Liturgy and Creativity

an Interview w/ Poet, Nathan Woods

For the past few months, I have been reflecting on a curious observation regarding writers with faith backgrounds. By and large, the Christian writers whom readers outside of the faith respect come from liturgical (or high church) denominations as opposed to more evangelical, non-denominational backgrounds. I’ve been struggling to put my finger on why the observance of “low church” worship lacks the outpouring of creative beauty that seems to stem from “high church” liturgical worship.

When I talk about “liturgical” denominations, if you’re unfamiliar, I’m referring to churches that follow a strict form of worship — plainly, a liturgy. The service is meticulously laid out, often following a liturgical calendar, which dictates the themes to be contemplated on any given Sunday throughout the year. This isn’t to say that non-denominational churches are formless; the elements of worship at any church will likely follow a predictable pattern from Sunday to Sunday — three songs up front, prayer and announcements, preaching, communion, and a closing song followed by a benediction, for instance. But a predictable pattern does not a liturgy make.

More than the general shape of a Sunday service, the most obvious difference between high church and low church denominations is visual. The ministers in high churches don vestments, formal robes with mantles draped over their shoulders, whereas a non-liturgical preacher might wear a suit or polo or even fashionable ripped jeans and overpriced sneakers. Stained glass windows with depictions of saints abound in high churches. Announcements project onto a wall or flash across a screen in low churches.

As I was composing the previous paragraphs, I stumbled across the poetry of Nathan Woods, who is a member of the Orthodox Church, a liturgical denomination. He has been sharing his poems on his Substack,

Silver Door

, every Wednesday, as well as essays and other content on Saturdays. He is the Poetry Editor for the upcoming Symbolic World magazine, a publication that aims to “rediscover the symbolic patterns informing our cosmos.” For a sample of Nathan’s poetry and the beautiful imagery he invokes, I recommend checking out Fox’s Guide to Springtime Shelter, The Rider and the Ridden, and We Sing.

I reached out to Nathan, and he agreed to have a conversation with me about art and creativity and the ways in which liturgy might inform them. Here’s how that conversation went:

Interview with Nathan Woods

Daniel Bishop: After reading several of your essays on Substack, it seems like the natural place to start this conversation is with poetry itself. I gathered that your parents, your father in particular, instilled in you a love of reading from a young age. What drew you to poetry?

Nathan Woods: Yes, books have always played a big part in my life. My dad in particular pushed that and was a good reader himself: doing the voices, knowing when to pause, leaning in at dramatic moments. Lord of The Rings was a bedtime story for me before I could read it for myself, which I'm incredibly grateful for.

As I got into my teens I would say my awareness of spiritual realities became significantly heightened, so that when I first encountered the works of William Blake I became immediately entranced. His poems in particular seemed to speak of these spiritual realities from a place of experience and authority that I'd never encountered before, so I just dove in without a second thought.

Bishop: Was there an immediate sense that you wanted to create poetry? Or did that come later?

Woods: Oh it was an immediate impulse, fueled by grandiosity and a comical sense of my inevitable rise to poetic greatness!

Bishop: Haha looking back, I think we can all relate to that specific teenage assurance that what we're passionate about will inevitably lead us to fame or infamy.

Woods: Yes! And I would have been perfectly happy with infamy!

Bishop: Do you remember anything about how you approached those first poems?

Woods: My approach was full steam ahead. I wrote A LOT. I tried to rhyme most of them but had no real conception of what rhythm was or how it worked. I remember a period when I was obsessed with the number of letters in each line and trying to keep that uniform. Crazy stuff. I had no idea what I was doing. It was great.

Bishop: I guarantee you were still doing better than I was in high school. I remember an assignment sophomore year in which we were tasked with choosing a poet and analyzing their meter... despite being warned against it by my teacher, I chose Mike Shinoda, the rapping half of Linkin Park, and argued that he obviously displayed meter because his "poetry" was set to music. Needless to say, it didn't go well for me.

Woods: That's hilarious. But hey, you could have done a lot worse than Linkin Park!

Bishop: When I was younger, I recall devoting almost endless amounts of time to the things I was passionate about. As we get older, and take on more responsibility, finding the time to create becomes more of a challenge. How have you seen your writing practice change since those early days?

Woods: A lot has changed since then. My relationship to writing has had a lot of highs and lows for most of my "career." Writing, poetry, was closely tied to my spiritual world until I became a Christian, which was just four years ago. Thank God since then I've had a lot more stability across the board, as well as responsibilities, so my writing just doesn't have the same existential charge it used to, which is a huge relief.

I've got a one-year-old and we have another on the way so, yeah, I have to be a lot more intentional about finding time to write. I'd say that recently I write more consistently but less than I have in the past. It's still a passion of mine but it's not my primary focus. I've given up any pretensions of becoming a great poet or whatever.

Bishop: Oh wow! Congratulations. I hope that the transition to two is as smooth for you and your wife as it has been for me and my wife.

