Volunteers: Willing to "Walk the Talk"

Talk Is Cheap—How Does One “Walk the Talk”

The old adage, “Talk is cheap,” implies that it is very easy to say one will do this or that, but much more difficult to actually do the thing that one is proposing. While words are important in as much as they express thought, they are also important because they set in motion what will ultimately become action. There is a rather famous quote from an unknown source that expresses it this way:

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

Recognizing the importance of words as the foundation of actions, our volunteers and staff have spent the better part of the summer learning to internalize and operationalize the five core values that articulate the rationale behind the work done here at the Father Fred Foundation. What this means is that they have been challenged to commit to memory the values that were part of Fr. Edwin Frederick’s original vision and later crystallized and articulated by the strategic planning committee for our Foundation. Committing these to memory makes it easier for us to operationalize, or put into practice, what we preach. As in the quote we’ve referred to earlier, we want these words to manifest themselves in actions which ultimately become habitual, embedded in our character and ultimately write the pages of our life story.

In Hebrew, the expression “to learn by mouth” aptly describes the process by which we memorize information. In English, we say that we “learn by heart.” The Hebrew speaks more to the method by which we accomplish the internalization rather than to the end result. By verbal repetition of information we are able to embed in the heart the particular information that we are trying to assimilate. The English expression describes the end result we hope to accomplish. However one packages it, without going through this process our values remain nothing more than mere words, idle chatter, and worthless truisms.

Here at Father Fred, we see the living out of these core values as critical, not only in the delivery of service to our clients, but also to enhance the experience of our volunteers. Looking closely at these core values we see that each of the five speak as much about our volunteer corps as they do about our clients. To see our core values and what makes us tick as a foundation,  Click here..…you might be amazed at what you see.

Be blessed and be a blessing,

Fr. Iakovos