Crossed the Line

“I can assure you that those of us who have woken up to corruption aren’t going back to sleep. People don’t go back to sleep after waking up from this dream. Our eyes are wide open and the fight for our freedom is on.” Ashley Taylor @ ashleytaylorwellness

By: Gabriela Yareliz

The world seems to be on fire. It’s terrifying to see what is happening in Canada, so close to us here. Journalists are being arrested, bank accounts frozen— all under orders from an incompetent coward.

We could wish for it to all go away and revert to what was. But how does one unsee this? How does one forget the incredible and brash display of evil we are witnessing on a global scale? How does one forget the ones who cheered this on and didn’t see this as evil at all? That’s the wild thing. There are people who think Trudeau is right. There are people in Australia and New Zealand who want another lockdown. I get direct messages from them all the time; messages drenched in fear and an insatiable desire for whatever they believe is safety. They have made fear their nest, and there is no desire to leave it. They are afraid of a world of uncertainty, not realizing they lived in it before.

It’s wild, today’s interactions. Where one can be treated as subhuman for one’s views. If one doesn’t agree with what is mainstream, one is categorized as “ignorant poor” (literally saw this in an article the other day, and I laughed). There are people who express that they don’t care what happens to you. It’s like anarchy. The level of crime and disregard for human rights, life and what we all have in common.

Is there a reverting back? Will we be going back to Broadway shows and really care about New York Fashion Week when a woman was murdered in her own apartment a block away? When these same places irrationally discriminated against others and barred entry?

We have crossed a line, and I don’t think there is a way back.

The question then becomes, where do we go from here? The present moment marks us and changes us forever.

“It seems to us unwise, and even to border on willful, spiritual blindness, for a movement which has repeatedly emphasized that Jesus is coming soon and has long taught that liberty of conscience will be severely curtailed in the last days, to refuse to see the restrictions of freedom taking place around the globe as a precursor or foreshadowing of climactic future events that will pose an even greater threat to freedom of conscience. It is clear to us, and to many other thoughtful observers, that we are on the verge of momentous, earth-shaking events. May God give us spiritual alertness to recognize the times in which we live and to declare the message of truth for our times, a message which offers freedom, wholeness, and abundant living while on this world and eternal fellowship with Jesus in the world to come.” Liberty & Health Alliance

He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
Luke 4:18-19

[In solidarity with the Canadian truckers, journalists on the ground facing danger, those who face termination for noncompliance in NYC and elsewhere, the churches refusing to benefit financially from discriminatory and senseless regulations, establishments who do not refuse entry and service to fellow humans, and all who raise their voices for freedom of conscience].

The Adele Music Series

By: Gabriela Yareliz

We walked through many of Adele’s hits and albums and how they relate to her life. She was a fun one to look at. Her songs very much reflect where she was as an artist and as a woman. And it’s not over yet… Wishing her the best, as she enters yet another new chapter.

Post Directory:

Make You Feel: We looked at how she emerged into the artist world, through her album 19, and general observations regarding her music and relationships.

Rain: Looking at “Set Fire to the Rain,” what makes relationships toxic, questioning how we land there and setting standards in love. Sometimes, an end is a beginning and pain is part of being reborn.

Deep: Examining “Rolling in the Deep,” letting go of what we think could have been and finding clarity.

Uninvited: We look at “Someone Like You.” Letting go of old loves, the desire to not be forgotten and love that lasts.

Hello, 25: Looking at Adele’s most stable album. Her pivot into adulthood via motherhood, a new relationship and facing inevitable change.

Ready: Here, we look at “Send My Love (To Your New Lover)”. We look at the relationships where a partner can’t handle us and the maturity and empowerment in (truly) moving on.

Hard: In this post, we look at “Easy on Me” and Adele in her 30 album. In my opinion, we find a woman who seems lost again. Hopefully, she proves me wrong.

Check out our other music series here.

Justice

“If judges do not act justly, then individuals do not have the opportunity to act mercifully.”

Good Kills: God, Good and The Sword, David Engelhardt

By: Gabriela Yareliz

One of the most comforting attributes about God, to me, is the fact that He is just. I don’t know why I find so much comfort in that, but I do. Maybe it’s that same internal thing that led me to the profession of law in the first place. I like good to be rewarded, and I like bad to be punished and separated so no one else gets hurt. I like mercy displayed for those who need it.

