I was a baby and my mom was bouncing me on her knee to Billy Joel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The River of Dreams.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This is my first memory. Now, it may mean that I was conditioned to love the musician, but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care. I just do. I love his voice and piano skills and brooding album cover gazes. After my first heartbreak, I listened to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And So It Goes\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to complement the pain, and then, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Summer, Highland Falls\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to get over it. As I was leaving home to enter my first year of college, I blasted \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Movin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Out\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sporadically throughout the three-hour car ride. I have \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Scenes from an Italian Restaurant\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on repeat whenever I cook spaghetti.\u00c2\u00a0 So many beautiful chords, so much lyric to life applicability. Needless to say, a motto of mine has always been: if you insult Billy Joel, I insult you . . . until a situation I found myself in this Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Once a week, my French service group and I visit Freedom House in Detroit, which is a shelter for survivors of persecution who are seeking asylum in the United States and Canada. Many of the residents are from Francophone countries in Africa, so we help them improve their English. This is something I really enjoy doing. All of the people with whom I work are some of the kindest I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever met in my life. They are so eager to learn that it is inspiring. One of the residents, though, I have always found to be a bit challenging to talk to. He was a pastor in Cameroon and if you even mention the words \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Judaism\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Islam,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he will immediately scoff and begin explaining why Christianity is better.<\/p>\n
As part of my lesson this week, I had my group fill in the missing lyrics to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Piano Man\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on a worksheet I created. He began giving me a sermon about how anti-God this song is. Essentially, he was saying that the characters shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be going to a bar to forget their problems, they should be going to church to have Jesus forgive their sins and aid in the soul-reparation process.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe it and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how to respond. Of course, part of me instinctively wanted to resort to one of my go-to lines whenever I meet someone who doesn’t share my terrific taste in music: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like Billy Joel? Well, your sweater is ugly.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But, with him, I found that I could not physically force any insult or even subtle, passive aggressive statement from my mouth. When my volunteer group went to an orientation, we were told not to ask what the residents were there for, but the leader of the session made it very clear that they were all fleeing from some serious hell.<\/p>\n
In the liberal paradise of Ann Arbor, I find that is easy to look down on people who are overtly religious. While this is certainly justified in cases where a group uses religion to oppress others, it is not when you are judging someone who uses it as a source of personal hope. This man at Freedom House isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t privileged. He is trying to find security in a foreign country from the persecution he faces at home. Yes, his apparent dislike of other religions isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t right, but me arguing with him about the legitimacy of his faith when it plays such an important role in his life would be mistaken as well. And you know what they say about two wrongs.<\/p>\n
He finds comfort in Christianity. Good for him. I find comfort in spaghetti and Billy Joel music. Good for me.\u00c2\u00a0Whatever works for you, just do it. Become the practitioner of any religion you want as long as it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hurt anyone else, because the world is often a harsh, cold, terrifying, and unfair place in which to live. Help yourself find some sense of peace,\u00c2\u00a0“just the way you are.”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was a baby and my mom was bouncing me on her knee to Billy Joel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The River of Dreams.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This is my first memory. Now, it may mean that I was conditioned to love the musician, but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care. I just do. I love his voice and piano skills and brooding album cover […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":192,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4084"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/192"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4084"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4105,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4084\/revisions\/4105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}