’s so amazing I didn’t want to have let her down.

“Paige is among the most thoughtful souls that has crossed my path in this life. She has a nearly infallible memory, and a gift for gracefully anchoring just about any space (or group of folks) in which she finds herself,” said Anthony Jenkins Assistant Minister at UUCC. And after my hour with her, I’d have to agree!

Too Cute

Paige has a pixie haircut, and she’s the only person I’ve ever met who has that ‘do and also has the actual features of a pixie (local lawyer and activist Becca Niburg, for example, also has a pixie cut and stunning features, but she’s more of an elegant Greek statue than a pixie). This is part of what, despite her petite physicality, soft voice, and the aura of love that surrounds her, Paige intimidated me. It sounds so silly to say months and one incredible hour later, but how else was I supposed to react?! She has huge upturned eyes, high cheekbones, an angular nose, and exquisite lips. I can see her blushing as she reads this.

“I like Paige because her diminutive figure belies her deeply grounded, clear, expansive, and powerful presence,” said Carla Gates a nurse who makes her home in HoCo and is a member of UUCC.

As both Robert and I told another new HoCo friend, Dylan Goldberg, Committee Secretary for the Health and Government Operations Committee recently, our favorite thing about this area so far is the way that the people who call it home and make it such an exciting, beautiful place, can surprise you. Paige leads her fellow UUCC staff and parishioners in nothing short of an ongoing campaign to heal what ails the world through individual spiritual nurturing, social justice, and progressive networking. She grew up in a decidedly different, conservative United Methodist milieu in Georgia, though. When I met her and detected a slight Southern lilt in her dulcet tones, I suspected she had grown up somewhere in the South. but I was still so fascinated to learn of her youth.

Careful the Spell You Cast

Stephen Sondheim wrote those words in his musical “Into the Woods.” And Paige knows we’re all always casting spells, through our intentions, words, and deeds, whether we know it or not. She’s careful about the spell she casts. This struck me as we began talking about her background. I felt like words were stumbling and tripping out of me but doing a carefully choreographed dance or march as they left her and entered the world.

“I was born in Atlanta, but my family moved to Savannah when I was in third grade–I think of Savannah as home,” she said with one leg up casually on an armchair across from me in her office. She then moved to nearby Athens, the storied home of musical icons B-52s, REM, and the Indigo Girls. She realized then that a career in ministry was her calling. At. 25 she got a Master’s at the Harvard School of Divinity (HSD). She describes the time between her undergrad years at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia and her graduation from HSD as three of the most important years of her life, not only because she met her spouse, Graham, there.

We talked then about her life after her formative, transitional years, including the span at HDS, moving into what it’s like now. Paige saw a psychotherapist for the first time in her life after some life-changing experiences opened her up to newness of all sorts. Two of those experiences laid the foundation for a spiritual transformation to come. First, she fell in love with a woman. Second, experiences her friends at Wesleyan had with unplanned pregnancies gave her a more expansive view of reproductive choice for women than the strict anti-abortion/choice ideology of the faith community she was raised in. She needed to make sense of it all with an expert guide–like she is now for people’s soul work.

At HDS, Paige learned that the United Methodist Church was more than what she had grown up in, but that of her younger days was a one of relative homogeneity. She told me, sounding almost surprised herself or knowing I would be, that that space, so different from the spiritual melange that is UUCC, was “really important to her.” The youth group was her home.

“The work I did with the therapist,” Paige said, “really helped me get in touch with what was going on in here,” she continued, pointing to the center of her torso. “And to be fair, the fact that I was able to identify ministry as the career path for me six months after being introduced to Unitarian Universalism was because I had had such a positive church experience when I was a young person.”

At her college reunion, Paige remarked to a fellow former classmate that she saw herself as having changed so much more than the others in her class when really. Perhaps it wasn’t true, she opined to her friend, as they’d all changed so much.

“My friend from college then said, ‘No, Paige, you’ve really changed the most out of all of us,'” Paige intoned slowly and earnestly. I leaned forward and let out a giggle at how she said this in a way that perfectly conveyed her former classmates’–and even her–marveling at what a different person she was compared to young, Southern-Methodist-Church-going Paige

Onto a New Life

Next, Paige and I talked about the final phases of her metamorphosis into the grounded, confident, spiritual leader she is today as Senior Minister at UUCC.

“The requirements of Unitarian Universalist clergy are very rigorous,” she said. As such, after her Master’s work was complete, Paige was a chaplain in a hospital, interned at a UU congregation in San Diego, led another UU group in Kansas, and underwent career counseling and psychological testing. This was all to make sure she, like all clergy with UU backing, was capable of executing the sacred duties of a UU minister.

I asked her how UUCC fit into the larger spiritual being of Howard County. She made a “mmmm” sound as if relishing a tasty food, and we both smiled. I was mostly smiling because, “Yay! Paige thinks I asked a good question!”

Why and How

“In the last five years, we’ve articulated a stronger sense of mission and vision that’s directly related to being a leader in the county. We’re not a church that’s here just to serve its own members–we have a mission in the world,” Paige said. She became quiet and took a deep breath then. She paused/ She looked up and then at me, intense but relaxed. She said that UUCC aims to provide a space for its devotees with spiritual sustenance and support, no doubt. Just as important, though, the congregation seeks to be the locus for organizing people and money in the interest of making the world better. And finally, Paige said, UUCC is responsible for being a voice for marginalized communities, “whether we’re talking about queer youth, or undocumented immigrants, or people who are poor or homeless.” UUCC-ers believe, she said slowly with the fingers of one hand gathered in a purposeful point, that it’s their responsibility to improve the lot of humanity, specifically by uplifting Howard County.

