Jim Cogley: Reflections Tues 22 Oct – Mon 28 Oct 2024

Thank you for passing them on. Because of  your doing so they now have a huge circulation and a life of their own. Many who are pursuing a deeper journey receive them as soul nourishment and the feedback is very positive.  This encourages me to keep writing and know that you are doing something really worthwhile. Please encourage your recipients to do the same.

With gratitude. Jim C

Tues 22^nd Oct – Spirituality or Psychology

Interplay & Intertwine

Unfortunately the disciplines of spirituality and psychology have traditionally been viewed as poles apart and even going in different directions. Each one tended to view the other even with suspicion. Back in the 70’s, while in seminary training, you only went for counselling if you had failed in your spiritual life. Today our understanding is to see both as intertwined and equally necessary to create a whole person where sanity and sanctity are combined. To have self-esteem is a psychological accomplishment but this needs to be balanced by humility that results from spiritual discipline. Psychological work on its own does not motivate us to be kind, to have compassion, to practice forgiveness or to act with integrity in our business dealings. For these virtues we need a spiritual awareness to compliment our psychological work.

Wed 23^rd Oct – Ascent or Descent?

Christian teaching in general has tended to meet us midway between our broken humanity and our dubious divinity. It encouraged the ascent of the soul towards God and tended to be ritualistic, moralistic and legalistic. Our bodies needed to be mortified into submission and it used pious language such as the pursuit of holiness and the practice of virtue. Genuine Christian spirituality is Incarnational, God becoming man. This is the divine decent to embrace the human condition. It implies the challenge to also go a descending and inner journey in order to embrace, and ultimately transform, all that it means to be human. The language of decent is characterised not by either moralistic or ‘holy talk’ but by wisdom, which is so espoused in the scriptures. Genuine Christian spirituality comes from the bottom up – it starts with God becoming human.

Thurs 24^th Oct – Zacchaeus Come down (to my level)

The ministry of Jesus met people exactly where they were at, often at the very lowest level. Symbolically this was true when he restored sight to the blind man of Jericho, the lowest city on earth. Similarly when he met Zacchaeus while coming up from Jericho, who thought he had to climb up a tree in order to see him, Jesus invited him to come back down to ‘his’ level. This even suggests that when we think we need to ascend we may be barking up the wrong tree! Later we see him stoop to wash his disciples feet, a menial task reserved for slaves. In his teaching about the fatherly nature of God he portrays the Prodigal Father stooping beneath his dignity in going out to meet his wayward son. In many of his parables he compares the kingdom to a great wedding feast where the blind, the lame and the lazy are invited and there are no exclusions and no worthiness criteria.

Fri 25^th Oct – A Crisis of Spirituality

Could I be so bold as to make a shocking statement and suggest that the crisis in all of churches, both Protestant and Catholic, is one of spirituality, that the model we have espoused for centuries has just not worked? It certainly has been a religious one, but was it an incarnational model? If it had been incarnational we would never have been taught to be so hard and punishing of our bodies as if they had to be beaten into submission. Similarly our sacred sexuality would not have been denigrated to the level of sin. Relationships that are so absolutely necessary for personal growth would not have been viewed with so much suspicion. Also our emotions would not have been outlawed as they have been.

Sat 26^th Oct – Practice without experience

As I look back over the religion that I have grown up with, I have no axe to grind, as I owe it so much, and it was the cradle of my faith. Yet I need to be realistic about its shortcomings and having served my entire life within the system deem that I have earned the right to be a loyal critic. What I perceive as happening today is the death of that old religious model and I see no reason to bemoan its passing even if that means less practice and more genuine searching. It breaks my heart to see countless thousands of good genuine people having been betrayed by their faith. What I mean by that is where people have practiced faithfully but never experienced God; where apart from a private capacity their Church experience of the divine was almost non-existent.

Sun 27^th Oct – Bartimeaus Cloak

In the Gospel story of the healing of the blind man a detail of the story that often draws my attention is the way Bartimeaus cast aside his cloak. I’m quite sure that cloak must have been like his badge of identity for God knows how many years and presumably had been given to him by someone. It not just represented his past but who he was, how he saw himself and how others related to him. In his journey to Christ it was necessary that he let go of who he was not, in order to discover who he really was.

Sometimes a cloak is necessary to wear for a while. Like the cloak of grief that enraps a bereaved family. It might be hard to imagine a time when it would be appropriate to cast aside that particular cloak. However, just as day follows night and spring follows winter the season of grief passes and it becomes possible to  throw aside that cloak.

Some people are inflicted with heavy cloaks from a very young age. One man told me how from his earliest days his father would tell him that he was a idiot and good for nothing who would never come to anything. When he did eventually find something he was good at he went overboard thinking he could never do enough and nearly destroyed himself still trying to disprove what his father had said. When first married he and his wife lived blissfully happy in a mobile home. Then he began to build his own house and this became his big chance to prove his father wrong. He became a driven man. For two years he worked every hour that God sent and did a really good job. The tragedy was that in so doing his relationship suffered and the day they were due to move in was the day they went their separate ways.

Many can identify with that story when we think of times we were shamed or belittled, made feel insignificant or stupid. The problem is that whatever we were told at a young and vulnerable age we may still believe about ourselves. It may well have become our cloak of identity.

Here let me say that not all cloaks given to us are bad and need to be discarded. As a priest every year I get invited to speak at numerable conferences, seminars and retreats. That has happened not because I have always had an ability to speak in public. The reality is that in early years I would have been shy and hesitant in that area. But I did have someone who encouraged me; someone who believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. It was as a result of that man’s encouragement that I then developed the gift that I didn’t know I had. I say that because to give your child the cloak of encouragement is truly the gift of giving them confidence for life.

Back to the cloaks we need to discard. Whatever was done to us in our childhood, like being compared with others, being put down, or continually criticized, is precisely what we may still be doing to ourselves. It’s no longer a parent, teacher or relative that is doing or saying horrible things to us but now we are doing and saying them to ourselves. So I end up being my own worst enemy and now I compare myself continually with others and act as my own judge, jury and executioner. These things become part of our belief system and so determine how we behave.

The cloak of Bartimeaus is our cloak too, just designed a little differently for all of us. Whatever its colour, or whatever its shape, it’s our decision whether we hold onto it like a safety net or comfort blanket or like Bartimeaus to throw it to one side and respond to the invitation, ‘Get up, he is calling you’. The place the Lord calls us to is always back onto the road of life that leads to eternal life.

The question to ponder is what might the cloak of Bartimeaus represent for me?

Mon 28^th Oct – Suppression

One word comes to mind to describe the religious faith that I grew up with and it’s one that I don’t use lightly. It is ‘suppression.’ The full expression of all that it meant to be a human being was severely curtailed by guilt and unworthiness and a view of God as a deity who frowned on His creatures and took delight in their misery but never delighted in the work of his hands. Much of what it meant to be human we were actively encouraged to suppress. Our religion created a divine distortion and we are only slowly moving from that God of fear to a God of unconditional love. To recover that essential beauty and power of Christianity that was truly incarnational we need to get back to basics, open our bibles, and start asking some very fundamentaal questions.