John Schwartz Poetry

First entry in over three months — wow! I did say at the very beginning I reserved the right to be quite sporadic on this site, so don’t say I didn’t warn you haha. I’ve still been writing (I need to keep writing); I just have a smaller group chat with people who have particularly engaged with my poems and it’s easy to shoot one their way. However, as I look at the stats, there actually ARE a few people going to this site here and there even months after posting, so … that’s fun, and so how about a new post for something new to look at!

I wrote this one yesterday morning. It’s good for me to celebrate and worship and write this sort of poem. I’m prone to focus on the gaps, the struggles, the wrestling — and don’t get me wrong, poetry has been SUCH a gift for that. Yet the way a simple poem about the love of God is contested in my mind even as and after I write is quite telling. I like this poem, and how re-reading it gives me repeated opportunities to worship and be grateful. Regardless of the bursting thoughts and feelings in the complex neurological and mental and emotional world of John Schwartz, I truly am staggered by the mercy and grace and unspeakable love of God.

(The title is a reference to my favorite verse of the hymn, “The Love of God,” by Frederick Lehman.)

Thanks y’all. I would love to hear from any of you at john@ichthusmhk.org!

My daughter Juliana (who’s all grown-up now and lives in NYC) had mentioned at one point that she loves light and shadows and can just sit looking at them/watching them for lengthy periods of time. It occurred to me that I didn’t know if I’d ever done that, so I purposed to do it for at least 15 minutes and then potentially write a poem from that experience to help me engage in it more fully.

I went out on my front deck, pulled a chair up to get a good view of the shadows cast by my maple tree on my house, and looked in a way I am not used to looking. It was really cool. And here’s the poem. (The second stanza refers to seeing the shadow of two birds that landed in the tree and then flew off… which was pretty great.)

This one riffs on John 11, the amazing story of Jesus raising his dear friend Lazarus from the dead. But then it’s really about another dear friend of Jesus’–me, as time keeps passing and the process of becoming like him defies easy description. I’ll make some pointing comments afterward for those of you (like me) who need all the help you can get to understand poems.

Just a few notes if you want ’em:
* The title is a play on the name of the famous read-at-graduations Dr. Seuss book that highlights the partnership of this adventurous life with God, whether (in the poem’s metaphor) in the lap or with the rabbi “watching” us drive, as we (to change the image) never stop being a branch in the vine.
* The red in the first stanza is a warning light on the dashboard. If you adjust the seat, you can block the light behind the steering wheel and make it look like you don’t have any problems. Or you can just smash the light I suppose, which is great … until it’s not.
* The main stanza (a word which always makes me think of the Nissan Stanza my friend Brett drove in college … complete with a baseball as the handle on his gear shift, fun trips to Yello Sub in Lawrence, and hilarious times creatively bending some traffic rules) is the one I like the best and reading John 11 will illuminate it.

That’s it. Thanks for reading! Text me 785 317 4733 if you got any thoughts, comments, questions, etc.!

Did Jesus lust?

Sometimes when I’m feeling ornery, I’ll ask people that. Because usually their knee-jerk response is (often with horror) “No!” And then I’ll point out Luke 22:15, where Jesus says to his disciples, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” — literally (and very Hebrewly) “I have lusted with lust to eat…”

So Jesus did lust, in that the basic word translated lust simply means to have a desire for. Of course he didn’t lust in the sinful way, but that’s exactly my ornery point. What is it that makes desire, sin? When does desire become sin? Obviously Jesus strongly desired and didn’t sin. In fact, maybe he had strong desires that set in place and even crowded out lesser desires. And maybe there’s a lesson for us.

This line of thought has recently connected with/given me a new lens with which to view James 1:14-15: “But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is brought to completion, it brings forth death.” Note that lust and sin are not the same thing. (Also note that the NIV and CSB unhelpfully translate “lust” as “evil desires,” when the text does not specify if the desire is evil or not. The NIV’s translation, at least if made formulaic for how all sin works, pretty much rules out that Jesus was ACTUALLY tempted, as he wouldn’t have had evil desires… so this understanding might help us there too.)

All this might go along with the famous C. S. Lewis quote about desire: “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Boy, amen. I am driven by desire. Perhaps we all are, I don’t know. So here’s a very simple poem about all that. First lines tip the hat to Judy Blume.

