Misael - Single Release
I’m extremely proud of this as a song, but it’s something I wish I didn’t have to write. Such a strange feeling.
I’m from a very small town, no more than 1,300. As you can imagine, the job market is not very large. Deeply nestled in the woods is a facility that could almost house my community. This place is where I found myself applying at nineteen years old, during the interim period after I left college to switch schools. This was a facility for illegal immigrants.
At the time, I never thought much about the subject, being from a place that is culturally homogenous. While I write this, I wonder if people think, “Is this just a political song?” It’s much more complex than that. My time there shaped my outlook on life and multiple subjects. It is a song about respect of someone’s faith and demeanor, humanity, confusion, growth, sadness, and regret.
I witnessed this kid of eighteen preach to a room full of people consistently and while maintaining a constant smile. He approached me one night and asked me about my beliefs, which I admit caught me off guard at first. He said “I see you reading in here at night, is it a Bible? It was a half English/half Chinese Gideon New Testament I found in the desk that I simply found intriguing. I grew up in a place where you are “Christian” just by being born there. While I was in there, I realized I had never fully read the word for myself. So, I began on those long overnight shifts. Every time I stepped into this dormitory, I was greeted by this blissful guy, which seemed odd considering where we were.
He had no criminal history, and his parents had brought him here as a small child. One day he told me he was being sent off. I asked him what he was going to do, and how he felt. He expressed with the utmost confidence that God would lead him wherever he needed to be. That place would be a country he was too young to remember and had no family.
It hit me then that this young man, just barely younger than myself, would be uprooted for something he could not control. I was just simply “lucky” to have been born in the circumstances that I was. At that moment I was both confused about the situation and vastly moved by his faith. I knew that if I was in that place, I wouldn’t be so hopeful and still full of joy, but angry and deflated. Would I have faced it with faith or fear? It may seem a small interaction, but it was a seed that was planted for me that I believe had an immeasurable impact on my life.
He was to be deported the next morning. He requested I sign his Bible because he said, “I want to remember you and how you treated me.” I told him that I could not give him anything, for it was against the rules. He then said, “Well, let me sign yours.” The boy took the light blue Bible I had laying on the top of the desk and flipped to the back where there already appeared to be some writing from previous owners.
“Then he signed it, Misael.”
-Ethan Prudhomme
LYRICS
That bird of wisdom
Had its prey
But I found faith
Behind those walls
Of green and beige
When your cup is running dry
Why would I not just pour you mine
That day I saw adolescence die
Blurry felt the law of the land
When we murdered childlike eyes
World was view like a page
Not these ink-spread shades of gray
Just eighteen
When your world was pulled out from under
Just eighteen
When we tore your life asunder
Did our lines of security
Become more than life
Would I not break the bread of my birthright
Did you mourn about your future
As we begged you to
Hang your harps on the willow
Did we render you justice
As Mother Liberty held you hostage
How could he sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land
As he bore witness to all of our privilege
Born of his name
And you’ve borne yours well
I read, “Hope” as you signed it, “Misael”
Never had I seen
Garments of captivity
Appear as shrouds of pure belief
How does one exude hope in exile
Just eighteen
When we told you home was another
Just eighteen
When we cursed you, our own brother
Did we gain by sending innocence away
A child abroad, uprooted, and estranged
Did you mourn about your future
As we begged you to
Hang your harps on the willow
Did we render you justice
As Mother Liberty held you hostage
How could he sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land
As he bore witness to all of our privilege
Born of his name
And you’ve borne yours well
I read, “Hope” as you signed it, “Misael”
Detained was my reason and belief
Correct my apathy
And cultivate compassion
Pardon me
Pardon me
Pardon me for the day
That refuge became ruin