Call of the Spirit: Paige

Meet Paige. She’s a police officer whose spirituality makes a difference on the scene.

I don’t tell anybody. Sometimes it’s just a prayer that I say while I’m doing my work or while I’m talking to someone or a family. But I know that that’s why I’m there.

Transcript

It’s my favorite place to be.

Paige is a member of St. James’ Episcopal Church in Pulaski, New York.

And sometimes he taps and I’m like, “Ow!” So when I was feeling that and I kept saying to my mom, “I’m having this push. I gotta go back to church.” She’s like, “Oh, okay, yeah I think you should.” And I was like, “Yeah but I’m going to be nervous, I’m going to be scared. I can’t walk back in there. How do I walk in there with my two crazy boys and you know, just sit down, start going to church. Who does that?” And mom’s like, “You need to go.”

The minute I came to my first service, back on just any other day, walked in here and I was like, “I’m home. I’m home.”

Paige is a police officer in Northern New York State. 

I just know that there are some scenes that I arrive at and I’m at them for the specific reason of bringing my spirituality and calmness to that particular place. I don’t tell anybody. Sometimes it’s just a prayer that I say while I’m doing my work or while I’m talking to someone or a family. But I know that that’s why I’m there.

It’s not my burden to carry them. But it’s my burden to carry them to here. So I let that go here. I remember why I was there. I remember why I cried with that mom. I remember why I hugged the elderly man. When I come here on a Sunday, that’s what I’m doing. I’m trying to pour back in. Sometimes it’s the sermon.  Sometimes it’s a song. Sometimes it’s Andrew and all of the other kids running back from Sunday School. It soothes me, it calms me. Sometimes it energizes me. Sometimes it makes me cry. Sometimes it’s just the smile.

St. James’ serves Thanksgiving dinner to 300 people every year. 

So we have a free Thanksgiving dinner. Free to anybody, whether you can afford or couldn’t afford or have someplace or don’t have someplace. We work very closely with the Pulaski fire department. It’s a volunteer fire department. It’s right next door to us. And we’re going to do the prep over there because they have a great kitchen. And then we bring the food to here to serve the hungry people of Pulaski and northern Oswego County.

We do a ton of shut-in deliveries.  So we have kids that can drive or a lot of younger people carrying out laundry baskets of takeout turkey dinners to their cars and they’re driving all over the place for delivery. And there’s somebody on the phone that’s writing down addresses and “How many dinners do you want?” We have another group of people that are taking those orders and filling them on the buffet. We have people walking in to sit and eat with us here. We have people that are over in the kitchen pumping out the food. It is chaos.

I wish I could hug my church because that is how much I love this little nook in Pulaski. I just want to hug it.