Jim Cogley – Tues 2 Dec – Mon 8 Dec 2025

It has been a great privilege to share these reflections with you, many since early 2020. Their range has been considerable covering broad areas like spirituality, psychology, mythology, human development, ancestry and many aspects to do with Church, faith and religion. I hope you continue to find them as enjoyable to read as I do in writing and inspirational enough to share them with your friends. There is nothing as important as the right word at the right time.

With many thanks for being a labourer in the harvest

Jim C

Coming Events:

Edmund Rice Centre, Callan – Approaching Christmas – What is Christianity?

This seminar will be an exciting journey of uncovering the riches of the Christian Faith that has become obscured beneath layers of historical accretions. Why not take a soulful day away from the busyness of Christmas to find what it’s really about?

Sat 13^th Dec 10am-4pm. Early booking advised to Jim Maher on 086-1276649.

Also three evenings entitled The Advent Journey – To the Essence of Christianity will be held in the Community Centre, Lady’s Island beginning this Thursday at 7.30pm. These presentations will be biblically based and admission is free.

This Wednesday there will be a Mass for Healing at 3pm

For receiving Wood You Believe books go to jimcogley.com If ordering for Christmas presents please place orders this coming week to allow time for resending.

For daily services usually 10am. Sunday 11am. Webcam: ourladysisland.ie

Tues Dec 2^nd – Parallel Church

The question of where we stand in relation to the Church we have grown up with, is one that can only be answered in a personal way after giving it serious consideration. Hence what I write comes from my own lived experience. It reflects where I see myself while fully engaged on a faith journey that grows ever more exciting with each passing year. Recently, while walking with a friend, he asked, ‘What is it that sustains you at this time when the institutional church you belong to seems to be in terminal decline, numbers are declining rapidly, and faith is at an all-time low, surely it must be disheartening and even depressing?’ Almost without thinking, I replied with a term that I had never heard or used before. I said, ‘The parallel church is what truly keeps my hope alive.’ In my mind I could clearly see two models of church and while I had a foot in both I was not fully identified with either. It felt as if I was mostly occupying the space in between.

Wed Dec 3^rd

Two Models of Church

The image shown is a trinity of different coloured hearts, all linked together. It closely resembles the two models of church that came to mind when asked the question in yesterday’s posting. We could think of the green heart as representing the older model of Church that has been turned on its head, particularly in recent years with hypocrisy, unrelenting abuses, scandals and the unrelenting tide of secularism. The heart on its head can only narrow down just as the institutional Church is declining in numbers, influence and moral standing. All attempts to offer it resuscitation don’t seem to work. Once it stood proud, now it can scarcely lift its head. Running parallel is another heart representing the other church that is upright and growing in popularity and stature. Both hearts are linked but not converging. This symbolizes the fact that there is the possibility of interaction and living space between them while in realty the two may never meet.

Thurs Dec 4^th – ‘Change and decay, all around I see’

For the vast majority who are identified with and firmly entrenched in the older model of church there is no awareness of the existence of that other reality. Within that limited perspective all that can be seen is doom and gloom, declining numbers, older people not being replaced, a shortage of ordained ministers, no young people, just a faithful remnant who keep the show on the road with a vague hope that things might change, even though it is obvious that they won’t, nor is there any appetite for change no matter how bad things might be. Allied to this are decline in finances, high maintenance costs and many churches in need of repair. In the words of one priest, ‘We seem to be heading towards the church of ruins with more and more having to close down’. Some outlying churches at present are so little used, often with only a weekly service, that the writing is on the crumbling walls that their time is limited.

Fri Dec 5^th – Awakenings

On the other side, represented by the red heart, is what could be termed the parallel church. Here comprise people who have experienced different levels of spiritual awakening. This has usually come about from the ground up where some level of deep suffering has forced open their souls to deeper realities. We need to be broken enough to be truly open to Spirit and most people in the red heart have their own story of brokenness like addiction, bereavement, childhood trauma or abuse. Such individuals usually have long forsaken the religion of their youth but having come to spiritual awareness and feeling a need to belong tend to come back to their church for a brief time. Unfortunately, what they find all too often is not something that feeds their souls, a language that doesn’t connect with where they are at, and little awareness of the human journey. So, they leave a second time in disillusionment feeling that this time it is not they who are leaving but that the church has left them.

