on Richard Forrest Woods – Part 18

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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Some final observations

One might think that ‘getting out’ when he did was a blessing for Dick and saved him some trouble. But he didn’t ‘get out.’ He was ‘gotten out’ by AIDS and local society’s intolerance of it. Had he lived and stayed on at St. John the Divine, he probably would have died anyway from exhaustion, hypertension, or stress. And he would have had to witness along the way the further erosion of many elements of worship that his training and heritage, indeed his very self, tried to preserve. Either way, he was doomed.

Perhaps Dick no longer belonged at St. John the Divine after his hiring rector Tom Roberts died in 1973, and perhaps he should have sought other employment once again. Perhaps he was too tired to do so, or perhaps he thought he’d give the next rector(s) a chance, or perhaps by the time he realized that mistake, he felt he was too old to move on. Or perhaps he was resigned to the fact that with ‘renewal music’ and willful liturgical and musical ignorance on the rise everywhere, he’d probably never find the sort of parish he trained for and taught in the Seminary. [He would have found such a place, by the way. But with so much Church-wide change emerging at that time, it was probably difficult to determine where one might find a parish reliably friendly to whom and what Dick represented. Don’t forget that Internet searches didn’t exist in those days.] Then there was the money and the St. John’s choir, both of which fed Dick’s soul to a great degree. If I were granted a sit-down with him once again, it would be my first order of business to find out why he stayed on and didn’t use his stature to go to another position.

And perhaps I myself did or didn’t belong at St. John’s, but I didn’t have the foresight to know one way or the other, at least during my time working with Dick. Frankly, the more critically and honestly I look back at my time with Dick’s successor John Gearhart, I keep concluding that I might have stayed longer. I had more to learn. I needed to develop better skills in work / life balance. I needed to learn ways to continue after a major upheaval such as Dick’s death. I had plenty left to learn in matters of worship trends, liturgy, acoustical renovation, making my expertise known with compassion, and recognizing where my expertise was lacking or didn’t exist at all. John Gearhart was becoming for me what Dick Woods was for the generation before me – he was a new voice for new ears like mine. I had been willing to learn from Dick, and I was now willing to learn from John. But I had arrived at the parish during an era of unrest rather than stability, and I think I never got my legs solidly under me. I untidily tilted at every windmill and allowed myself to be distracted by the commonplace occurrence of a conservative parish behaving conservatively. But had I stayed, I would have witnessed multiple, refreshing turnarounds that occurred in the parish. While I am pleased with where I eventually ended up three years after resigning, I probably needed those three years to be less chaotic than I made them!

Richard Forrest Woods, Diplôme Schola Cantorum, was born about twenty years too late. He lived long enough to witness constant, measurable erosion of the dignity of Episcopal liturgy and music. He lived long enough to see his counterparts around the nation begin to be replaced by amateur guitarists with corporate day jobs. Dick’s training was in maintaining high standards, not in rescuing them from whom he considered marauders. The celebrated, deliberate wearing away of high musical standards pushed him far out of his comfort zone.

Conversely, Dick died about twenty years too soon, in that he did not live long enough to see churches begin to take better care of their marginalized. Perhaps he would be pleased today, not to mention have been better cared for.

For the musico-liturgical tradition he championed, Dick Woods appears to have died in vain. But for those readers whose loving tributes to him inspired the writing of this would-be-published-document-turned-marathon-blog-series, he certainly did not live in vain, for he brought life and a love of music to many people fortunate enough to work with him. Dick’s choirs adored him partly because of his own self but also because he gathered them around a more profound Alleluia of human fellowship that only the best music coupled with our best efforts can bring.

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Next time, a curious final post in this series: “About the author”