John Schwartz Poetry

This one’s about going fishing with my dad (Bill) and my grandpa (Fred).

I’ve been missing Grandpa (my mom’s dad — I was less than a year old when my dad’s dad died, so I didn’t know him) lately. I was his first grandson after having four daughters and then a granddaughter, and we always had a special relationship. I believe he was the man I felt the safest around, and … I miss him.

The subject matter of this poem (the Bible and the place it has in human lives) seems to me to be of utmost importance. Not just if the Bible is important — I certainly believe it is, uniquely and irreplaceably so — but how.

The title is, appropriately enough, a reference to something in the Bible. And I think it might mean more than that as well.

One of my favorite things to do is to interact with people who for whatever reason(s) have genuine interest, curiosity, and enjoyment in poems I write. So if you happen to fit that description, respond to the Facebook message if that’s what sent you here or just shoot me an email at thusdude@gmail.com; I’d love to hear from you!

In conjunction with my sabbatical, I took the summer off from posting. Not sure if I’ll continue the weekly posts or go back to occasional. I wrote over 50 poems on sabbatical, so I may put a bunch in one post. Regardless–I will put this one here; I also posted it on Facebook.

It’s a groaning season — I’m up to 20 untimely (and a few more expected/timely/but painful nonetheless) deaths in the worlds I am close to in the last 5 months. It’s nuts, and … oh, the groaning.

This is sort of about that, or at least fits the groaning theme … but it’s actually about more/different than that. See how it hits you. It’s funny to say this about one’s own poem, but like is often the case, it feels sorta like it wrote me, rather than me writing it … so I’ve been musing on it and seeing lots of stuff in it.

The last line is a specific reference to something (Google it if you need help), which itself was a reference to something in the Bible (KJV version). That’s in play.

I am finishing up my 27th year of staff for Ichthus here at KSU, after 4 1/2 years before that as a student leader. Three and a half years ago, I effectively restarted Ichthus when I left what-was-then-Ichthus, which took a new name. (If that sounds confusing — well, yes. Yes, it was.) But whether old or new or in-between, the vision that has driven me is one of God doing something big and wonderful here in Manhattan, far greater than just Ichthus. I believe he has promised it, actually, in 1991, clear back in the days when my understanding of God’s voice was much less developed than it is now, and has reconfirmed it, sometimes quite vividly, in 1995 (“even when you feel like a grasshopper among giants in the promised land, walk the way of Caleb and Joshua”), February 2005 (“open the floodgates of heaven,” one of the most powerful personal experiences of God’s presence in my life), and (differently) 2015. This most recent season (2019-now) has found me praying more than ever and pursuing the same vision trying specifically to learn from the great disciple-making movements happening throughout the world right now.

It’s an interesting thing to keep believing in something when the years keep going by and the road has more twists and turns than I could possibly have anticipated. (Thirty years of marriage and five kids, the oldest being 25 now, is part of that. There are lots more parts.) How badly do I want it?

So I still believe God is going to do something big and wonderful here (beyond the many wonderful things he has done over the years in so many lives–what an amazing job I have.) City-wide. Flooding this town with the good news of Jesus, transforming lives, healing and restoring and rescuing and being in his proper place of Lord. I do. Even if I move or die before it happens.

This poem represents some of my personal wrestling to keep believing that, particularly in this last season, when Ichthus is smaller and the most promising things seem to keep getting nipped in the bud by Covid, generational things, and who knows what all else.

(The Elijah references are from various parts of his life in 1 Kings 17-19 (also see James 5). And I’m heading into sabbatical starting next week until August 1, which will be an extended time at the “brook.”)

What’s the most important day of your life?

Today–because it’s the only one you’ll ever live in.

I’d say the dominant theme/lesson of 2023 for me so far is living in the moment. Learning to live in the moment, present, right here, right now. Not past regret. Not future planning. NOW.

It relates to what Dallas Willard said, “Hurry is the great enemy of the spiritual life in our time,” as fear-laced hurry (and that’s what makes it “hurry” and not just moving rapidly) takes one out of the moment.

It links to the concept of “flow,” similar to yet broader than what I often experience in writing poetry.

It is connected with my dawning realization that the underlying Master Compulsion in my OCD, within and behind most every other counter-thought or action I take to gain relief from my bursting fearful or guilt-laden thoughts, that which I am tempted to practice nearly every moment of every day, is something that fundamentally moves me OUT of the present moment into a sort of fruitless meta-thought.