I’ve been practicing for years now (looking forward to the decade marker), and as time progresses, it has been harder to explain and understand the path society and my profession have undertaken. A lot of what we see out there like bail reforms where murderers walk around hurting more and more people or even certain government aid, we call it “social justice,” but it’s a perversion of the word itself.

As I was reading Good Kills: God, Good and The Sword, the author David Engelhardt hits the nail on the head when he defines ‘justice’ as getting what is owed to you. Therefore, if someone who works to gain more has more, and then he/she is stripped of that to give to another who did not work for it, that is not justice, it’s grace at best.

He shares the example of a person who works a whole year and saves up for a car. When the car is stolen, not only is the literal car stolen, but that year of effort and saving. It’s a violation.

Engelhardt writes that we have created a society that feels that so much is owed to it, and it’s true. I see it every day. “The entitlement created by economic mercy unhitched to economic justice is devastating,” he writes. People believe they are “owed” free housing or “owed” a stipend of some kind (and I don’t take the housing crisis lightly, as I work in that area and help people who face housing insecurity)– but the truth is that no one is owed anything they didn’t work or pay for. That’s just very matter a fact. Anything someone gets that wasn’t earned is grace. We have tried to make “grace” the new definition of “justice”, and yet they are opposites.

And while we all need grace and receive grace and mercy from God, a functional society can’t exist without consequences and cause and effect, or someone (or many) gets hurt.

What makes a law just? Engelhardt writes that they are laws that “promote and perpetuate life.” We see a clear statement of this through the Ten Commandments.

Engelhardt emphasizes that life isn’t some sort of gift where everything is owed to us. That isn’t even Biblical. Instead, he points to Scripture where God sees life as an investment. “Life, on the other hand, is entrusted to us with definitive obligations. We cannot do whatever we want with our lives; the correct use of life is taking what was given to you and giving God a return on His investment.” We do this out of love and honor toward Him because He has given us something we cannot earn.

He points to the parable of the servants who were given talents as an example of this. We have an obligation to live the precious life given to us, to the max. We carry the breath of God in us. (Job 33:4) When we fail to live life with duty, there is a consequence. Jesus called the servant who did not grow “wicked”. (Matthew 25: 26) The servants who invested and grew their given talents were rewarded. Not all of them were given the same, but all who did something were rewarded in measure. God operates in a just manner. Note that just doesn’t mean everyone operates with the same things or resources. Nothing is owed to us, but something is entrusted to us (to every single one). We reap what we sow, despite a society that tries to make it not so.

If you have been wronged, had something taken from you, or been violated, then you have a taste of what it’s like to be owed something. In God’s world, evil pays a price. There is restitution and healing offered, which means it matters. In a society that allows wrongdoers to victimize more people without consequence and expects us to see this as “justice”– it’s not. We know in our heart of hearts that it’s not because we were made in His image. The fact that we are made in His image means we hunger for that which is a deep part of Him. To want consequences, to want fairness as God sees it– that is not wrong or racist or controversial. It’s not hypocritical just because we all are undeserving and need grace. It’s instilled in us.

It’s the way God has and will always operate. To be connected to and reflect God means to want true justice. It means to be a good steward. It means a desire to stop evil in its tracks to spare others from pain until the day we can all stand before the true Judge. Hopefully, that day, we can all hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees… you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”

Matthew 23:23-24

Hard

By: Gabriela Yareliz

We are zooming out on the timeline. We move from album 25 to 30. We now meet an Adele who is deep in motherhood and divorced. Adele leaves a relationship that was seemingly normal given her expressed track record. She speaks highly of her ex-husband and says she trusts him with her life and that no one “did anything wrong.” (Source)

People always seem to find themselves after they are married and have kids. Can we learn to do this before we hurt others? (A general question for the species)

She told Vogue, “I was just going through the motions, and I wasn’t happy.” I get annoyed when I hear stuff like this. I am annoyed for the kids involved and for people who are hurt. You have a presumably perfectly good man next to you, and it’s like, “Nah I am bored. I miss the pain of dysfunction. This isn’t me.” WHAT IS THIS? This is what defines Adele’s 30 album for me. It’s a woman who was bored and leaves her husband, and now, to top it off, she is going to write sad songs about it and about how she is finding herself (something any well-meaning adult does before marrying another human being who has feelings). (TF). Also emerging with the album was a woman who had a totally new look. In some photos, some said she looked unrecognizable.

