Jim Cogley’s Reflections: Tues 4 Nov 2025 – Mon 10 Nov 2025
Coming Wood You Believe Healing Seminars with Jim Cogley & Luba Rodzhuk:
*Croí Nua, Galway, Fri 7th Nov 7-9.30pm & Sat 10am-4pm, Booking Croí Nua.
*Edmund Rice Centre, Callan – Healing Childhood Trauma & Abuse Sat 15th 10am- 4pm, Bookings to Jim Maher on 086-1276649
*An Tobar Retreat Centre, Navan Fri 28th 7-9.30pm – Focus on Loss & Recovery
Saturday 10am-4pm Healing and Integration Bookings to Spiritans on 086-8416110
For ordering Wood You Believe books: jimcogley.com
For daily services usually 10am. Sunday 11am. Webcam: ourladysisland.ie
Healing Mass this Wednesday 5th at 3pm in Lady’s Island with focus on Family Tree
Books can change Lives
Books have a life of their own. They find their way into the most unlikely places and literally transform lives. After twenty-five years of writing, I know this to be true. However, as an author I need help with distribution and marketing. The 13 volumes in the Wood You Believe series, while very popular and meeting a real need, are only available locally, online and at seminar events. I am hoping that there may be some who would be involved in parish groups, organizations like AA, Active Retirement or book clubs/shops where these could be made available and make a real difference. They would go to you in multiples of five at almost cost price and the balance can be used at your own discretion. Particularly coming up to Christmas there is a huge demand for presents that are meaningful. If interested ring 087-7640407 for details.
Tuesday 4th Nov – Working with Dying
Recently while working with a group who were training in Healing & Integration the topic was Working with the Dying. Leaving out ‘the’, it became a much broader subject. It was no longer about those out there but very much about us. From our first beginning we are in the process of dying, it is the one unescapable fact of life that defies all advances in medical science. Our lives amount to a brief interlude between two eternities, merely the dash between our date of birth and that of our death. Samuel Beckett captured the essence in just one line in Waiting for Godot: ‘Astride of a grave and a difficult birth, lingeringly the gravedigger puts on the forceps.’ Shakespeare captured the ravages of time in one of his sonnets when he said ‘Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth and delves the parallels in beauties brow, feeds on the rarities of natures truth, and nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.’ Given its inevitability it’s important that we make friends with it as early as possible.
Wed 5th Nov – Dying Well
Our natural tendency is to deny the inevitability of death. It’s always something that is going to happen to someone else. A man said to his wife that when one of them would die he would go on a world cruise! It becomes obvious when working with those who, coming close to passing over, that it is the ones who have lived well that die the best. Having lived well doesn’t mean to have made no mistakes or never blotted one’s copybook. It does mean to have taken risks with the game of life and allowed mistakes to have been part of the learning process. When the curtain is finally coming down it’s not usually what has been done that comes back to trouble someone but the life they never allowed themselves to lead, the unlived life. Another common regret is to have wasted too much time and energy holding onto hurts and resentments. At the point where one’s true character is about to be exposed the stature of a person is never the walls or obstacles that have been placed in their way but their choice to surmount and look over them.
Thurs 6th Nov – Living with Open Hands
The quality of a person’s death so often reflects the quality of their life. As we live so shall we die carries a certain truth. We come into the world with closed fists and in death our hands open out. For many that is far too late, the lesson has never been learnt during life, and it can make the dying process extremely difficult. The person of mature years who has practiced the art of letting go in life, the way of non-grasping, can usually and gracefully yield up their spirit. In other words, the more inner work someone has undertaken of not being identified with roles and externals the easier the process can be. This contrasts with the one who having always held on in life will hold on to life only to have it forcefully taken from them. One lady coming close to her end said that she was at the stage where she was allowing herself to let go of the many roles she had played in life like daughter, teacher, wife, mother, granny and she was doing so in order to come home to who she really was. This was a profound statement since the essence of death has to be letting go of all that we are not in order to come home to who we really are.
