John Schwartz Poetry

Have posted so infrequently, I thought I’d do TWO today! 🙂

Last post had The Matrix as the backdrop. This one, specifically talking about my experience of OCD, is Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky). Same basic theme though. Proper humility, what Chip Dodd would call “healthy shame” — recognizing one’s gifts AND weaknesses/limitations. (He’s also to credit for the “eight feelings” of the last line…. been very significantly impacted by his book The Voice of the Heart these last months.)

Goodness. What a semester. Learning a lot. Life is humbling. I started out 35+ years ago thinking Jesus and I could conquer the world. Now I still think that but with an entirely different lens. And amazingly, God not only isn’t thrown by this whole messy process, he seems to be pumped about all of it.

Anyway, if you’ve seen The Matrix, that provides the backdrop.

Oh golly, it’s been almost two months since I posted.

Here’s an Easter one. Comments below the poem if you want any more clues.

I was sitting in Faith Manhattan three days ago listening to Andrew Johnston give an Easter sermon from Luke 24, about the “wondering” related to it in verses 4 and 12. I was thinking how encountering the truth of the resurrection changes everything … and then had an idea to personify that (the Greek is anastasis–lit. “standing up”).

I enjoy it. Hope you do too.

Thinking about when you cry out to God, possibly under great duress, and he seems absent. Why would he do/allow that? Why would he make us ask him again and again? Or why would he answer “no” to a begging for relief? This poem isn’t about all the reasons why he might (I can think of more; perhaps I shall write poems on them too), but it is about one of them from my own life.

(My feast example was inspired by a memorable scene in C. S. Lewis’s book The Last Battle.)

On a day at the end of last semester where I had a gap of delightful free space to breathe, and walk on campus, and reflect and pray and write a poem in the library, I found myself marveling at how rather than just reveling and enjoying the time, how strong the pull was to get in my head and get lost in guilt and such. How many times I have frittered away joy.

Just because one is declared emancipated doesn’t mean he or she knows how to actually live in that freedom.

I need to keep learning it.

Title and some imagery are from one of the most poignant chapters in the whole Bible, Ezekiel 16.

I (like many) love Colorado. One of the things I love there are the aspen groves–in any season, but especially summer, with a delightful mountain breeze, and fall (I took the picture below–what a fantastic hike). Here’s a haiku about such things.

ESTES
Oh shimm’ring green coins
Midas months are sure to come
Dance your dance with glee

Wrote this one over the past weekend when I experienced for about the millionth time that bittersweet longing and painful love and groaning for the life I was (you were, we all were) made for — the life of God.

This is one of the most common themes of all the poems I write. I ache for the life of God and grieve at my fickleness and wildly celebrate that God is bigger than all of that.

The poem’s title comes from one of my favorite movie scenes ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Mk2Tca88Xo … The “seven grand” is the 7000 in 1 Kings 19:18.

Would love to hear any comments or questions or thoughts or anything at john@ichthusmhk.org …

It’s been a busy and eventful (and really good) semester. I am taking today, Friday (the 13th!) of finals week, to slow and breathe and be alone. I walked to Hale Library’s great room (the “Harry Potter room”) and wrote some poems, and this was one of them. The theme of beauty in the midst of pain is a common one for me (see, e.g., here or here or here, not to mention the many about OCD and … well it’s a theme). My good friend and I had a conversation the other day where just the stories in his own immediate world felt crushing, not even to mention things like the stuff I read today in the news … or the Holocaust. The world groans. It aches. There is so much pain. This really hangs on me–I feel it, everyday–and I write to wrestle and help integrate who I know God to be and the visible world … my lament psalms.

(The title is from a line in a Switchfoot song. The first line is from J. I. Packer’s Knowing God introduction. Corrie is Ten Boom; Lali is the tattooist of Auschwitz.)

Bonus poem! This was originally sparked by a study in Ephesians 2:1-10, specifically the phrase “God, who is rich in mercy” in verse 4, which when I started writing led to some thinking of the different kinds of riches and their challenges and how they might interplay. The title is a play between Matthew 28 and the statement in verse 10 that God’s people are God’s masterpiece. Blessings!

(As always, feel free to skip ahead to the poem if you don’t want commentary/preamble. Many of you are quite sleuthy when it comes to understanding poems–I marvel at you, and salute you, as I need ALL the help I can get when others share their poetry with me.)

I think God deliberately designed biological life to show us/help us understand what true (expressed in the New Testament by the Greek word zoe) life is. I also think that biological development functions in much the same way–the maturation process of birth through infancy/early childhood/adolescence/adulthood giving us clues for how we become mature in Christ.

One thing that complicates this is that we often become (or at least functionally are, how many years has God’s life within you been genuinely/intentionally growing?) spiritual babies when we are biological adults, which creates some significant challenges that would just be, well, super odd in biological development.

This poem’s about that–how hard it can be for us to submit to (let alone revel in, embracing every present moment as a holy moment) the day-by-day process of sanctification… so this poem is about that.

The last two lines are a reference to Genesis 3; the nature of the forbidden tree in Eden is not incidental or unimportant.