Cleo Baker was stitched with many threads; some bright, frayed
The Rev. Kristin Hutson commends Cleo to God. Photo: Gerald Farinas.
During today’s funeral for Cleo Baker, I found myself pausing amid the hymns and prayers to take in the fullness of the sanctuary.
Six ordained ministers had gathered—an uncommon sight for the memorial of a layperson.
But Cleo was no ordinary layperson.
Around him swirled a network of lives: family who flew in from out of state, longtime friends, neighborhood peers, and fellow community leaders.
He was as one person put it with a shout of ‘Amen,’ Cleo was the Mayor of Bryn Mawr Avenue.
In fact, as the Rev. Dr. Barbara Cathey remembered, when the Alderman needed to know about certain people or certain situations, Harry would call Cleo.
Listening to the stories shared in the parlor, then in the Liturgy, and continued in the Fellowship Hall, our memories of Cleo were colored differently.
Each person in this community, it seemed, carried a different version of Cleo.
As the reminiscences were shared, I could sense a subtle shift at certain moments—a mix of reverence, discovery, and even quiet bewilderment.
A family member might have listened to a friend’s recollection and thought, “Why didn’t I know this version of him?”
A neighbor might have wondered, “If he extended that grace to them, why not to me?”
And a colleague, perhaps, sat in silent awe, realizing, “I don’t think I really knew him.”
That is the mystery and the ache of any full life: it cannot be held by any one person’s memory.
Like the liturgical quilts by Rev. Vicky Curtiss that hang in our sanctuary—textured and bold, soft and faded, orderly and chaotic all at once—Cleo’s life was stitched together by many threads.
Some threads came from messy life situations, others from unexpected friendships; some from service, others from struggle—deep struggle.
Each one added a color or a curve to the patchwork of his story.
No quilt is made of a single square, and no life is known in only one dimension.
What we mourn today is not only Cleo’s absence, but the unique thread he was in each of our lives.
And what we celebrate is that, somehow, in God’s great mystery, all those fragments—ours and others’—are part of a greater design.
We will never see the full picture, not this side of heaven. But stitched together in community, Cleo’s legacy is no less whole.
The Rev. Dr. Barbara Cathey, pastor emerita, eulogized Cleo as The Lost Sheep. Photo: Gerald Farinas.
