John Schwartz Poetry

This one (not really a poem I suppose) is pretty personal. (I was back and forth on posting it, as it’s sorta long AND it’s totally about my own journey. But I thought it might have connections with some of y’all, and I frankly just like it … so I decided yes.) It’s about shame and art and identity and neurological integration and my own fragmentation and how writing poetry is helping change my life. The title refers to Psalm 133. Benjamin means “son of the right hand,” therefore left brain, with Lefty then of course being right brain.

Oh, hopefully both columns are visible on a mobile device by selecting it and scrolling, but if not, I put it in two columns below this one.

And in two columns if you can’t read it as above…

A sudden rainstorm gave me the idea for this one. Skip right to the poem if you don’t want my commentary (not that it’s that profound lol) to spoil your engagement. It’s about perspective, and control (and/or the lack of it), and trust, and choosing joy, and the like. Though God is God and in charge/sovereign and all that–truly, the fact remains that for our actual day-to-day lives it matters VERY much how we respond, how we set our minds, how we SEE and SEEK. “According to your faith it will be done to you,” as Jesus said. What a humbling honor.

YES

The wind blows where it wishes
The rain falls as it may
Does this frustrate me
Or free me

The tide doesn’t consult me
The seasons come and they go
Does this comfort me
Or mock me

The mountains stand stony still
The sky says I’m so small
Does this awe me
Or scare me

Is the bowl flipped or open
The heavens bronze or breathing
The ground a grave or garden

Are my hands closed or open
My head dipped or free
There’s a crowd around the hinged door
Asking what my heart will see

I found the first three lines of this poem in a journal from the summer of 2021. I think maybe Cory McElvain said them in a devotional he was leading on the Ichthus Kenya trip. Anyway, they were arresting lines then, and now, and I decided to keep going and see what happened. See what you think.

THE MOST INTERESTING GOD ON THE PLANET
through blood and tears and gasps of pain
God squeezed through the vagina of a Jewish teenager
clearly the body is honored and glorified
clearly the Lord’s not hung up on appearances
      or squeamish
clearly he redefines dignity
      and majesty
      and power
so lower yourself to get high
empty yourself to get full
be losing yourself to get found
don’t be judging the bloody gasp sound
and if the pressure makes your head sure it will burst
then just let yourself be born

This one’s about someone I know well — two people, actually. And then “Eben” is Eben Alexander, a guy who had a near-death experience. Message or text me if you have any questions!

JOHANNA
< our heroine, sitting on a park bench on a cool drab day, is approached by a stranger, who says >
Good day miss and have you ever noticed?

I’m sorry but not’ced what I said

No noticed … just really noticed
Freed from the rage rage in your head
Here listen to my good friend Eben
From the journey he took there and back
And he’ll tell you that even on best days
At most it can see just a crack

So I guess then no, prob’ly haven’t
With even best days a lott’ry pick
So why are you asking you rubbing it in?
I wouldn’t have placed you a dick

< fit of laughter ensues >

Hang on sorry umm please give me a sec
I just gotta catch up my breath
Hope you don’t mind my laughter
But that’s just funny
Like mistaking bright life for death
OK so alright no it’s not a jab
I just thought you might want a teacher
There’s a way to get tastes of the unbrained life
While you’re still a decaying creature
(You might say it’s an optional feature)

Oh sorry sir yes I do want a teacher
And I so so want tastes of that life
My gray matter’s determined to cut funky grooves

OK great will you please be my wife?

Umm
Whoa
Uh that escalated quickly
Didn’t we just the two of us meet

Johanna come on can’t you feel your heart burn
I’m the one who keeps washing your feet

Wait you’re him you’re the one
The one in my dreams
I’ve been crushing on since I could see?

The only the same
Love’ll bypass your brain
I can show you your identity
You can notice all true right through me
The crystal calm mind past gray sea
The fearless made so fearfully
Johanna just breathe and let be

A theme of my life lately has been the whole Jesus-paradox life and death thing. There’s at least one form of this statement in each of the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John); here it is in John:

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. The one who loves his life loses it, and one who hates one’s life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves me, he or she must follow me… (John 12:24-26a)

I think I’m supposed to take a next step into this actual truth. Not just a poetic Bible passage.

I like this one.

I think about the nature of living: what it’s like, and what it is supposed to be like. I have (pretty much for my entire Jesus-following life) such a strong desire to be perfect. I read the absolute calls of God in the Bible, the calls to total surrender, walking in the Spirit, experiencing power and joy and peace and such, and I want it. Ultimately I want it because it is good and makes God look good and I love him and as his child I truly do long for his “name to be hallowed”; but right along with that I want it because when I don’t walk in a sense of absolute surrender and flow and perfect Jesus-performance (haha, what a phrase) it makes me uneasy. Very uneasy. I am so uncomfortable with messiness in my own life. (Yes, I am an Enneagram One. Yes, there is a reason why all of 2021 and half of 2022 was filled with God teaching me to be OK with being a human being. Yes, the allure of trying to be and feel perfect is a perpetually tempting snare. Yes, I am laughing right now.)

