By Margaret Nally
Published in September 2006
The journey from kitchen table conversation to national conversation about the nature of community has been a 30+ year story. We celebrate that the virtues and values of The Working Centre are being recognized in the personification of Joe and Stephanie who have embodied the outcomes of this covenantal relationship with community.
The virtues of Work as Gift, Rejecting Status, Simple Living, Serving Others, Building Community, and Creating Community Tools form the backbone from which the strength for the journey originates. These virtues are the spirit in which TWC moves and from which it gains its strength.
In recognizing the importance of the outcomes of these virtues in the daily life of the Working Centre, the Order of Canada is a call to envision a new reality in how we, as a nation, might move towards a deeper inclusion of all peoples.
The model of relationship that the Working Centre offers is a nudge towards a country where compassion and belonging are upheld as significant in its place in the world. Could Canada be a nation where deep respect for each person’s capacity is recognized and honored and allowed to flourish in new, creative ways of building community? It is working here in our region and why not believe in this movement for a better country and a transformed world? Indeed, we need to continue to envision a better reality in a world torn by strife and hopelessness.
The Working Centre has lived audaciously and courageously in the face of apathy, economic downturns and other challenges. But because of the model of patient and participatory leadership, in round tables and engaged conversations, The Working Centre, in its many manifestations, has crafted a way forward in faith. It is because of paying attention to what truly matters in transforming situations into well-springs of wholeness and belonging that this model thrives. The intentional and creative responses to the need for the human spirit to participate in the greater good has allowed many creative and economic responses to poverty, homelessness and isolation.
Thomas Merton speaks to the reality of how the people of The Working Centre envision their life: “Do not depend on the hope of results, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no results at all. If not, perhaps as you get used to this idea you start more and more to concentrate not only on results, but on the value, the rightness, and the truth of the work itself. Gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.”
And there is a constant invitation to join in this way of being that the Working Centre’s 100+ staff; 500 volunteers and the 1500 people who daily walk through its doors extend to all – those in Waterloo Region and most especially the wider community, in this honour of receiving an Order of Canada.
Come join the compassionate and caring community that builds positive ways for inclusion and belonging. Risk walking on the edge of praise and blame, love and anger, fear and hope. Let’s build together a new Canada based on a common journey of respect.
The Order of Canada is a call to the ideals of the best of what the nation’s leadership provides. The community of The Working Centre offers a new vision of a nation, eagerly engaged, and joyfully struggling with the full potential of humanity.
The Order of Canada – a great honour and an opportunity to share the vision.
