SUMMER 2025 wrap up: We Go On
Another ESGD Summer of three workshops — one for HARP and two for young adults, 18+ or 22+ — has passed. We want to take a brief moment to look back at some of its key messages.
This year’s summer motto “We Go On” refers to the path we have chosen. We want to go on with God; but in order to do so, we cannot always go on in the same way as before. Something in our spiritual heritage as Blessed Children calls us to ask ourselves, again and again: Who have I become?
Am I still moving towards my ideals, or have I accepted I won’t reach them?
Am I overcoming myself for the sake of others? Or have I become bitter? Have circumstances hardened my heart?
Do I still work on my hopes for my family and community, or have I quietly checked out?
Can I still pray? Or is there too much noise in my life?
Where am I in my relationship to God?
For many, the summer has become a checkpoint to ask such questions. Though expressed in different ways, these are questions that guided us through all three workshops. Facing our ongoing inner spiritual battle is unavoidable if we want to continue our journey as Blessed Children. We want to go on and therefore created a space to wrestle with these questions – and what a wonderful time we had wrestling in good company.
Even as the days we spent together were rich in meaning, dotted with perfect moments, liberating and spiritually refreshing, they also left us more serious and aware about what this path asks of us. We were reminded that True Love is more than words. It is not cheap or shallow. True Love is compassionate, strong, sacrificial, attentive, patient, and fully engaged… it is deeply spiritual. It changes people. It reminds us of the changes we ourselves must make, the movement of our spirit that brings us towards a free and generous heart.
As serious Blessed Children who long to be close to God, this is our lifetime project and we need to live with the fact that we need to constantly recommit to it. Otherwise, our spiritual lives can become about passively “staying in the church” rather than taking real steps towards building the kingdom.
Going on with God means being ready to leave safe ground when He calls us to our next adventure. Going on means staying strong in Lack-of-Love-moments, when we are tempted to create our own misery through self-consumption. Going on means facing the darkness. But going on also means finding a way through. Going on means taking the next step out of faith, not out of fear. And faithful step after faithful step, it means feeling the sun again.
So, what shall we say? God, we go on. We don’t know how this journey will unfold; we don’t know if we will see the promised land. Still, we commit to go on. We want this life and we choose this life: We go on, from darkness to light, from fear to freedom and responsibility, from confusion to clarity, from the limits of our love to utter goodness.
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We want to say thank you to everyone who contributed to this powerful experience. We believe God works through sincere offerings and we were able witness the holy moments that could be created by your sincere offerings this summer. Thank you for sharing your heart, with each other and with God, even though that came with its own struggles. Thank you for creating a space where God’s children could feel like “This is my home.”
And as we are going on our separate ways for now, remember: One of the greatest threats to spiritual life is our tendency to forget. To forget how God has already moved in us: the love we received, the victories we won, and the reasons we were able to win them. When we forget what we are capable of we give in to the lesser versions of ourselves that choose fear over faith, oneself over others, and the noise of the world over God’s quiet whisper.
The way not to forget is simple, but demanding: God’s love and truth cannot be preserved by memory alone; they need to be lived. Therefore, we need to go on and repeatedly find ways to be, however small, a light in the darkness. For in the end, we are what will be remembered of God’s Love.