“American Christianity and biblical discipleship are two different things, with only minimal overlap.” Is that harsh? I don’t know. Jesus, how do you see your church–your people–your BODY in this country where I live? I do not want to talk smack on your bride—never goes well with a husband. I just know that I love my brothers and sisters, and as I read the New Testament and its clear picture of radical devotion to Jesus, there seems to be a fog. Years ago, John Piper said in a talk “The hardest place in the world to live as a Christian–America.” That’s pretty weird isn’t it? And yet.

So here are a couple of poems along this theme. The first just deals with some specific challenges of living devoted amidst the cacophony of options and distractions in my everyday American life.

The next one is more specific to the longing I have to experience some of what I’ve seen in believers in other cultures, particularly in the way they gather in microchurches and experience the family of God in some rich ways that our usual Sunday morning expressions of “church,” as good as they may be, aren’t really set up to facilitate (I actually wrote this poem sitting in a Sunday morning worship service). And also my takeaway point on an Ichthus mission trip to Kenya in 2021, “The United States is a strange, strange bird, and unless God massively intervenes, we’re screwed.” (Note I say “we” — I am right thoroughly in the midst of all of this along with my brothers and sisters, needing every single bit of the massive intervention for myself and in the bodies I lead and in which I gather.)

Oh, a few helps: The title plays on the location of Asbury University; the “oval” is the overlap of the Venn diagram of American Christianity and biblical discipleship; and “Power” refers to the “powers” Paul refers to in, say, Ephesians 6:12. As always, I welcome questions, comments, thoughts, etc.!

Wrote this one thinking about Genesis 6:6-8 (title hits Romans 8:19):

Yahweh regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So Yahweh said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in Yahweh’s eyes.

It’s more poetic perhaps than “theological.” But I love how Yahweh is truly a character in the Bible, not (as Dallas Willard would say) “the great unblinking cosmic stare.” And the thought of his heart being deeply troubled moves me.

Had the image (which itself was a vision of sorts, in that impressionistic-y way I occasionally get vision-like things) in the first stanza of this poem come into my mind this morning when I was thinking, “I should post a poem.”

When I went back and re-read it, it struck me that it meshed with a recent thought theme lately of Jesus’ being embodied, where he actually brought divine DNA into the actual physical world and how cool that is. AND it’s also good timing for this Lenten season.

So that seemed to me like enough of a confirmation to post this one. As always, I would love any thoughts, questions, comments, engagement–reach out if you’re so inclined!

As I look out on dirty snow semi-melted by a cold rain in the middle of a big old stretch of frigid, it felt a bit cathartic to post a poem I wrote in one of my favorite places in the world, Poipu Beach in Kauai.

Here’s a picture:

And here’s the poem:

This is one of the 53 poems I wrote during my sabbatical this past summer. I was going to post one or several of the ones wrestling through burnout and uncomfortable emotions and such, but decided maybe I’d start with a more playful one. Just thinking about some of the craziness and goodness of God becoming a human.

This particular poem was written on my super-fab-900-miles-of-Kansas-highways-in-three-days trip–three of the verses at Horsethief Reservoir west of Jetmore and four of the verses at a Starbucks in Dodge City.

Decided to post an old one today–wrote it six years ago, less than a month after I started writing poems. Seemed like a good one in our hurry and flurry culture.

It’s from Luke 10:38-42:

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.
But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.
She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset
about many things, but only one thing is needed.
Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

When he said “one thing is needed,” I think Jesus was doing his rabbi-thing where they are pretty much ALWAYS referring to things in the Hebrew scriptures to fill their teachings with multiple layers of meaning and goodness. In particular, I think he was making a reference to Psalm 27:4, to allude to that and really the whole Psalm (read it sometime soon if you’ve got time, it’s a potent one). I especially think that’s cool because though women wouldn’t have been able to study the Torah formally, as I understand it they DID receive instruction in the Psalms … so Jesus is deliberately referring to something that he knew Martha would know.

Anyway … the poem. See how it (and, really, the story above) hits you!
(As always, I welcome comments/questions/etc. at john@ichthusmhk.org!)