And: Robert spoke with another HoCo spiritual leader, Regina Clay.

There’s another raison d’etre, unofficial thought it might be. UUCC-ers, because of the congregation’s welcoming, diversity-inherent nature, Paige continued, find that it provides a happy-and-healthy-making spiritual home for them. Often this is when they seek religious paths different than–sometimes just slightly altered versions of, sometimes totally opposed to–those that they tread on in their youth.

A UUCC service has the structure and format of a Protestant service, sure. But Robert and I attended several services in a row before speakers used the words “God,” “Jesus,” and “Bible” and then they were used only once each. They or other speakers explicitly noted in non-normative, inclusive sermons, the sanctity and validity of each person’s spirit-journey. None of the aforementioned Christian theological words are taboo nor carry any sort of value judgments at UUCC, nor do those relating to other traditions. In fact, a UUCC sermon often affirms the sanguine, spiritually salient aspects of these entities and the traditions they come from. But there’s no coercion.

Again, it’s true that UUCC was born of liberal Christian theology, but it doesn’t have one particular “creed or doctrine or sacred text,” as Paige put it. UUCC is a religious movement that acknowledges that there is so much holy wisdom in the world, and there are so many ways to live it. UUCC also believes that it’s important to gather regularly to make sense of life.

“That’s what religion is for,” Paige said, nodding slowly.

UUCC-ers don’t have to believe the same thing in order to derive support for spiritual growth from each other. An average UUCC sermon makes use of the words and deeds of prophetic people from many different faith traditions, poetry, and spiritual texts. UU is here to better understand how to be in the world, not what to be, Paige told me. A spontaneous “oooooh” of approval left my lips, then. Paige laughed with me at this. But, really: oooooooh!

People can be members of UUCC and other spiritual communities, sometimes.

Over the course of many weeks, in sermons, Robert and I learned about the Japanese concept of Kintsugi, heard the Reverend Anthony Jenkins recite the poem “Strange Fruit” by Aber Meropool, and listened to a story about a speaker’s personal story of struggling with mental illness. We heard information about a PFLAG Trans Support Group, requests for donations for a food pantry, and learned how we could contribute to a holiday gift-giving program for families in need, too.

“UUCC is a transforming spiritual community. We freely explore the mysteries of existence and act to make the world better,” Paige said, reciting an excerpt from a mission statement the board came up with several years ago. The board’s looking to rework it a bit now, but both Paige and I loved this one. It’s clearly, after all, what this magical collective of people still does: find personal transformation, explore the ways the spirit is realized, and act to see the world–through Howard County–progress.

I asked Paige to do an exercise with me that I had seen some incredible family therapists on The Oprah Winfrey Show do with family members in conflict. It was to complete this sentence, “If you really knew me, you’d know…”

After some more oooh-ing and aah-ing by both of us, Paige said the following: “If you really knew UUCC you’d know that we take life seriously, but we don’t take ourselves seriously. And if you really knew me, you’d know that I’m a reverend, but I’m very irreverent.” I doubled over with joyous laughter. I wanted to get up and throw my arms around her, but I had an interview to complete! I felt like reaching across the table and tickling Paige then. Even though I didn’t–because I may be fawning, a goofball, and wear my heart on my sleeve, but even I have my limits, and…wait–why didn’t I? Next time I see her, I’m doing it!

Despite her easiness on the eyes and the important work she does, Paige, and by extension UU, is darn fun, it’s true. Paige and UUCC are more about discovering the brilliance of the human experience alongside its parishioners than she or it is about telling its followers what that is or how to live it. UUCCs sing, testify and hug, and it’s a space for inclusion and respect but not other-ing and finger-wagging.

“I truly feel like she genuinely cares about every single member of her congregation, as well as the larger community. Her passion for social justice inspires me,” said local lawyer, activist, and UUCC member, Dawn Millman Popp of Paige.

Young at Heart

The most fabulous creatures on Earth, then, children, are always part of a UUCC service. They stay to experience part of the ceremonies each Sunday at the Owen Brown Interfaith Center, where Paige’s office is, too, then go to a separate service. But the sacred gift of youth is a big part of worship at UUCC. Paige’s kids with her spouse and co-parent, ages twelve and eight, are deeply important to her in the same vein. I’ve met them after a UUCC service, and they’re as sweet and wonderful as you’d imagine. I also met Graham, her spouse, and I remember just staring at him for a moment and saying, “How amazing must you be? You’re married to Paige!” I felt bad then, not because he had anything but a positive reaction, but because I could tell he’s just as neato as Paige in his own right. But, come on–he’s married to Paige! And as Brenda Sigall had said to me, remember, “Everybody loves Paige.”

It’s no coincidence that UUCC is so large and so active and that it’s located in Howard County. There are many UU congregations in the world, but there’s a significantly robust one here. In every service, the portions in which members give out information about good works that smaller groups within or somehow adjacent to the larger one are doing in and for the county take up a good bit of time. This is true of the program handed out by volunteers at each service, as well. UUCC nurtures Howard County and vice versa.

Also: I chatted with David Saunier, a local business owner, and you can read about that here.

Paige walked me to the door of her office. We hugged. I walked into the hall and she made her way to her desk. I turned around then to look back at her, and she was already sitting–with perfect posture–at her computer, clicking away. She gave me a sweet, sideways glance and smiled. I had the sudden urge to go back in and tickle her again. I suppressed it, and what a martyr I felt like for stopping myself! Next time I see her, though, as I said…I’m doing it! Laughter is holy, and I know Paige would agree.

Thanks for reading! Check back with us 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.