Maybe, she knew how Eat, Pray, Love this album was going to be (hate that book), and so she started with the single “Easy on Me” for people like me. Meh. As someone who has experienced the aftermath of a divorce in a family, I am not really into the whole recklessness of making life-altering decisions and going back on commitments. People go into these commitments so negligently. In family law, professors half-joke that we should make getting married harder and less will face the even harder concept of getting divorced. I know the world sees this Adele move as empowering and will have a very different opinion than me, but I don’t take things like marriage and children lightly. People just need to grow up. We, as people, are always changing. If this was an excuse to leave someone, no one would stay married. Everyone would have an out.

“Easy on Me” comes off as a song of excuses, it is riddled with phrases like:

/I was still a child
Didn’t get the chance to
Feel the world around me
I had no time to choose what I chose to do/

Woman, you were not 12 when you got married. It was a full-on adult choice. The time to realize you had not “felt the world” was before having a child and involving another person. I guess what bothers me most is that her past is filled with all these supposedly evil men she sings about, and then she finds a good one, and she leaves. On one hand, she is changing, her look is changing, she is finally “feeling the world” around her, but when it comes to the relationship, she sings, “There ain’t no room for things to change; When we are both so deeply stuck in our ways”.

She states that she changed who she was for this person and tried and tried, and now she gives up. She had “good intentions” and “the highest hopes.” Album 25 felt like a woman who had matured and “let go of her ghosts,” and here, at 30, we find ourselves with a woman who is possessed by her ghosts and sort of lost again. It’s common knowledge that she hasn’t been alone since separating from her husband. Is this still an Adele trying to find herself in the reflection of other’s eyes? She asks for us to go easy on her, but I recognize I’ve gone full on hard. The music video goes from black and white to full color. It’s brighter than some of her really old videos, which were always filmed with darkness as a sort of theme, but given the recent Adele headlines, I wonder if she has really left the black and white behind.

Arbiters

By: Gabriela Yareliz

As someone who interacts with Christians from all political leanings online through my website, I have observed how subtly and yet blatantly we have turned from Scripture on many issues and sort of made ourselves our own little gods. We often gravitate toward whatever makes us feel righteous, good, included and unlike whoever we have othered or judged in our minds.

I have been reading through Good Kills: God, Good, and The Sword by David Engelhardt. A refreshing but heavy-ish book after I finished my mystery novel by some “cutting edge” New Yorker that was not a “masterpiece” unlike what the cover said. (I promise you, the writer himself couldn’t explain the ending to his own book, it was so bad). But back to Good Kills, which is much better– my most recent passage was about morality and how we see current issues. It reminded me of a conversation I had with someone who works in ministry. She had told me that abortion was not wrong as it only affects the woman, not the unborn child or anyone else involved. I was bewildered not by her position regarding abortion, but more by the reasoning behind it, which was so clearly unbiblical. It made me wonder when we (me included) became arbiters of what is right or wrong or what is oppressive and what is oppressed or when we as a church and its leadership discarded God’s ideas about life concepts and created our own.

It made me think that we are in the messes we find ourselves in because if there is anything the pandemic has taught us it’s that many spit on the privilege/advantage of others and want to make them pay for it, but when given even an ounce or a possibility at reserving power, privilege or control for themselves, they don’t hesitate to take it. We haven’t just lied to each other about why we find ourselves so broken and shattered as a society. Worse, we have lied to ourselves.

We often think that it is a society without God that we must guard against. What we have failed to realize is that many of us, as revealed in the way that we see (and treat) others, have made ourselves god instead, and that, perhaps, is even scarier.

The only solution is to walk toward something set outside of us. Something that challenges and humbles us. Something that reminds us that we are not the deciders of standards and morality, but that it was set long before we came along in our arrogance.

Ready

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Today, we are looking at another song from Adele’s reconciliatory 25 chapter, “Send My Love (To Your New Lover)”. I love the melody of this song. It’s a bop. It’s also in that category of things you wish you could say in life but never do because it’s weird.

