By: J. Charles Coughlin
This month, HighGround will be celebrating our 30th anniversary. I celebrated our 25th anniversary with a blog post thanking and celebrating the many mentors, colleagues, clients, and friends who helped this firm get this far. In that post, I expressed my gratitude for the opportunities I have been given and the many people who helped me along the way.
The virtue of gratitude is not something Americans see a lot of today, particularly in our civic and political lives. Gratitude, as I later came to learn, is a virtue that needs to be cultivated daily in our own lives. Today, I try to begin every day by communicating how grateful I am for all the blessings God has bestowed upon me.
In America, we see little or no genuine gratitude expressed by either of our political parties. Our civic dialogue is almost exclusively grievance based. Our world order has dramatically changed over the past year, and our elected political leaders are not leading anymore. They are simply airing their own grievances rather than pointing a way forward. The narrative has created a nauseating cycle of reactionary politics, which turns its back on our country’s greatest success, caring for others more than ourselves.
I’m often reminded of the lesson on gratitude that shaped me over many years, a journey that began in 1999. In that year, I had the opportunity to visit Israel with my then brother-in-law, Frank Colacurcio. Frank went on to found a church in Northern California that grew to over 1,000 families. He retired a few years back but was a beacon of hope for that community for over two decades.
At the turn of the last century, a time that seems so long ago, Frank taught a specific sermon series on what God expects to see in our lives. It is based on the “fruits of the Spirit” from Galatians 5:22–23: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Every month, for nine or ten months, he would do a deep dive into one of these virtues: historical definitions, how culture has changed the meaning, and each time the word is mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments.
That sermon series, which I attended each month, gave me a foundation that has carried me through the rest of my life. I still make mistakes and say and do foolish things, of course, but it also gave me what I call “mental road signs.” Those guideposts have been incredibly helpful, blessing both my life and HighGround in more ways than I can count.
When one dwells deeply on these virtues, it becomes clear that few, if any, are on display in our civic culture today, whether here in Arizona or in our nation’s capital. We are led by a country in which one man dominates a political party, claims his personal morality alone governs his actions, and openly admits to hating his enemies. Meanwhile, the opposing party largely responds by grieving the erosion of individual civil liberties and pointing back at the perpetrator.
As the play Hamilton most famously sang, “If you stand for nothing, Burr, what will you fall for?” Without core principles, values, or a clear purpose, a person, or a party, can be easily swayed and manipulated. Such an organization, lacking an internal foundation, cannot resist external pressures and easily becomes adrift. Sound familiar? Bullies win schoolyard fights.
Many people who have known me over the years are aware that I struggle to live up to many of these virtues. Still, I keep them close, on my phone and on a handwritten index card, so I can return to them during seasons of stress, which, given my chosen profession, have been both innumerable and humbling. I always find the answer to my own struggles when I contemplate these virtues and ask myself a simple question: “What am I missing in my life?” The answer is always there; against such things there is no law!
If you would like to learn more about these virtues and do a deep dive into the meaning of each of them, I would encourage you to attend an interview on April 8 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Redemption Arcadia, 3330 East Camelback Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85018. My pastor, Frank Switzer, will be interviewing my former brother-in-law, Frank Colacurcio.
Go ahead and put it on your calendar now. You won’t want to miss this interview. Do it. It will be great!
While April 8 may seem far off, those interested in attending should consider reading Frank Colacurcio’s new book,Strippers, Lies, and Spaghetti. You see, before I met Frank in the late 1980s, he was a member of an organized crime family. Gifted with a genius IQ, Frank took the road less traveled, navigating a life few could imagine and survived to share the story.
Frank left the crime family and committed his life to Christ, which would suggest there is a path to redemption for the rest of us and perhaps for our country as well. I hope to see you on April 8 at Redemption Arcadia. I know you will be wildly entertained and leave with a smile on your face. Perhaps we can start a conversation about saving both our political parties after that!
God bless. Happy 30th Anniversary to all my colleagues, clients, friends, and future friends.