Woods: Thanks!

Bishop: I’m glad you brought up the spiritual connection of your early poetry. One of the things that fascinated me when I read your article _Human Conversion in the Digital Age_ was that, after reading Blake and being thrust into the world of poetry, you started tackling some poetic giants — Dante, Shakespeare, even diving into the Bible, which isn’t something I would have expected from someone who was not a Christian. You mentioned having a heightened sense of spiritual realities around that time. How did engaging with the Bible from a poetic perspective interact with the spiritual realities you were aware of?

Woods: Well my interpretative lens for reading Scripture was taken almost entirely from Blake, who is a complex and sometimes contradictory thinker, but I think it's fair to describe him as a gnostic Christian. And like Blake, I was most drawn to the Hebrew prophets, inspired men, sometimes visionaries, who confronted the ills and injustices of their day with their words.

I certainly adopted a gnostic outlook more or less from the beginning; it seemed obvious to me that there were dark spiritual forces at work in the world, something that gnostic and small-o orthodox Christians can agree on.

Bishop: They were quite literal visionaries. I can see how readily the prophets lend themselves even to modern-day poetic study. Some of the imagery about the heavenly realms and the throne room of God are gorgeous.

Another thing I found intriguing about your spiritual journey is that, after discovering a handful of Orthodox apologists, for lack of a better word, you were essentially discipled through a Discord server before you joined the Orthodox church. Am I getting that right?

Woods: Close. There were three Christian YouTubers, two Orthodox guys, and a Reformed minister who played a big part in my exploration of traditional Christianity and, ultimately, my conversion. After that it took over a year of going to an Orthodox parish before I could become a member, which is pretty standard.

The Discord server you're referring to was, at that time, full of people on a similar trajectory. I wasn't on that server until after I was made a catechumen in the Church, though. It was still a monumental online space for me: I met my wife and some good friends there.

Bishop: Had you had any experiences in other faith traditions or denominations outside of the Orthodox Church?

Woods: I had very limited experience with Quaker meetings, which my parents took me and my sister to off and on for a year or so. Quakerism is very much dying but Pennsylvania still has pockets here and there. It was a lot of sitting in silence which as an 8-year-old was torturous. Really the opposite end of the spectrum from Orthodoxy.

My only close Christian friend was helping with ministry at a fairly large non-denominational church as I was coming to faith, and I visited there. I have to say it really solidified my decision to check out an Orthodox service.

Bishop: So I've been asking myself the question: what is it about liturgical traditions that churns out artists — specifically of poetry and prose, but the case could be made that it extends into other artistic disciplines as well — whereas non-denominational evangelicalism doesn't seem to do so? I think the question is really two-fold. Is there something about liturgy that facilitates artistic impulses? And/or is there something about liturgical practice that appeals to people with artistic inclinations? Obviously, you had been writing poetry long before you entered into the Orthodox Tradition. What was so unappealing about the large non-denominational experience and so appealing about the Orthodox Church?

Woods: There's a lot to unpack there. To generalize, which, granted, can be dangerous, it seems to me that though non-denominational churches place a lot of emphasis on music in their services, it serves a different function than in Orthodoxy. The music seems to cater to the congregation in the sense that it's meant to elicit a positive emotional response while allowing everyone to sing along, which necessarily limits how complex your hymns and songs can be.

The Orthodox Church, and I assume other liturgical traditions as well, primarily transmits her teachings, often theologically nuanced, to the faithful through the hymns of the Church, which saints have mostly. And the hymns are sung/chanted in such a way that is meant to foster an atmosphere of repentance. Songs are often joyful but I wouldn't describe them as happy. You’ll often hear of joyful sadness, or bright sadness, in ecclesiastical music circles. As a whole, Americans aren’t comfortable with the idea of sadness as a positive emotional state.

Honestly, and anyone reading this who goes to services that have a worship band please forgive me, the non-denominational church service I went to just seemed like an OK rock concert with feel-good Jesus lyrics.

I don't know if liturgical life necessarily facilitates creativity, but it certainly provides a built-in artistic foundation from which one can comfortably work from once it gets into your bones.

The icons, the fasting and feasting within the liturgical calendar, the music, all of this is obviously going to appeal to someone with an artistic sensibility. On the other hand, I know visual artists in protestant traditions who have struggled to reconcile their work with their faith.

So yeah, the hymnography of the Church was certainly a draw for me, but it was more how the poetry and hymns, the fasting, the icons, and the sacraments, were all integrated into a way of life that really appealed to me.

Bishop: I can relate to that and, as someone who is a member of the worship band at my church, I am not offended by the comparison to "an OK rock concert."

Woods: Haha I suspected you could be in a worship band, and that's very gracious of you.