Adele starts the song by emphasizing that whomever she was talking about invited her into the relationship. He was ready, and she was his “everlasting love.”

She continues with:

/I’m giving you up
I’ve forgiven it all
You set me free…/

See, now this is an anthem. This is the song I wish could replace “Someone Like You.” No one should want a fool back. In this song, she doesn’t want him back, she is finally freeeeee.

The chorus is this incredibly grownup response to someone from her past (who hurt her), moving on. She sings:

/Send my love to your new lover
Treat her better
We’ve gotta let go of all of our ghosts
We both know we ain’t kids no more/

She sends her best to his new partner, and simultaneously sends a message to him that she hopes he has grown up and can treat her (the new girl) better.

That’s the weird thing about relationships. Different relationships bring out different sides of us. Life can shape us in ways that change us, and we can be different people in different relationships. Have you ever seen two divorced people, and you wonder who they were or how in the world they fit in a puzzle together in the past? I know I have. But that’s the thing. People grow up. People learn. (Some people don’t, by the way). But that’s one of the mysteries of life.

Then there is reference to letting go of ghosts. The video plays with this idea as she is sort of translucent and images of her sort of overlap with one another.

In the second stanza, she talks about how she was like strong heat rising, and he couldn’t take it. She emphasizes that she is still rising. She sings that he couldn’t “keep up.” She makes it clear that this was a relationship where she shone too brightly, and he wasn’t a fan. (Not the best dynamic).

Her attitude throughout the song is very much of someone who is past something and extending an olive branch of sorts. Like an I-wish-you-well-but-not-sure-you-are-capable-of-better.

I almost didn’t post about this song, but she actually comes through in this song. It’s a good one. It’s a mature track filled with actual self-worth rather than it being a victimized scorned lover anthem.

She ends the song with a repetitive:

/If you’re ready, if you’re ready/

And you know what Adele, we are ready. Ready and here for this empowered version of you.

Hello, 25

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Adele was absent for a good while between 21 and 25, and she was busy. In mid-2011, (right around 21‘s success and release) Adele started dating Simon Konecki (who works in charity and water). They had a son in 2012 and got married in 2016 (in some places it says 2018), regardless of the marriage date, it means that when 25 came out, Adele and Konecki were parents and together (but not yet married). (Source) Shortly after formalizing their relationship, they separated. She filed for divorce in 2019, and they were divorced by 2021. (Source)

So, let’s zoom in a little on the timeline. When 25 launches, Adele is presumably happy and in a new stage of life. She is a mother and in a (what seemed like) happy relationship. This is her least heartbreaking album, one could argue. There is a different tone to it.

Adele relaunched herself into the world of music with her single, “Hello”. This song took six months to write. Yep, you read that right! Adele said about the song: “I felt all of us were moving on, and it’s not about an ex-relationship, a love relationship, it’s about my relationship with everyone that I love. It’s not that we have fallen out, we’ve all got our lives going on and I needed to write that song so they would all hear it, because I’m not in touch with them.” (Source) This is a departure from her previous songs.

The sense we get from this song is a solid block of maturity and adulting. She sounds really stable and settled in (which is refreshing).

The key vibe of album 25 is “nostalgia”. Apparently, it was a difficult album to record because she had writer’s block. (Source) After much persistence, she broke through.

“My last record was a break-up record, and if I had to label this one, I would call it a make-up record. Making up for lost time. Making up for everything I ever did and never did. 25 is about getting to know who I’ve become without realising. And I’m sorry it took so long but, you know, life happened.”

Adele

Let’s focus on “Hello” specifically. Adele starts out by pointing out that ‘time heals all wounds’ is a fallacy:

/They say that time’s supposed to heal ya
But I ain’t done much healing/

You can go years, decades, a life, being unhealed if you aren’t intentional.

/Hello, can you hear me?
I’m in California dreaming about who we used to be
When we were younger and free
I’ve forgotten how it felt before the world fell at our feet/

Here, Adele brings us to where she was when she was writing. She had come to California. She brings us into the present moment where she feels she is experiencing her “turning point” into adulthood. Apparently, she feels the weight that comes with adulthood. There is a level of ‘carefree’ that one loses in the process of growing up.

