(Belated) Spirituality Sunday
Date/Time Disability and a Memorial at McNellie's
(Image Description: A picture of four middle aged guys, fairly far into their cups, pose for a picture at McNellie’s Public House. From left - Mark Burleson, Jeff Gentry, Wes Wilson, and Scott Schlotfelt. No extant picture of us with Fr. Everett exists. If you are reading this and you for some reason have one, please let us all know)
I was five drinks in at the hastily organized wake. McNellie’s has been our common meeting place for well over a decade. Christ Church ran their regular pub theology nights there and for many years my parents lived only three short miles away. On visits home, for weddings, summer reconnection, or - far more often, recently - funerals, we would gather at McNellie’s shortly after dinner, start drinking IPAs from the breweries of the high plains, and let the bullshit roll.
Sometimes we talked theology. We were all churchmen of some sort or another, three of us ordained by the same church on South Garnett where we grew up, one an ordained priest of The Episcopal Church’s Oklahoma Diocese, and the other an AV and IT everything man raised near the seat of Word of Faith power at Rhema and gone on to a successful career at a large evangelical franchises like LifeChurch. At times we debated the merits of Oklahoma football, with me regularly chastising three of the four for backing a team that claimed the moniker of thieves. Three of us would drink too much and then all five of us would sober up with coffee or maybe head down the street for a rapidly aging piece of apple pie at the Village Inn.
We connected every time we could. Just last summer, when our family was on a massive two-week trip out west we gathered at the American Solera[1] brewery and worked our way well into our cups. When the time came to leave I asked Father Everett, the single remaining pastor out of the four who started pursuing vocational ministry a quarter century ago, to give me a blessing. He laughed and asked if I was serious. His inquiry may have been related to a Unitarian leaning take on the resurrection that I had been advocating for the last half hour. I said I was serious. Even Episcopalians who are fully committed to the way of Jesus but deeply suspicious of magic need pastors and priests.
As Father Everett chucked and made the sign of the cross on my head, safeguarding me with his good words, I realized how very fortunate that I am. Father Patrick, Mother Susan, Father Dean, Mother Beth, and Father Everett. These beloved leaders are embodied sacraments. For all of my doubts about the universality of dogma, I would not wander through life without them.
Three weeks ago I was enjoying a rare week off when I got a text from Wes, a friend from my childhood church, first Bible College roommate, and for almost a decade, Fr. Everett’s administrator. “Y’all should check in with Everett,” Wes said. “He has received some life changing news and I know that he loves to hear from you.”
Fr. Everett is a very successful parish minister. His congregation, stocked with a diverse assortment of conservative Christians, gay families, Southern Hills Country Club Members, and people in recovery, had grown from 40 to 400 over the last decade. Fr. Everett was respected by his Bishop and known in wider circles, many of them apparently quite conservative[2] throughout the Episcopal Church. I excitedly made a note to follow up with Father after my workout. I thought he might be lining up for the Bishopric or perhaps he had a book coming out.
Before I set my phone down on the bench at the Sterling Y, I did the thing I judge others for doing. I did a quick sweep of Facebook. There, at the top of my feed, was an image of a book about enduring cancer with a hopeful spirit. Father Everett mentioned that he had given the book to many without expecting that he would soon need to read it for himself. He announced that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I dropped my phone on the bench and doubled over in grief. This was not the vibrant update from a flourishing priest that I was expecting to hear. This sounded like a death sentence.
Which it was.
After my workout, I texted Fr. Everett immediately to tell him that I was horrified to hear his update. I noted that this news had driven even this faithful agnostic to his knees, and playfully called my beloved priest a five-dollar epithet for inspiring such activity. I knew that a response that twisted the sacred with the profane would make him laugh. I am proud to be Fr. Everett’s “favorite heretic.”
Fr. Everett texted back later that night and said that he would call me as soon as he could. I told him not to worry about me but to focus on his healing. I tried to call Wes later that evening to check in. The phone went to voicemail and I left a few words intended as a benediction. I then texted Wes to let him know that I was praying fervently for his self-described “work spouse,” and I would be there if he needed me. Nothing in Wes’s return text led me to think that Father Everett’s diagnosis was less than dire.
