on Richard Forrest Woods – Part 12

This is one of many installments of a biography of mentor and friend Dick Woods. See here for the entire series.

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Dick’s complaints

One of the clergy at St. John the Divine, Houston, was always driving the congregation’s spoken texts by staying ahead of the assembly – loudly and at high speed – under the guise of ‘leading’ them. He was always out ahead of the congregation in everything: the Gloria, the Creed, the Confession, the Lord’s Prayer, every Amen. Yelling one’s way through the liturgy to ‘lead’ the congregation is the spoken equivalent of blasting full organ at them during every stanza of every hymn. The yelling (Dick’s word) drove Dick crazy, week after week. He once addressed it during a weekly Tuesday staff devotional, warning that dragging the congregation that way through their parts of the liturgy turns too much attention to the ‘yeller’ and away from the congregation’s leitourgia. In that same staff session, Dick also tried to correct a sexton, whose style of increasingly heated-up extemporaneous praying the previous week Dick labeled ‘conjuring up God.’ Dick did not share with me what he was going to say that day, and I was alarmed at the risk he took in saying those things to the entire staff, with both offending people present. But I was riveted by his knowledge and authority in addressing those matters, even as I knew he might not have felt so authoritative by then in his life. He was well trained in congregational worship matters, but his expertise was on the way out from the mainstream, and I had to discern his expertise more often in his practice than in his instruction.

Dick hated to see liturgy repurposed on a whim; he always wanted liturgy to speak for itself. He would even raise an eyebrow if Holy Eucharist began with a direction to the page number in the Prayer Book rather than directly with the opening acclamation. After all, the page number was in the bulletin, and to verbally call attention to it was the equivalent of reading the bulletin aloud to the congregation, something else Dick hated. Nowadays at St. John’s, depending on the celebrant, a quick ‘good morning’ and welcome may follow the opening acclamation, during which the congregation is sometimes promised a ‘powerful worship experience.’ Dick insisted that liturgy is inherently powerful but that to literally interrupt it to label it in such obvious, pedestrian language immediately lessens the very power it could wield on its own. But so it goes. Fortunately, the celebrants at St. John’s these days don’t wait for a response to ‘Good morning;’ rather, they move straight through it: “Good morning, and welcome to the Church of St. John the Divine …” Gotta give them that.

Anyway, Dick despised how liturgy was being increasingly customized for the contemporary service, and he trusted no one who embraced it. As a proponent of the latest edition of the Prayer Book, he had invested some of himself in it and didn’t appreciate its erosion so soon after its publication. He suffered a double loss of liturgical conservatism and of self that came with so much modern liturgical overhaul without his input or blessing as the ‘chief liturgist.’ [Aside: Dick was never titled ‘chief liturgist’ and was never acknowledged as such, from my observations. But he was definitely most knowledgeable about liturgy, as parish musicians usually are, often far more so than the clergy. Although an Episcopal rector is the final word on liturgical matters, the parish musician is most often the more knowledgeable. (We need not venerate our musicians for that so much as we should impugn our seminaries for not training our clergy better in such matters.) As the scope of his influence allowed, Dick planned liturgy, conducted the choir, and cued the crucifer with great authority. My first time to witness it, I saw Dick truly in his element. Not only did I see a true ‘boss’ in him in that moment, but I also realized that for those of us paying attention, we were all part of something far bigger than any one or two of us. But the title of ‘liturgist’ was not bestowed on a musician in this parish until ten years into the tenure of Dick’s successor John Gearhart.]

A ‘Music Committee’ was formed in the mid- to late 1980s or so. I never went to those meetings, but according to Dick and his circle, it was merely another antagonistic tool to use against him, and since then, no one I have talked to can recall what its charge was or what it accomplished for the greater good. Its formation was probably a placating gesture toward the pushier renewal music contingent of the parish. Dick would go to meetings and listen and understand, but he had no intention of increasing the renewal music component of the services under his direct management. He already included at least one such song each Sunday during communion, sometimes even dipping into the more casual hymnal supplement Songs for Celebration. He tended to fill communion with congregational singing anyway, rather than choral motets, which was probably as much compromise as he was willing to allow. A friend of mine from the Cathedral, who would visit occasionally would complain to me that St. John’s sang far too many hymns and that the choir didn’t have enough to do. At any rate, Dick’s quiet, unadvertised refusal to increase the ‘renewal music’ component to Sunday mornings didn’t relieve the inner stress he felt from the redundant Music Committee and the tenuous reasons for its formation. That committee lasted only a handful of years after Dick’s retirement, confirming its dual callousness to him and pointlessness to the parish.

Dick’s mistrust of most of the parish and its managers was deep-seated by the time I arrived on staff. I didn’t mind being some sort of bridge between him and them, but he wouldn’t have it. When I offered to play the piano for a certain Sunday School class, he said, “No! You can’t do that! Once you start that, you’ll be playing that stuff for the rest of your LIFE!” I might have tried harder to bridge gaps, but I didn’t create them, and I didn’t know what I was doing, and I always had him in one ear, warning me that I’d never be let out of the fluff-piano-playing box once I stepped into it. Perhaps Dick should never have hired an assistant so young and inexperienced. Perhaps he really needed an assistant more like himself at that point. All this sailed right over my head in those days. I would like to have been able to visit with him over that and a host of other matters, lo these many years later. The learning experience I was in was rich, but other learning experiences I let slip by were surely abundant.

Dick enjoyed the respect of his counterparts all over the country. He was well-liked in the American Guild of Organists, Association of Anglican Musicians, and the Association of Diocesan Liturgical and Music Commissions [now the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions], and he played, conducted, and lectured magnificently for their various programs. But he and I would also garner unsolicited sympathy from counterparts. We would introduce ourselves to fellow musicians, but when they learned where we worked, they would usually say, “Oh, I’m sorry,” rather than, “Hey, that’s a great church.”

A fighter Dick was not. Fully peaceful on the outside, he deferred to authority 100% of the times I witnessed. He would then internalize any pain, betrayal, annoyance, or injustice. He would complain bitterly in private about it, but only if asked, and always without raising that swallowed, medium-high-pitched Pennsylvania-Dutch voice of his. Perhaps a drink or some dinner would boost his spirits, and the next day he’d be fine. He once told me that I could say absolutely anything to him, that he was the most resilient person I would ever meet. He was right about that, at least from day to day, but I’ll bet the cumulative effect of it all just made him tired and immunocompromised.

Next time: A bit of fun