/There’s such a difference between us
And a million miles/

I find this remark about distance to be interesting. While it’s true that we can be literally distant from someone (miles and kilometers), we also grow in emotional distance. Personally, I think one of the biggest damages social media and all the technology have done is to feed us this idea that we need to somehow stay in touch with every single person we have crossed paths with. I fundamentally disagree with this. I think there are people who serve different roles in our lives, and some are there for a season, and don’t get me wrong, some are there for life. But it’s totally ok to not hold on so tightly to people. It’s ok to say “hello” from the other side.

When the chorus kicks in, we see someone who is reaching out to a person for various reasons, to apologize for breaking their heart, to check in… In the following verse she asks, “Did you ever make it out of that town where nothing ever happened?”

The following verse is emphasized:

/Hello from the outside
At least I can say that I’ve tried
To tell you I’m sorry for breaking your heart
But it don’t matter, it clearly doesn’t tear you apart anymore/

The verse has a flavor of repentance, “At least I can say that I’ve tried.” She also notes the indifference of the person she is trying to reach out to; it doesn’t “tear” them apart. When she calls, they never seem to be home. This reminds me of landlines and the good old days. The video, with its sepia tones that remind us of Instagram’s early limited filters and the “retro” phones evoke that nostalgia for when we had to coordinate calls with people or we were left to leave a message because whomever we were trying to reach was unavailable, didn’t want to pick up or was simply living life.

We land on the idea that while nostalgia can be nice, it can also lead us to lonely and empty places. Change happens. When we return to certain places and certain people, we are left “on the outside.” It’s part of life. Adele likes to take us to those places of searching. This song, while not of heartbreak, is no different.

Uninvited

gify

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Today’s song became Adele’s second number one in the U.S. “Someone Like You” hit the airwaves and stayed there on repeat. It’s one of the last songs on 21, and it makes sense. This song marks the end to the relationship the entire album talks about. The song serves almost as a punctuation mark.

About this song, Adele said, “When I was writing it, I was feeling pretty miserable and pretty lonely, which I guess kind of contradicts ‘Rolling in the Deep’. Whereas that was about me saying, ‘I’m going to be fine without you’, this is me on my knees really.” (Source)

Let’s take a look at the song, whose video just has her wandering the streets of Paris all sad.

“[…] ‘Someone like You,’ the stirring, somber closer in which Adele goes to visit a former love (with high hopes of a reconciliation), only to discover he has not only moved on with his life, but is in a much better place. And though she’s heartbroken, she puts on a brave face, stubbornly proclaiming she’ll find someone just like him, even if she knows that she never will. And that conclusion makes you ache not only because it’s so daunting, but because it’s so real. We’ve all felt that way, tried to trick ourselves into thinking that any other outcome was possible. In Adele’s music, much like life, there are no happy endings.”

James Montgomery of MTV News talking about “Someone like You”

/I heard that you’re settled down
That you found a girl and you’re married now
I heard that your dreams came true
Guess she gave you things I didn’t give to you/

Adele was in a relationship with a man she thought she was going to marry, and then, he broke up with her, and shortly after, she found out he was engaged. (Source) Then, she wrote this song. I won’t be snarky about this. I have a lot of empathy for what she went through, as just about the same thing happened to me around the same age. I find it interesting that this is what inspired this song, and yet it’s probably the song I like the least from her. I guess we all experience life so differently. She wrote a song about finding someone like the person who broke her heart. I was pretty damn sure I wanted the opposite of the person who broke mine.

She starts the song stating that she knows about his recent marriage. It’s like a sad confrontation is happening. She indicates this when she sings:

/I hate to turn up out of the blue, uninvited
But I couldn’t stay away, I couldn’t fight it
I had hoped you’d see my face
And that you’d be reminded that for me, it isn’t over/

Clearly, this is a person who hasn’t let go.

/Never mind, I’ll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you, too/

One thing that crossed my mind here is, why does she want to find someone like this? Clearly, if he broke her heart and then was engaged shortly after, this person is unstable and incredibly dishonest. Also, if supposedly the whole album is about him, then isn’t this the incredible manipulator and liar we found in “Rolling in the Deep”? WHY DO WE WANT SOMEONE LIKE HIM??

