“Here we were — a circle of souls, saviors anonymous but not un-anxious, gathered in that liminal space where earnest intent met the soft absurdity of our own expectations. I could almost hear Heidegger whispering from the Black Forest’s shade about Sorge, that entangled knot of care and anxiety that both anchors us and entraps us in an existential labyrinth.
Isn’t it oddly delightful, this need to save? To show up with tidy logos and brave hearts, as if salvation were a polished keynote, when all along we might be inviting ourselves into a more honest kind of confusion. We care — yes — but do we love? Or do we clutch our cares like talismans, mistaking their weight for purpose? This question hovered over the meeting like an insider joke only the moment could understand.
It struck me, in that delicate tension of laughing and listening, that Sorge is a philosopher’s riddle and a lover’s shadow: worry and care share a name, and we keep looping between them, as if anxiety were the only thread out of the maze. But, ah!... is it merely fear dressed in earnest clothing? If care isn’t tethered to love, it’s like saving a ship while staring at the hull’s cracks.
And yet, in the rub of our shared awkwardness, the ironic smiles, the earnest confessions, the quiet hum of uncertainty, something happened?! Not salvation as we thought we wanted it, but a peculiar warmth: the recognition that to be present in our own unknowing is a kind of love. The tension wasn’t something to fix; it was to enjoy, like a dance step between the tragic and the tender. We scratched at our collective itch of wanting certainty, only to discover it was the edge of love’s open question all along.
I saw it in my own eyes that same playful agony, this delicious oscillation between earnest care and lighthearted surrender: we care deeply, yet we’re aware of our own romantic dramatics. We yearn for rescue, yet we laugh at our own heroic fantasies. And there, in that shared irony and sincerity, we touched something more vital than any tidy solution.
If Savior Anonymous taught me anything, it’s that salvation isn’t a product to be delivered. It’s a company picnic where everyone brings their own salad of hope, fear, and awkward grace, and somehow it tastes like the existentiality of love. And while Sorge might be the word we use to name our worry and our care, the existentiality of love is the thread that dances between them, guiding us not out of the maze, but through it in good company.
So yes... I hope we’ll meet again. Not because we’ve solved anything, but because the tension was fun, the reflections genuine, and the possibility of more tender confusion irresistibly hopeful. After all, to look forward to another circle of earnest smiles and questioning hearts, that is perhaps the quietest revolution grounded in the existentiality of love one can muster in these curious times.”
Hedè van Dekker
