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278 ˜ A Work of Hospitality, 1982–2002
demand of the celebrant: “Say something intelligent!” It has become part of the
Open Door lore.
What a wide space Carl’s death leaves in our home. Never has anyone carried
themselves through the halls of this household with greater dignity. We will
miss his big voice, his out-of-the-blue remembrances and stories and questions,
his interest in listening to guests and “highly intelligent” speakers, and his large
heart that regularly remembered and gave thanks for those who had helped him
along his way to new life and healing.
But Carl Barker’s greatest legacy is in the way he taught us to go to God.
Carl often prayed a prayer in our worship services that reminded me of the story
Jesus tells in Luke 18 of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee raised
his arms to God with thanks that he was “not like the others” and listed his
many virtues. The tax collector bowed his head in private and pleaded, “O God,
have mercy on me, a sinner.” The tax collector, said Jesus, teaches us how
to pray.
Carl Barker taught us how to pray, and his prayer remains in our hearts:
O God,
grant me wisdom to do Thy will.
Shed Thy good light upon
my troubled path, that I might not stray
into the byways of fools.
And if I stay in a swamp,
bogged down in the quagmire
of mine own iniquity,
O God, be merciful unto me,
a sinner. Amen.
James Brown Is My Brother, by Ed Loring
A p r i l 1 9 8 5
Amid the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, stretching east into the
Piedmont area of the Carolinas, marched the hungry textile mills. The mill owners
were hungry and thirsty for profits. The Piedmont had lots of cotton, picked by