John Schwartz Poetry

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John Schwartz Poetry

More Questions

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.

the view at sunset in the upper pasture of the Troyer (formerly Swihart) property where I was!

Spitting Out the Fruit

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!

My Devilish Pen Pal

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

Armored Saint

I was on kitchen crew for a retreat last weekend (Zero Hour Ministries, great group and mission) and had a lengthy conversation one evening with a fellow OCD-sufferer. (See this post for my explanation/poem on Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.) The conversation was so very enjoyable, marked by that difficult-to-put-into-words feeling when someone “gets it,” truly gets what you are trying to say in a way that few other people can. Finishing sentences with exactly what you were going to say, when usually at that point you’d just be getting a somewhat quizzical look haha. Very meaningful.

It inspired me to post another poem about OCD — one of my most frequent poem topics, as right-brain and integrative-brain activities are really helpful to combat the brain lock of OCD.

Happy new year!

Eucharistos

This past semester in Ichthus we studied the New Testament book of Hebrews. I absolutely loved the commentary I used, particularly its insight into how the first-century Greco-Roman culture (most notably, the undergirding societal structure of patronage, or patron-client relationships) informs so much of the rhetorical approach of the book. Rather than nerd out about it here, I’ll just say this:

The Greek word for ‘thanksgiving’ is eucharistos and I’ve never understood why. Eu means ‘good’ … charis means ‘grace’ or ‘favor’ … and it has never made sense to me why that etymology would result in that meaning. And now it does — because the biblical culture viewed ‘grace’ as a circle, even portrayed by the Roman moralist Seneca as a dance of three sisters. ‘Grace’ (charis) was the attitude of the benefactor/patron/rich person toward the client/one in need. ‘Grace’ was then also the name given to the actual benefit or connection or gift given. And then finally (and this is the part I have not seen) ‘grace’ was ALSO the name given to the flow of thanksgiving — GRATITUDE (note the link there) — back to the patron.

You “returned grace” … it was viewed as a beautiful circle that if not finished with gratitude, was not complete (and was even an insult to the benefactor/patron/gracious person).

A ton more I could say there, and what’s funny as I look at this particular poem it doesn’t really go very far into any of what I’ve written above. But teachers gotta teach, and Bible nerds gotta nerdize, and finally … we used to make fun of my mom when she’d say before family dinners (referring to prayer), “Shall we return thanks?” We’d say “What, it’s not like God is thanking us!”

Apparently (as usual) Mom knew more than we thought. 🙂

Europoems

Jeanette and I got to go to Europe last month. To say that we thoroughly enjoyed it would be a significant understatement. I had hoped to write some poems during the trip, and after a slow start, that came to pass. I thought I would post some of them in one chunk for easy reading. I’ll start with the one that has a picture that goes with it, (canola) fields in Denmark that I found just absolutely captivating. The poem itself was birthed by noting the way different countries were handling Covid on public transportation and seeing where that took me.

This one I wrote when we were flying from Copenhagen to Brussels where our friend picked us up and took us to their home in Maastricht, Netherlands. I was thinking of other airplanes that flew over this very same part of the world about 80 years ago…

Pardon the language in the second line, but it seemed to fit.

The next two are from this wonderful book my wife gave me not too long after I started writing poetry. I have written fairly few poems in this book because there are always so many other poems bursting around in my mind to write, when I sit down I usually do those. So I decided I would take the book on our trip and do at least a couple … and so here they are. The titles are simply what the page says to write a poem about … see the picture.

This one (also from the Write the Poem book) is pretty personal, dealing with things that go with having a predominantly avoidant attachment vibe. (I dabble in ambivalent attachment as well — good times.)

OK, two more. This one is called Ache VII because I’ve written six previous poems called Ache. It’s a regular state of my soul, and I find writing poems to help therapize it. Ends up being a little conversation between Jesus and me.

This last one is also pretty personal. Wrote it sitting outside a restaurant in the beautiful city of Maastricht, Netherlands. It deals with my tendency (I imagine I’m not the only one) to get stuck in and even derailed by things of earthly beauty rather than seeing through them to the Source of all beauty.

If you made it this far, amazing — you should get a prize. Thank you for letting me share with you all!

Deep Calls to Deep II

I went on a trip last weekend to the San Diego area (North County/Encinitas/Carlsbad to be precise) with Jeanette for her 50th birthday. We had a truly delightful time. The first night we were there, we went to a beach where the surf interacts with the rocks in a way I find so very enjoyable. So I wrote this, and I really like how it turned out. (Oh, I called it “II” because I have already written a — totally different — poem called Deep Calls to Deep.)

Identity I

Hmm, it’s been a while. 🙂

I called this one Identity I because apparently I intended to write several on the same theme. I haven’t yet (and I wrote this one nearly 3 1/2 years ago), but I like the thought.

I do like, even with no sequels written yet, the way the I (as opposed to an Arabic numeral 1) fits with the theme.

What I also like about posting this poem now is that I wrote it when there was still a thorn in my soul … so the experiential component of it was typically conflicted and bittersweet.

I can access the truth of it by faith to a degree now, to let myself feel joy in the love of God, and I am grateful yet again for the different place I am in now compared to then.

Thanks for reading!

Qavah

I wrote this one in the midst of the last year of coming to the end of my rope.

The word qavah is the Hebrew word translated “hope” or “wait” in places like Isaiah 40:31. It is a primitive root with a basic meaning of “to bind together, possibly by twisting.” I find that interesting. I also find it very interesting that (at least that I can see) the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures) pretty consistently translates qavah as “endure,” or literally to “abide under (pain, suffering, etc.).”

As I put it in another poem, To wait is to hope is to endure pain / Sanctification like begging for rain.

This poem helped me trust God more and see some of his design as he taught me to start enduring through the junkloads of shame that have needed excavation in my life. (I am by no means done with this lesson.)

Further Up and Further In

My last post, “Asking for Orbit” dealt with “It’s about God, not about us” as it applies in my highly-prone-to-implode life. This one is my (much longer) poem with me wrestling out some of how that sentiment might play out when the God it’s “about” is the God revealed in Jesus Christ, one who is in his very essence agape love.

(My theological “Spidey-senses” go off sometimes at some of the places or ways we take the concept of God as supreme, the source, the end, the only one worthy, etc. )

Hope you enjoy it. As always, your comments or thoughts are welcomed … it’d be fun to grab coffee and talk more about any of this!

Oh and P.S. if you’re on a mobile you may only see the left column … make sure you read the whole thing.

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