A little more than a week passed. Father Everett, an inveterate Facebook user, only posted a couple of times. Once expressing gratitude for his wife’s dedicated support, mentioning that “our vows are not for when life is easy but it is hard.”
Last Wednesday my phone buzzed at 9:40 am. It was Scott, another member of our McNellie’s crew, and one of my oldest friends. Before I answered, I knew that it could not be good news. Scott rarely calls and he works a standard schedule like I do. The call could only mean one thing.
Here I am in the center seat of a Southwest flight covering my face with my hands, as if that can protect me from typing this. Father Everett was gone. The one who faithfully preached and did his best to be Jesus had graduated to a new life with Jesus.
As soon as I heard the funeral was on Sunday, I knew I had to go. Tickets were outrageous and I didn’t have enough points to cover the flight. But when my father heard about my predicament, he generously made sure I got my ass back home to Oklahoma.
Thus, on Saturday we arrived at McNellie’s even earlier than planned. Slamming IPAs and eating chips and queso to my left were Wes and Scott. To my right was Mark, followed by that damn empty chair. “How many are you expecting tomorrow at Holland Hall,[3]” I asked Wes.
“What do you mean tomorrow,” he asked. “The funeral is next Sunday.”
I dropped my forehead to the table, doubled over in a pose of surrender that I have not assumed since I surrendered $800 of the Disability Policy Consortium’s funds to a scammer in the spring of 2019.
“That can’t be,” I said. Scott said the same, affirming that he had texted me that it was that Sunday, the 16th. We checked the texts. There it was, in black and white, 9/22.
Confusion and an immediate desire to hide my mistake collapsed into laughter. I had learned over the course of the meeting and in the multiple memorials posted online that Fr. Everett was as ADHD addled as I am. We all agreed that Father Everett would have found my error hilarious. I swear that we could feel him laughing beside us.
“I wondered why you were coming home for eight days,” Wes said. He knows that, like Father, I fill every corner of my life with work. Also, being in love with the ocean, the mountains, and the idea of spending Monday holidays at the Boston Athenaeum one day when I can afford it, makes me incredibly reticent to leave New England. I will always be an Oklahoma boy, but my life only started flourishing once I was planted in rocky New England soil. Hence, I have to be compelled to proceed past the last MassPike exit to the east, the Canadian border to the north, or the boundary between Connecticut and New York in the South. I haven’t spent eight days in Oklahoma since the summer of ‘00. It certainly wasn’t happening now.
So we held a tortilla chip and Tank 7 Eucharist for Father Everett on Saturday night and three of the four of us were able to make it to Christ Church to remember our friend in the prayers of the people and receive the eucharist at 9 am. That damn chair at McNellie’s is still empty, but we will maintain the fellowship in gratitude for one of our heroes of the faith. Father Everett has finished his race and now resides in the arms of Jesus.
Agnostic or not, I have not surrendered the hope that one day, in the ever-closer future, our little McNellie’s band with join him there.
Well done, good and faithful servant. I still wish the call had been about your elevation as a bishop. We would have never stopped giving you shit about that hat.
(Image description: an altar filled with pictures of Father Everett Lees, stands in front of a wall made up of wooden squares. The squares are the front face of receptacles for parishioner’s ashes. Apparently this wall is called, a columbarium, because The Episcopal Church needs to have a distinct and difficult name to remember for everything. After the funeral mass next week, I believe that Father Everett’s ashes will be safekept in this columbarium.)
[1] Best in Tulsa that I have visited, hands down. The close second is the creepily named Cabin Boys next door.
[2] I was surprised when in his memorial the Bishop of Oklahoma referred to Fr. Everett as a “creedal Christian.” I don’t think that effectively differentiates one Episcopalian from the other since we all confess the Nicene Creed at every liturgy. My guess is that this was code for traditional Christianity that is still confident of promises like literal bodily resurrection. If I have indeed cracked the code, I don’t like it much. That feels more evangelical than Anglican.
[3] The fancy private school associated with the Episcopal Church where Fr. Everett was on the board, his wife works, and his three children in their early teens attend.