{"id":103,"date":"2021-01-11T13:26:50","date_gmt":"2021-01-11T19:26:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/?p=103"},"modified":"2024-12-15T08:29:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-15T14:29:39","slug":"pathway-to-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/?p=103","title":{"rendered":"Pathway to Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We had an “Art Night” at the last Ichthus Thursday night meeting of Fall 2020 and, alongside some delightful student offerings, I read this one there. I chose it because it represents sort of an ‘aha’ moment for me about the role of art. I have found that writing poetry over these last three years has been therapeutic — specifically, super healthy for my actual brain with its sin-riddled disintegratory tendency to be left-brain heavy (see “The Station Will Be Truly Grand”<\/a> for related themes). So as we had a night celebrating God’s gift of art and even HOW and WHY it is such a gift, it was fitting to read a poem where I realized how poetry itself, the very genre, might be an essential component of why songs\/Psalms of lament “worked” so well for the Hebrews. The ‘aha’ actually came when I was in a pretty mentally anguished state and had the thought to try to write\/wrestle it out in poetry … the hard-to-put-into-words joy that poetry is began to seep into my agony to where, lo and behold, the world seemed a bit lighter by the end of the poem… When this happened again within the week, I took note, as for me, journaling\/prose has NOT always been a tool to help ease my mind, but can actually find me in an even blacker hole. (I know for others journaling does help, and it actually used to help me. But there was something just different<\/em> about poetry … for which I was (and am) grateful!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PATHWAY TO HOPE<\/strong>
 Laments are poems\u2014
 Ah! I get it \u2026 like never before
 That\u2019s why they end happy

 A way to be before the Lord
 Rage and terror, famine, sword
 Overwhelmed by life and yet
 Creative joy shows safety net
 Like Frodo gazing to the sky
 Perspective burst, despair defy
 Structured tool to funnel pain
 Speaks to soul, marries brain

 In darkness black and agony
 A glimmer stirs inside of me
 Art\u2019s goodness taps a wellspring true
 And lubricates stuck praise to You
 Nothing\u2019s changed fear tries to say
 But true-lens whisper saves the day
 Something\u2019s changed,
   that something\u2019s me
 And Jesus wins the victory

 Laments are poems\u2014
 Unexpected gift to this dear son
 May I use them and be free<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We had an “Art Night” at the last Ichthus Thursday night meeting of Fall 2020 and, alongside some delightful student offerings, I read this one there. I chose it because it represents sort of an ‘aha’ moment for me about the role of art. I have found that writing poetry over these last three years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441,"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions\/441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnwilliamschwartz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}