Bishop: Truthfully, my biggest stumbling blocks within my faith tradition are high-production worship services that try to emulate pop music and concerts. I'm not saying it's "wrong" but, in worshipping the creator, I don't want to take my lead from culture. And again, that isn't to say that Christian artists can't create within recognized genres of music, literature, or poetry. I just want it to be more than a second-rate representation of whatever it's trying to do.

Woods: Of course, we all come to these things with our own experiences, and my own coming to faith was, in part, wrapped up in my general distaste for modern life. Orthodoxy still has a pre-modern mindset and way of worship, which has its own difficulties in the 21st century.

Bishop: Can you expand on the ways the visual artists you know from Protestant traditions struggle to reconcile their art and their faith?

Woods: I don't want to speak for anyone else but I think you could imagine belonging to a tradition that is actively opposed to your chosen artistic vocation would be very difficult.

Bishop: That's interesting. By visual arts, I assume we're talking about painters and photographers? I've never considered the Protestant tradition to be actively opposed to those expressions of art. Granted, I could imagine feeling like Protestants have a certain apprehension toward modern depictions of the body and anatomy which they let slide where it concerns the old masters. Ironically, I've thought that visual artists have had it easier in faith traditions because the messages in visual arts are often more implicit than explicit compared to the written word. That is to say, visual art is more open to interpretation than, if not poetry, then certainly prose.

Woods: Mm, I wasn't very clear. I meant actively opposed in a church setting. But yeah, I think you're right; visual artists (painters, photographers, sculptors) can "get away" with more because so much is implicit.

Bishop: Okay, I see what you mean! Yes, there is a huge difference in the primacy of visual art in non-liturgical churches compared to the iconography and even architecture of high churches. And, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a correlation between the primacy of those visual arts and an outpouring of creative writing.

As a counterpoint, I'm not necessarily happy to report that in the 90's, I remember traveling visual artists visiting the church I grew up in. I don't remember their exact medium, but it was something akin to chalk. In any case, they had these "demonstrations" where they would start off creating an image, usually something that would have represented the paradise of Eden. They'd smudge some elements and it became something representing the Fall of Man. Smudge smudge — the cross of Calvary with the sky dark as the Father hides His face from the Son. Flip it over and it's a beautiful scene of the empty tomb in the Garden of Gethsemane. There was dramatic music playing in the background and it was, unfortunately, terribly corny haha

Woods: Haha well I think there is a place for that kind of thing, corny as it is. It's just a matter of recognizing what and where it is in the hierarchy of things.

Bishop: In a similar vein, I was raised with the scriptural edict to do everything as though "unto the Lord." I've often wrestled with the practical application of this when it comes to creating art — what sort of obligation does this place on a poem or a story? Does there need to be an obvious moral? Does God clearly have to be victorious at the end? For that matter, does God need to be overtly involved at all? I think about the Book of Esther, an amazing story, but God isn't even referenced... and it's in the Bible. What are your thoughts on how faith and art interact? Do we have obligations as Christian creatives?

Woods: I've never thought of the Book of Esther that way but that's really interesting and there's something to that. I've wrestled with these same questions myself. First, I'd say that attempts to sneak or force God into stories or paintings or what have you are doomed to lapse into propaganda of some sort, no matter how well-intentioned.

St. Augustine's "On Christian Doctrine" has helped me think through some of this. He emphasizes the Christian as sojourner, someone returning home.

"We have wandered far from God; and if we wish to return to our Father's home, this world must be used, not enjoyed, that so the invisible things of God may be clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made — that is, that by means of what is material and temporary we may lay hold upon that which is spiritual and eternal."

For St. Augustine, the only thing we should delight in is God, and those things that are useful, like songs or paintings or novels, are only useful insofar as they aid the traveler on their journey to God.

So yes, I think there is a responsibility Christian artists have but there is a grace given too. If we're attempting to glorify God any mistakes, which are inevitable, He can smooth over.

Bishop: I had never heard that Augustine quote before. It's a beautiful way of looking at our roles as creators seeking to glorify God.

Augustine had some interesting views on the use of art in contemplating holy things. It must have been in Confessions, but I remember coming across a passage that argued against the use of music since it wielded too much power to move the soul. In his view, it was the truth in the words of the song that should move one to worship, not the music.

A friend once levied a similar charge against a band we often listened to — that their music was manipulating her emotions. I told her I was pretty sure they were just writing music that they liked.

In either case, it's too much to ask a composer or musician to create bad music on account of good music being too moving. I think there's an error, too, in assuming that God can only move through words. The hymn _How Great Thou Art_ proclaims "I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed." All of creation declares God's glory, and a composition of music is well-suited to the task.

Woods: St. Augustine's caution against music is echoed by other Fathers of the Church. My understanding is that it's not that they are saying that music in itself is dangerous or anything like that, it's a caution not to excite the passions through music but instead lead the soul to repentance.

And I think this principle can be applied across the board in the arts.

Thank you so much for the great questions, Daniel. It's helped me process a lot of this.

Bishop: Thank you for answering them.