A Personal Note from Cam – Dated April 8, 2020
This past Sunday, April 5th, Jane and I once again joined in with our faith community and participated in a virtual mass from the comfort of our family room.
During the Concluding Rites, the celebrant, Rev. Msgr. Albert, started to cry as he was giving his final blessing before sending us forth to share in the holiest days in Christianity with those we would be interacting with at home. As I watched him crying, weeks of pent up emotions kicked in for me, and I too found myself deeply moved by the circumstances, and began to cry myself.
As I was wiping away my tears, my mind was racing with so many thoughts—for my family, for my clients, for my friends. I was overwhelmed with the thought that the world is such a huge place, and at that moment I felt really small. That was moving and humbling, in a good way.
Our registered investment advisory and financial consulting practice is made up of a kaleidoscope of people. In fact, our practice fully represents the broadness and diversity of our great country. We have single, married, divorced, and widowed clients. We have straight and gay clients, and a pretty representative breakdown in terms of people from every imaginable ethnicity.
We are blessed to still have one surviving member of the Greatest Generation who served his country during World War II in the United States Navy, and also a woman who is a survivor of the Holocaust. This man, and this woman, are dear friends and they are both examples of humility and love.
We have clients who are deeply religious, and clients who are atheists, and clients who fit in somewhere along that spectrum. We work with a big range of people. In short, the clients we are honored to work with tell the tale of what makes America such a wonderful place to live.
Tonight, Passover begins. Tomorrow, the 40 days of Lent ends on Thursday, April 9th and the Easter Tritium begins. I am not aware of a time in modern history that our nation-or the world-has been in such shared turmoil as the major religious celebrations of Passover and the Easter Tritium coincide.
Never before have the world’s people been impacted by an epidemic like this. But even as COVID-19 is devastating society, it is also bringing us all together. And we are seeing scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs all joined together with a common focus, all searching to find the best treatment options, and racing to discover a vaccine.
And so, it is for the world and all of its occupants, that I ask you to join me in prayer in these coming days.
For those of the Christian faith, I invite you, if you are so moved, to pray the Stations of the Cross with Br. John Rockenbach, CP, on Good Friday. Brother John is a dear friend of mine and this video was recorded on Good Friday 2017, at Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center in Sierra Madre, California.
Then, on Easter Sunday, I invite you to watch Andrea Bocelli perform live from Milan Italy’s empty Duomo Cathedral via a global live-stream on YouTube. The performance, titled “Bocelli: Music for Hope,” is set to take place at 7 PM in Italy, at 1 PM ET and 10 AM PT.
“I believe in the strength of praying together,” Bocelli said in a statement. “I believe in the Christian Easter, a universal symbol of rebirth that everyone—whether that are believers or not—truly needs right now. Thanks to music, streamed live, bringing millions of clasped hands together everywhere in the world, we will hug this wounded earth’s pulsing heart, this wonderful international forge that is reason for Italian pride…it will be a joy to witness it, in the Duomo, during the Easter celebration which evokes the mystery of birth and rebirth.”
The virus cannot stop the power of art, and the ability of humans to come together in even the most difficult of times.
I will be praying for you and all of your loved ones in these coming days by name. I ask that you pray for me, the entire CTA Team and all of our loved ones also. And may the peace of God be forever in our hearts.
Yours truly,
Cam
Disclosures:
The information provided is not a complete analysis of every material fact and are subject to change.
Securities and some investment advisory services are offered through Cetera Advisor Networks LLC, member FINRA/SIPC, a broker/dealer and Registered Investment Adviser.
Financial Planning and some investment advisory services are offered through Cameron Thornton Associates, a Registered Investment Adviser.
Cameron Thornton Associates and Cetera Advisor Networks LLC are non-affiliated companies.
The opinions expressed in this letter are those of Cameron M. Thornton, CFP® and Trevor M. Cole, CFP®. All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, we make no representation as to its completeness or accuracy. All economic and performance information is historical and not indicative of future results. Past performance does not guarantee results.
Investors cannot invest directly in indexes. The performance of any index is not indicative of the performance of any investment and does not take into account the effects of inflation and the fees and expenses associated with investing.
Dow Jones Industrial Average Index: The Dow Jones Industrial Average is a price-weighted average of 30 significant stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ.
S&P 500 Index: The S&P 500 is a capitalization-weighted index of 500 stocks designed to measure performance of the broad domestic economy through changes in the aggregate market value of 500 stocks representing all major industries.
NASDAQ Composite Index: The NASDAQ Composite Index includes all domestic and international based common type stocks listed on The NASDAQ Stock Market. The NASDAQ Composite Index is a broad-based index.
Websites provided as a courtesy and are not under the control of Cetera Advisor Networks LLC or Cameron Thornton Associates.
Cameron M. Thornton, CFP® is a Representative with Cetera Advisor Networks LLC and may be reached at www.cameronthornton.com or (818) 841-1746.
Citations:
1 – https://passionist.org/stations-of-the-cross/
3 – Putting COVID-19 Into Perspective by Erick Erickson, April 3, 2020