She states she wants the best for him, and yet is confronting him and begging him not to forget her. It’s like she wants a place and presence in his present (ignoring the fact that they are now part of each other’s pasts). Maybe the best for someone is to have us out of their lives, and better yet, it may be what is best for us (and they just did us a favor).

It’s a human thing to not want to be forgotten. (This is a big motivator for many of our actions, whether we realize it or not). I think we have all felt this at some point or another. We want things to matter for others as much as they mattered for us.

/You know how the time flies
Only yesterday was the time of our lives
We were born and raised in a summer haze
Bound by the surprise of our glory days/

A theme throughout the song is this romanticization of the past.

/Nothing compares, no worries or cares
Regrets and mistakes, they’re memories made
Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?/

There is this idea in culture that it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. I don’t know if that is entirely true every time. I think there are many relationships and interactions we would have been much better off without. I don’t think regrets and mistakes suddenly become justified because they are memories made. It would make more sense for us to really determine what kind of memories we want and to choose accordingly. The past doesn’t always have to be bittersweet, and yet it often is. Does that mean we just don’t choose well or is it just a part of being human? (Drop your thoughts in the comments).

Adele concludes singing:

/Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead/

It’s a divine thing to have love last. If we get Biblical– (yes, I am going Biblical), love endures all things. And yes, love can hurt, too. God is love, and He is pained when we choose something other than Him. Being made in His image, love brings us pain when someone chooses against our love. (We weren’t created to experience that or cause that). Something I find comforting about God is that, for Him, it’s not that love either lasts or hurts. His love for us lasts even when it hurts. Our humanity is too frail and broken to understand that. But someday, we will.

For now, we let go. We heal. We let Him put our hearts back together again. We leave the door to our hearts open. Sometimes, it’s not just the hurt that shows up uninvited. Sometimes, good things and good people show up uninvited, too. Leave room for the uninvited.

Deep

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Today, we are looking at “Rolling In the Deep” from Adele’s top-selling 21 album. This was the lead single and first song on the album. This song put her on the map! People say this was the biggest crossover hit since 1985. (Source) The song is another “scorned lover” ballad. Perhaps, this is Adele’s way of telling us that she is like Seth Cohen from the O.C. They excel at being rejected.

The song emerges after a breakup (naturally). Apparently, it was hitting her hard and Adele decided to tell a tour bus driver about it. You know that feeling, when something is bothering you and you just need to talk to someone about it. Adele told The Independent that apparently, this conversation did not go well. Adele said the song was a comeback after being told that “‘my life was going to be boring and lonely and rubbish, and that I was a weak person if I didn’t stay in the relationship. I was very insulted and wrote that as a sort of ‘f— you.'” The song was written that afternoon with Paul Epworth. (Source) This explains some of the fresh rage that is palpable when one listens to the song.

In this song, we see the typical Adele imagery; there is darkness, water falling, fire burning, and a heart in someone’s hands (not her own). Most, if not all, of this imagery is used in “Set Fire to the Rain”; see our discussion here.

The song starts off with a pretty good beat. Dare I say the song is almost upbeat? (Can something be sarcastically upbeat?) The beat is an element of the song, as she says the person who wronged her played her heart (to a beat). In the music video, we see the beat causing ripples in a room filled with glasses of water.

/There’s a fire starting in my heart
Reaching a fever pitch and it’s bringin’ me out the dark
Finally, I can see you crystal clear
Go ahead and sell me out and I’ll lay your sh** bare/

So, we start with fire. Adele loves her fire. It seems that in the context of this song, it’s a rage type fire. (You can let me know in the comments, if you feel differently). Like in many of her songs, she starts in darkness. This song is no exception. The fire is illuminating her space and taking her out of the darkness. Just as we see in “Set Fire to the Rain”, the songs spell out an arrival to clarity. When she sings of clarity in the video, the camera zooms in on clear glasses filled with water.

/See how I’ll leave with every piece of you
Don’t underestimate the things that I will do/

There is almost a level of threat here. She is threatening to leave him “bare,” and tells him not to underestimate her. She also previously mentions that “if he sells her out” she will respond. Who knows what this is in reference to?

