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276 ˜ A Work of Hospitality, 1982–2002
couldn’t really think about helping anyone else, because I had to make it myself.
But now that I have a home, and I feel like this is my home, it seems like I’m
able to look at what other people are needing again. When I came here, you
know, I wasn’t expecting to stay. But maybe this old guy I was talking to some
time ago was right. He said, ‘Have you ever thought that what you’re doing here
at 910 was what you were put here to do’ I said, ‘How you figure that’ He said,
‘Well, if you leave you might have some bad luck—you might be going against
what God has been trying to tell you to do all along. So I think you should stay
on. This place works, you know, because there’s love here.’”
And love, as Jay has taught us many times, can be a powerful weapon
against wall-builders who would divide and oppress God’s children. Love also
emerges as the wonderful fruit shared among broken people who have been
brought together by God’s reconciling spirit. If we are to find the strength and
nourishment needed in our struggle to reduce the distance with the poor, we can
hope for nothing less. 1
Calford Davis Barker: May 20, 1927–July 22, 1994,
by Murphy Davis
S e p t e m b e r 1 9 9 4
Calford Davis Barker came into the Open Door Community on January 18,
1986. John Cole Vodicka was on house duty that day, and he welcomed Carl in
as part of the community. It was not an easy transition: Carl had been on the
move since he was a teenager and had rarely stayed in one place for very long.
But he worked at it. There were bumps on the path and a detour or two,
but Carl struggled on. In May 1989, close to his sixty-second birthday, he became
a partner in the community.
Over the years we learned of Carl’s life and adventures. We were spared
many details, and he seemed to know that there were some memories just as well
left undisturbed. They spoke in his silent spaces as his eyes would drift and pain
would cover his brow.
Calford Davis Barker was born on May 20, 1927, in Birmingham, Alabama,
to Stella Leonard and Jim Bob Barker. When he was three years old his mother
died of tuberculosis and, shortly afterward, his father drank himself to death.
1. Jay Frazier later became a partner in the Open Door (ed.).