Esquire - ISM lyrics

I was born as a j** to atheist parents They gave me a choice, they gave me a balance My astronomer father would show me comets of lava the same stars that my artist mom would paint on a canvas Found spirituality in art and science Not what god designed but in my thoughts and mind The beauty of evolution, puzzles of nature weaving together conceiving humans, and its all intertwined My parents sent me to a Jewish middle school And everything I learned I questioned and ridiculed I used to get sent to the principle Overly satirical of anything traditional Kosher school eating matza and latkas You could find me dealing ham by the locker My bar mitzvah speech even dissed Judaism It wasn't in this levy's genes to feel true religion But Oseh Shalom, the prayer therapeutic Chills on my arm, they're resounding in unison What I realized in the shower of music Not the power of God, but the power of humans I was born in a prism All that was real was the flatness of vision The pastures and rivers, The Blackness and vastness that acts as a prison Till I mastered the ism I escaped from the fear and the pain in the ism So I'm never gunna take his name in vein in the ism The sun from the ism, the rain from the ism Phenomena surrounding us explained by the ism I followed the ism, I swallowed the ism I sought out the children and I taught them the ism The community in unity was lost in the ism Wrote a book on the ism and I called it religion But biblical exposition too literal in the ism Individuals were waiting for miracles in the ism Sticking to the traditions and Singing hymns to the ism Created limited wisdom and split us in a division Put our faith into the omnipotence of the ism Till it severed identity and individualism Spirits diminished living beyond the present Our primitive inhibitions, let ignorance win the schism Found fear, found pain found greed in the ism Ignored progress, we just bleed for the ism No faith, they believe in belief of the ism The only way to be free was free of the ism