Fri 7th Nov – Behind the Scenes
The ideal way to die has to be with open hands and with nothing left to do except die. Unfortunately, this is not the case for many, if not most. As we journey through life we can shelve so many issues in the mistaken belief that once out of sight they are out of mind. They may be out of conscious memory but having been consigned to the unconscious for so long they will seek their day of recognition and that may be in the time preceding death. This resurgence of unintegrated material can greatly complicate and extend the dying process. For those of a prayerful disposition, painful things that were offered up may not have gone anywhere and are now very much to the fore. Traumas that were part of one’s life no longer belong to the past but can be alive in the present where often misunderstood they cause intense suffering.
Sat 8th Nov – Death and Forgiveness
The importance of forgiveness is seen most starkly when working with the dying and at many levels. Days before their passing people often see loved ones coming to escort them across the threshold. Often, they register surprise that a particular loved one is missing, and they wonder why. Discrete enquiry often reveals that this person died in an embittered state of unforgiveness and unreconciled anger. In such cases relatives can be encouraged to stand proxy for that person and choose to forgive on their behalf. Very often the person dying needs to forgive themselves for some regret or wrongdoing. Similarly, it may be a list of people he or she has been embroiled in conflict with and individual meetings where reconciliation takes place can literally prepare the way of the Lord and create a peaceful transition.
Sunday 9th Nov – Remembering
The word we most associate with November is ‘remembering ‘, particularly as we use it in relation to all those who have gone before us. Remembering in the Biblical understanding is much more than calling to mind past events and those who were once part of our lives. It’s more about a mysterious process whereby we become aware of them still with us, not as they were, but wherever we are, and still very much alive in our hearts.
The word remembering is literally re-membering and suggests putting back all the members like fitting together the pieces of a jigsaw. In fact, not being remembered and spoken about is a strong indication of never having been grieved. When someone dies, they leave a gaping hole in our heart and while it can never be filled again by their physical presence we can re-establish a spiritual connection that can even be greater than the connection we once had with them when alive.
At a seminar on Dreams a young lady spoke of having some lovely dreams about her departed father and experiencing him as a loving supportive figure. When asked if this had always been the case while he was alive, she replied, ‘certainly not, he was a serious alcoholic who could be quite abusive and often left us hungry. I grew up fearing him and never feeling a sense of closeness. Then for two years after he died, having shortened his life with alcohol, I dreamt of him troubled and seeking forgiveness for his behaviour. I was deeply hurt but eventually decided to be bigger than what had happened and offer him forgiveness. Suddenly the dreams changed, and it was like connecting with him as he really was for the first time. I was now seeing the truly good man that was hidden for so long behind the drink that he was using to block out the pain of a very abusive childhood.’
The words that someone close to us says when they approach their end tend to be ones that we will always remember. The day before my mother passed, she told me that shortly she would be leaving but that I would never be on my own and she would always be with me in spirit. Even though I was forty-six at the time she was still the mammy thinking of her only child and aware that her going would be the end of family for me. For anyone with siblings and lots of family connections that might not seem a big thing but in the context of me being a priest and living a single life it was important for her to give me that kind of reassurance. Years later people would ask me if I missed my mother and I could honestly say ‘not at all’ in fact I now feel even closer to her than when she was alive.
It’s particularly at a time of a bereavement that having a deep faith can offer such reassurance and when it’s not there such a void is left with loved ones staring into a hole in the ground or a curtain coming down in a crematorium.
While today there is a growing tendency to neglect faith we do so in a very thoughtless manner with no eye for the future. It is faith and faith alone that forms the bridge between this world and the next. It’s that bridge that we all must have in place to cross over ourselves and it is equally important for those we leave behind to know that while bodies die, love will always survive and can be assessed along that same bridge we call faith.
Mon 10th Nov – The Right Question
A ninety-six-year-old religious sister was trying to die for six months. Eating nothing and drinking little it was a mystery as to why she was still alive. The key lay in someone asking the right question and it was about her mother who had died when she was just six. Immediately the tears of a six-year-old began to fall and for the first time in ninety years she was able to let go her mother. That night she passed peacefully. This is one of the greatest obstacles to a peaceful passage that is not always recognized. Griefs that have not been unresolved in life can prevent a person from dying with ease. Holding onto someone in life can cause us grief and it is this holding on that can prevent us from dying peacefully. Allowing someone to tell their story is crucial, and even if the person is not compos mentis their hearing is strongly believed to be the last to go, talking about loved ones in their presence and the need to release them can be powerful to bring immediate and obvious relief.