Echoes of Eden, Wounds of Empire
Part 2 of the Sacred Desire Series
In this second installment of our three-part series, we examine how systems of control—particularly patriarchy—have distorted our understanding of desire and intimacy
Me trying to talk about Eve, desire, and sacred power while the church be like:
Let's start in the garden. Not with sin. Not with shame. Not even with the serpent. But with desire.
Before the rupture, there was longing. There was connection. There was a rhythm between bodies and breath, earth and spirit. There was intimacy without fear. Desire flowed freely—not as something to conquer or suppress, but as something to live inside of. It was Edenic. Whole. Alive.
And then a different kind of power entered the story—
not the creative, life-giving power of God,
but the fearful kind.
The kind that needs to dominate what it doesn’t understand.
The kind that would rather control than connect.
The kind that turns longing into liability.
What whispers beneath the church's telling of that first disconnection?
Not sin entering the world.
Not Eve's deception.
Not Adam's weakness.
But something more primal, more human, more dangerous, more familiar:
Blame.
What if the fall wasn’t just disobedience, but the moment both humans misaligned their desire? Eve desired knowledge. Agency. A sense of control in a world where she’d been named but not consulted. She reached toward something beyond her place, not from evil, but from longing.
And Adam—his desire wasn’t for wisdom or even clarity. It was for Eve. Her boldness. Her movement. Her hunger.
Maybe it was acquiescence.
Maybe it was the desire for closeness without the cost of truth.
Maybe, honestly, it was sex—wanting the body without the burden of mutuality. But his desire, untethered from courage or connection, began to look more like lust—a reaching not to join her, but to consume her.
He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t wrestle. He just followed.
And when the consequences came, instead of turning inward, he turned on her.
What if Adam was angry that he was drawn to something he didn't understand—and rather than admit that desire scared him, he made her the problem?
Whatever it was, it wasn’t responsibility.
Control her, so I don't have to confront myself.
That was the seed. And empire watered it into the toxic theology we still hear echoed today: "Your body, My choice." A patriarchal declaration that has shaped centuries of religious doctrine.
Fast-forward to the institutional church. Rome. Constantine. Male-dominated councils translating desire into doctrine. Sensuality turned into sin. Bodies into battlegrounds. The erotic into something to fear. Cue our fan-wielding nun—she’s working overtime now attempting to downplay her own desire.
What we call "Christian teaching on sexuality" is often just empire disguised as holiness.
And the consequences are everywhere.
A fear-based, empire-shaped theology of control has taught generations to fear their own longing. Especially if that longing lives in a woman's body. Or a queer body—labeled deviant for its refusal to conform to the binary. Or a disabled body—treated as broken rather than differently whole. Or a Black, Brown, or Asian body—hypersexualized and then punished for the projection. Or an aging body—dismissed as irrelevant to desire's dance. Or any body that doesn't obey the empire's narrow definition of who gets to want and be wanted.
Desire gets flattened into lust. Intimacy is reduced to heteronormative sex. Holiness becomes synonymous with repression.
We lost the plot. And in losing it, we lost the God who created us for communion.
Song of Songs, that ancient love poetry tucked between Ecclesiastes and Isaiah—dares to resurrect that echo. This biblical book celebrates physical desire between lovers without shame or moralizing. Bodies are praised, longing is expressed openly, and mutual pleasure is celebrated, all without mentioning marriage or procreation. It's not a loophole. It's a counter-testimony. And if this book made it into our sacred texts, maybe it's because God isn’t afraid of embodied love. Maybe desire—real, mutual, fleshy—isn’t the problem. Maybe it never was. It’s a reminder that sanctified longing still exists. That the erotic is not a mistake. That we were made for mutuality, for delight, for desire that honors rather than devours.
But patriarchy is loud. And the echo is faint.
We hear it in moments of deep friendship.
We hear it— In a hand held a little longer. In the gentle weight of heads resting on shoulders during long airplane rides. In the ritual of braiding each other's hair. In shoulders pressed together while reading from the same book. In bodies that dance with joy instead of shame. In prayers raw with honesty, unedited by fear.
And yet, God is still whispering: This is good.
So what do we do with the echoes of God?
We unmask the systems that taught us we need to fear our own sacredness, that sensuality is the devil’s playground. We stop normalizing shame and calling it theology. We stop spiritualizing power plays. We speak aloud how empire—trembling before desire's power—captured it, caged it, named it sin and called it doctrine.
And then we begin the slow, holy work of listening again -- to the echo of God, vibrating beneath scars and stories, humming in our marrow, patient for our remembering and re-membering.
Not to the voice of fear. But to the echo. To the unbroken melody that still hums beneath our fractures. To our bodies' persistent memory of belonging. To the God who longs for us still.
And if that makes you reach for your fan like our nun friend? Good. Truth should make us feel something. Our discomfort might just be Eden calling us home.
Yoga/Breath practice companion for this blog:
Next in the series: Intimacy Isn't Just Sex: Beyond The Sheets and Behind The Walls