Eros

Eros once lit the stars—

a holy ache in the fabric of things,

pulling cosmos from chaos,

and Adam toward Eve.

She moved through gardens

with oil on her hair

and honey on her lips.

She called in the night,

not with noise,

but with longing.

A whisper,

a calling.

Come.

She was there

when Adam first turned toward Eve—

not to name,

not to tame,

but to behold.

Flesh of my flesh.

Bone of my bone.

The first liturgy of wonder

spoken in the language of touch.

But now—

we live in the age of forgetting.

The world has been mapped,

measured,

monetised.

Desire is tagged and tracked.

Every ache is answered

with an advert.

We no longer seek—we scroll.

We no longer ache—we click.

We no longer rise at midnight

to search the city for the One—

we settle

for mirrors and phantoms.

Even love

has lost its scent.

No longer spiced with mystery,

or slow as song,

but made instant,

hollow,

and safe.

Eros—

once the fire that drew Moses to the bush,

once the cry of the psalmist

panting for streams of living water—

has been reduced to appetite

and buried beneath shame.

But eros is older than shame.

She is the breath of transcendence—

a trembling of the soul

toward beauty,

toward communion,

toward God.

She is the pull

between lovers who have waited,

who have vowed,

who have weathered storms

and still reach for one another

with reverence.

But she is also there—

in the clasped hands of friends

who share soul-deep laughter

and carry one another’s pain.

In the artist’s ache to name the unnameable.

In the silence shared by pilgrims

beneath a darkened sky.

In the fierce joy of solidarity,

and the holy solitude

where longing turns to prayer.

She is tenderness that knows

both wound and healing,

both ache and joy,

both fire and fidelity.

In covenant,

she becomes holy flame—

not transaction,

not performance,

but presence.

Body and soul,

offered and received

in trust,

in truth,

in time.

And beyond the veil of flesh—

she becomes sacrament.

A glimpse of divine desire,

a shadow of the feast to come,

a whisper of the Bridegroom’s voice

in every act of love

that honours the other as mystery.

But the dragon still whispers

from within the pixel and the algorithm.

He sings songs of disembodiment.

He names our ache “weakness”

and sells it back as illusion.

He tells us to grasp,

to gorge,

to objectify.

He disenchants.

He digitises.

He devours.

And so the chaos deepens.

Bodies become currency.

Desire becomes commerce.

Love becomes contract.

And Eve is left

scrolling through shadows,

longing to be seen again.

But I remember Eden—

not as a myth,

but as memory.

A place of first touch,

first gaze,

first ache—

where eros and agape

walked hand in hand

through a garden not yet guarded

by shame.

And I remember the Song,

hidden deep in the Scriptures,

where God is not only Shepherd

or King

but Lover.

Where the voice of the Beloved

calls not from the temple,

but from the thicket,

where desire meets delight.

Christian faith

was never meant

to be managed.

It was meant to burn.

To ache.

To kiss the feet of the Beloved

with tears and oil.

To say with trembling lips:

I found the one my soul loves.

So let eros wake in me again—

not to consume,

but to commune.

Not to possess,

but to praise.

Not to flatten,

but to follow.

Let her fire lead me

through the silence,

through the wilderness,

through covenantal tenderness

and mystical prayer,

through friendship and faithfulness,

through longing that never needs to be named,

to the place where the veil is torn

and the Lover still speaks

in the language of longing.

Arise,

she says.

Come away.

And I—

soul stirred,

flesh sanctified,

spirit singing—

go.

- Rev’d Jon Swales, as part of a collection called ‘Desire’