From 'I love you' to 'I love you' is the journey of a vocation (Chris Williams, SJ)

I love you
Comes to birth, subterranean,
Underneath hardened layers of earth.
Moving tectonic plates patiently
Occasionally erupting spectacularly
Other times shifting ever so slightly, building tension,
Until a massive break
Sends a seismic shock through unsuspecting rock,
Unsettling settled states of thought.

I love you
Forms new mountains at which to marvel
And opens deep canyons
Bearing hidden crystal caves.
Laboring,
Out of primal core forces
Bearing new creation.  

I love you
It was the most believable utterance of that phrase I’ve ever heard, while sitting in an utterly unremarkable conference room transformed with incense and song into a place open to worship; somehow breaking through the stubborn habits of conventional self-assurance I felt forced to carry.

I love you
Carried me to demanding moral commitments
And difficult decisions.
It took over a decade
For me to admit my resentment;
To have the courage to question whether I could honestly say yes
To where I love you had led,

I love you
Now felt like a snare
Its beauty commanding my commitment
But its demands bearing dissatisfaction;
The doldrums between I love you and I love you

From I love you to I love you
Is the journey of a vocation.
Our attempt to respond to love
Reveals the truth
That we are not what we ought to be.
We see, eventually,
That we don’t love that which has loved us freely
Or that we don’t love the ways of love
When it has lost its luster.

From I love you to I love you
Is the journey of faith;
To believe
That if you allow every other love
To stand in submission
That you are not letting everything that matters go
In a deranged act of self-immolation
But are instead selling all
For the pearl of greatest price.

From I love you to I love you
Requires transformation
Of amorous emotions.
Metanoia
Means more than abandoning sin;
This is only where to begin.
Metanoia
Means mining deep desires;
Ploughing through old pleasures.
And as farmers and miners know
It takes painstaking patience
To turn rough rock
And hard land
To a new life
True
To its destined end.

From I love you to I love you
Is a pilgrim’s journey.
But blind
Not knowing
(Even if you think you know!)
What you will find,
What you must leave behind,
Or who you will become.
Persevere through the growing pains
Because the promise
Is it’s better thank whatever you planned.

--Chris Williams, SJ, From ‘I Love You' to ‘I Love You’

Image source: Jesus Calls the First Disciples, mosaic, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy, 6th c., https://www.raydowning.com/blog/2016/6/3/jesus-calls-his-first-disciples
Poem source