It is the next step in maturity (I *think*? This is grasped by faith only) in the task of learning to actually live by the Holy Spirit, in an actual relationship with the Living God more than a quasi-religion trying to figure things out/apply principles from a book. (The book in this case being the Bible. I am quite confident not everyone gets caught in this trap.)

Anyway. This one’s about that. I liked the word “crucial” with its etymological ties to both “cross” and “cross-roads.” Words are so cool.

I think about sex a lot.

Now I know that is a stereotypical (classic comedic fodder) statement about men, and sure … I have grown up in this hypersexualized and thoroughly sexually broken world too. But that’s not what I mean. In fact, I sorta mean the opposite.

Why sex? Why did God make it? Why did he make it so amazing? The God who gave the gift of orgasms to humans (contrast the blank stare of cattle, dogs, etc.) was up to something — or lots of somethings. I like to think about that. One reason is that I’ve grown up in a (Christian) culture that has had a hard time viewing this great gift without shame, which has left all sorts of room for twisting and exploitation and hijacking of it. So I think about it, looking at the Bible and with the Lord, to be healed, and to crowd out the darkness and lies that assault my own life with truth, with the real.

But another (and ultimately greater) reason I think so much about it is that I truly believe biological life reflects spiritual life (bios reflects zoe, in Greekspeak) — that God deliberately designed this world and the way it works to reveal himself, to teach us how the “life that is truly life” works. So beyond the amazing experience, which (along with food, drink, nature, etc.) shows us God is a god of exquisite pleasure, what about this revealed mystery that marriage is to reflect the relationship between Christ and the Church — he the husband, we (collectively) not just his Body, but his bride? And within that mystery (see Ephesians 5), I ask again — what about sex? What does sex in marriage show us about the nature of the relationship between God and his people, both now (in the groaning betrothal) and in the ecstatic eternal?

That may have been more explanation than you wanted, and may have gotten you anticipating a better poem than I was probably able to write. But I do like this poem and the many others I’ve written musing on this topic. I think we as the people of God will honor God by becoming truly the biggest fans of sex and sexuality (properly exercised) on the planet. I’ve appreciated writers like Sheila Wray Gregoire recently who practically explore these themes.

As always, I welcome your comments. Thanks for reading.

This poem is one of the many many MANY I have written in these last years as a way to try to cooperate/endure/stay in the forge. The more exquisite the creation (we human beings), the more the potential for ruin, and I feel that — SO fragmented and disintegrated at times. Can one ever feel whole? It can get crazy … dark … crazy dark. (Is anyone else thinking of “sharks with lasers — laser sharks” from The Lego Movie right now?)

Anyway, God. And the occasional rare treasure of someone who just won’t give up on you even when you rake them through the emotional coals. And the dogged tenacity he puts in our souls to endure. I think God gets a kick out of things like this poem and whatever and whoever in your own lives gives you perspective and lightens the groaning load.

Posted a Holy Week poem last week (about “Sad Saturday”), so it seemed appropriate to post an Easter one today. (This will actually be the second Easter poem I’ve posted–the first is here.)

The specific biblical background for this story is Luke 24:13-35, one of my favorite stories in Scripture … for some of the reasons that are in this poem. (If you also dig this story and want to hear a very energetic, very clever song that I really really like about the same topic, you can go to this link.)

Jesus is really funny sometimes…

John 19:31 NIV says of the day between Good Friday and Easter, “The next day was to be a special Sabbath.” Literally it reads “For the day of that Sabbath was great.” The concept of “Silent Saturday” or “Sad Saturday” (or just Sad-urday if you prefer lol), with all of its agony, being a “great” day grabbed my poetic attention and so I wrote this.

May your Holy Week be one where the living Christ draws closer to each and every one of you, and in and to your gatherings and communities if that applies!

This is one I wrote in December 2017, about a month into writing poems. It’s sorta “Dr. Seussy” as an Ichthusian calls these rhythmic poems for which I seem to have a penchant. Anyway… if God’s bigness and grandeur has ever functionally made prayer challenging for you, perhaps you’ll benefit. (Shout out to Dallas Willard in his writings, particularly one section in Hearing God, that have helped me grow and change in my view of God’s majesty.)

A DIFFERENT SORT OF MAJESTY
Prayer-flight launching finds strong gravity
How could he ever have such time for me
I mean technically yes – he’s God and all
But devoted attention to one who’s so small?

Conceptions of majesty, wrongly reversed
Even our God-thoughts well-meaning are curs’d
Thinking of greatness not easy to see
His greatness precisely can focus on me