/The scars of your love, they leave me breathless
I can’t help feeling

We could have had it all (You’re gonna wish you never had met me)
Rolling in the deep (Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep)/

So, we enter the chorus. She is declaring they could have “had it all”, but apparently, thanks to him, they do not. She has scars. Scars usually indicate healing, but that doesn’t seem to be the song’s vibe. Not with this level of rage. And then, one can’t help but ask… what does “Rolling in the Deep” mean? Apparently, “it is a nautical term used to denote the condition of utter hopelessness of a situation.” (Source) Nothing is saving this love. It’s a sinking ship.

In common Adele imagery, there is the idea of a partner holding a heart in his hands (always in the wrong hands).

/You had my heart inside of your hand/

There are several things this type of imagery evokes. It evokes a degree of powerlessness that seems to be an undercurrent in many of her songs. What happened was in someone else’s control, and she is wronged (repeatedly). There is also simply the element of a completely surrendered love that leaves you entirely vulnerable.

It’s clear she wants him to think about her and feel guilt and definitely despair about leaving her. She notes she is also there in the despair, as if it’s a place that she won’t share with him. My question is, is she there alone?

The bridge is filled with tons of Biblical imagery and language. We see references to the soul, “counting blessings”, treasure, sorrow and “reaping what you sow”.

/Throw your soul through every open door
Count your blessings to find what you look for
Turn my sorrow into treasured gold
You’ll pay me back in kind and reap just what you sow/

This idea of finding what you are looking for and reaping what one sows. The language here is very similar to a certain older version of Scripture. This adds to the poetry of the song. I’ll also note that some of the parting words in one of my most heartbreaking goodbyes was “I hope you find what you are looking for.” I tend to associate that type of sentiment with a permanent goodbye.

In the end, the song ends with a vengeance tone. Her whole thing is, “You’re gonna wish you never had met me”. Did he ever feel that way? Who knows? Maybe, he felt embarrassed when the album came out. Maybe, he moved on and lived happily ever after. The truth is that this song is more about how she feels. There is no controlling the other party. It’s sort of like a fountain of anger and yes, scorn, in my mind. It reminds me of the things we say to ourselves to feel better after being abandoned. And yet– I highly doubt anything here made the other party change his ways.

Maybe, rather than dwelling on the fact that we “could of had it all,” we could just focus on the fact that we didn’t (and perhaps that’s a good thing, and we can have better). (And for the love of all that is on fire, we should strive to put our hearts in the right hands). People can often reveal themselves to be extremely selfish and hurtful people, and then we pine for them. Our idea of “having it all” can at times exclude reality and who the person really was/is/chose to be. Too many lives get crushed into misery holding onto illusions.

One thing that rings true and gives every scorned lover hope is the fact that, yes, we always do reap what we sow. Here is to hoping none of you are “rolling in the deep”, right now. Turn the lights on, only put your heart in the hands that deserve it (and if it’s in the wrong hands, take it back. It’s yours), and don’t take bus driver advice too personally. In the end, the only one “rolling in the deep” will be you, if you allow the rage to consume you.

We Start at Nothing

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Scripture tells us that the day is made up of evening and morning. (Genesis 1:5) This is why Sabbath begins Friday sundown and ends Saturday sundown. As I have been examining what it means to rest, I was hit by a quote by Eugene Peterson, which says, “The Hebrew evening/morning sequence conditions us to the rhythms of grace. We go to sleep and God begins His work.” I would argue that Peterson is wrong in pointing to this as a Hebrew time structure. This was established at creation, long before Israel was formed and set apart. (The same can be said about the Sabbath. It is universal). The Scriptural day and division of time starts with us doing nothing and settling into the unconscious.

Tish Harrison Warren writes, “For Christians, the act of ceasing and relaxing into sleep is an act of reliance on God. What if Christians were known as a countercultural community of the well-rested– people who embrace our limits with zest and even joy?“

Why is rest so hard for us? Is it because it goes against our selfish nature to accept the humility of being a frail and finite little creature? We rebel against the notion (as Warren writes) that God is the only one who does not slumber or sleep. We must train ourselves in the humility of knowing and being comforted by this fact. Even while we rest in nothingness, we are held in His hands under His watchful eye.