Anyway, here’s a fun, somewhat whimsical poem about one of the many aspects of that. Informed by Psalm 23 and the whole theme of being sheep. And it sounds like I’m teaching this … but I was basically writing it to myself.

GREEN PASTURES
God’s not a god of confusion
But don’t overextrapolate that
If we’re always sheep
At the same time we’re sons
Confusion is just where we’re at

Not pumped about being dumb livestock?
Sure it grates against adamic pride
But David showed true
The king’s a sheep too
It’s the gateway to enjoy the ride

I can’t get this all tied up for ya
There’s a tension in what I now say
But at least hear the shout
Do not “figure it out”
That’s a long stride into the flesh way

So give up the drive for mind-wrapping
Left-brained horizon’s full view
When sheep walk at night
A lantern’s their light
But trust hears “Fear not, I’m with you”

Here’s the second one I’m posting today; see here for the first.

I have consistently found writing poetry to be more productive in engaging with questions than other things I’ve tried throughout my life. Prayer alone with no written tether gets mind-messy. Journaling has been a mixed bag, sometimes bringing clarity and sometimes finding me caught in a mind loop seeking an intangible settledness that never comes. What I’m desiring is something that allows me to be truly honest and then actually facilitates hearing from God about and into my questions.

This poem’s specific topic is about the spiritual practices of solitude and silence. Over the last couple months, God seems to have been reminding me of those and leading them to renewed attention in my own life. I recently took two Thursdays in a row out at a delightful cabin to try to respond — they were (as pretty much any intentional solitude pursuit, to be distinguished from merely being alone, in my life has been) enjoyable and quietly significant.

I wrote this poem at the end of the first time (the one I wrote at the beginning of my day there was called “Questions,” very creative titling, no?), using the topic of solitude itself to springboard into some of my own challenge of living the strange and God-says-it’s-wonderful-so-it-must-be-true embodied life of John William Schwartz. The “tile” refers to where I was sitting in an empty room at a nearby ministry building in January of 2002 when I, inspired by Dallas Willard and Sarah (Schultz) Hartman, decided to try to integrate the practice of solitude and silence into my weekly life. (Let me know if you have questions about any of the other references; this is definitely a poem embedded in my own life.)

My hope is that this poem might help each of you reading it to intentionally find your own ways of genuinely interacting with and connecting with God’s voice and heart. I love you all. Truly. John 17:3.

Sort of excited to do my new post-a-poem-every-Tuesday plan. But as I said in the last full paragraph of my first post, no promises. (Not to make everything come back to OCD, but one of its rules is anything can become compulsive … so I have to pay attention to the motive/drive behind any commitment or rhythm.)

Anyway, I’m excited enough where I decided to do two … one here, and then this other one here. I had two totally different type poems I was choosing from, and I thought, hey — why choose?

This one, “Spitting out the Fruit,” is a Bible poem; I wrote it as an “I will” action statement after reading John 8:1-11 with a friend in a Discovery Bible Study to help me reflect further on it. The other one, “More Questions,” is a different type–more directly personal.

I don’t know if you want to read the passage first or afterwards. Some of you may be familiar with it already … again, it’s John 8:1-11.

As always, honored by any engagement whatsoever with either of them!

I’m thinking about posting a poem every Tuesday. I’ve got it on my task list, so we’ll see. 🙂 If any of you reading this would enjoy that, maybe put that on the Facebook post or email me at john@ichthusmhk.org…

Anyway, here’s another poem about OCD, along with the original post describing this in my life and also this one from last week. I told you it was a frequent theme.

Don’t read the rest of this paragraph if you don’t want the key/”twist” of the poem given to you before you read it. (I, for one, need all the help I can get when I’m reading someone’s poem, but some of y’all like to try to figure these things out.) Anyway, I mentioned something to someone about having “three letters” connected with my life (O-C-D) and then the thought came to me of them being three actual letters, like the kind you get in the mail.

So that’s this one! I thought it was sorta clever haha.

I haven’t been loving the poor quality of my screen shots, so I’m going to see if this looks any better.

MY DEVILISH PEN PAL
I found three letters in my tent
none of them were sweet and light
and I have so many questions
‘bout and with this edge of night

the first was like a bomb
shooting flames of fear and guilt
demanding that I give account
demanding that I will

the second was a sequel
like unto the fore
and this one called for action
lest I never feel secure

the third was more a summ’ry
and a judgment of malaise
and I s’pose even a hinge of hope
if a lens would change my ways

these letters like this cosmos sphere
stab my heel and beat my mind
must I read them ‘til the dawning day
I s’pose I must unless I’m blind