Sat Dec 6^th – The Hunger of the Heart

The red space, that parallel church, appears to be growing rapidly as a spiritual hunger envelopes society. With religious props having fallen away it is possible that the hunger of the heart is becoming even more acutely felt. Such people tend to avail of whatever supports come their way. So, they sign up for retreats and workshops, they read spiritual and psychological books and while at home they listen to podcasts by the spiritual gurus of our time. This stands in contrast to traditional church membership where reading is almost non-existent, events outside the ordinary are badly attended and a minimalist approach to doing one’s duty is very strong. Still on the critical side, what seems severely lacking in this new ‘church’ is a sense of belonging, a unified leadership and the richness of a long tradition. Also, it needs to be said that many who have experienced genuine spiritual awakening can be quite vulnerable to cult predators, new age philosophies and certain spiritual practices that are non-incarnational and very ungrounded.

Sunday Dec 7^th – 2^nd Sunday Advent ‘25

The central figure of the Advent story is John the Baptist with his voice still echoing down through the ages with its message of, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, level the mountains, fill in the valleys, make a straight highway for our God’.

Some time back I found myself on the road to Newry and reflecting on the difference then and what it used to be like thirty years earlier. At the time I would have had to travel through Dublin and a load of smaller towns like Arklow and Drogheda. It would have taken me at least five if not six hours to get there. This time with all the road improvements took just over three hours. Travelling along I was very conscious of the enormous amount of work that had gone into carving a way through so many hills, filling up so many valleys and straightening up so many crooked parts in order to make a straight highway.

The reality is that we can have inherited so many mountains, valleys and crooked paths that slow down our journey and impede our progress through life.

We don’t just inherit our ancestral genes, the crooked nose, the bald head or the bad temper. The real legacy of our ancestors is a whole set of attitudes and beliefs that have been handed on from generation to generation. Some of these are undoubtedly good but there are others that are well worth reflecting on because they can really slow us down.

Take for example the belief the ‘people are not to be trusted’. There are so many who go through their whole lives being suspicious and distrustful of others just because of that limiting belief that they have inherited. Someone asks them for help and instead of digging deep they immediately think of ulterior motives. Is he or she genuine or are they just wanting the money for drink or drugs? Many never develop the noble virtue of generosity simply because they are so distrustful. Worse still, some even boast of their distrust as if it were a virtue instead of a cover up for meanness which it often is. The bottom line is that the person who trusts others will always stand to gain far more than the person who is distrustful.

Another such belief that often has been passed down from generation to generation is, ’You are only as good as you are useful’. In other words, what we do, how well we perform is the measure of our self-worth. Is it any wonder that so many of us carry a sense of unworthiness and feel a sense of failure? We always think that whatever we do is not good enough and we should be doing more and trying harder. So, we go through life beating ourselves up. Is it any wonder that so many die so quickly when they retire? If their work is taken away, they feel that their lives have become worthless overnight. This also carries through into our relationship with God. We believe that he values us only on the basis of how well we perform and because our performance is never up to scratch, we think that we live under his frown instead of enjoying his favour.

In many families there was the constant admonition to ‘never rake up the past, to leave it where it belongs’. That one sounded good if only it worked. Whatever gets swept under the carpet eventually wears through. The reality is that the past is never where we think that we have left it, rather we carry it with us until such time as we have faced it and accepted it as part of our lives.

In lots of families the script that was engrained in generation after generation was ‘What goes on here stays here’. It was closely allied to ‘Don’t wash your dirty linen in public’. This promoted a culture of secrecy where people suffered intolerably in silence and no matter what was going on to speak about it was to break a family taboo and was tantamount to betrayal. Is it any wonder that sexual abuse was able to hide behind a veil of secrecy for so long?

‘Don’t speak ill of the dead’, was another unexamined script that many of us grew up hearing. Translated this meant ‘Never speak the truth’. Much easier to pray for the faithful departed rather than acknowledge the elements of their unfaithfulness. In Ireland we tend only to bury saints not real people. It is much easier to put someone on a pedestal and pretend they were something they were not rather than face how their behaviour might have left me deeply wounded. Failure to recognize my own woundedness means I will involuntarily pass it on to the next generation.

What I have mentioned are just a few of the hundreds of scripts that have been handed down to us in greater or lesser degrees. Because no-one has ever stopped to examine them, they automatically pass down to the next generation. What I want you to do as an Advent exercise is to have a chat at home among yourselves and see what other ones you can identify.

Think of attitudes that we have inherited ourselves; to money; to politics; religion; work. As you think about these, ask are they helpful or do they belong to another time? If so, what positive script could you replace them with. Like the road from here to the North it wasn’t straightened out overnight but if we do our own bit of work, we can speed up the journey considerably.

Mon Dec 8^th – Best of Both Worlds

There are considerable numbers of Catholics who have discovered that there is an in-between space where they can comfortably exist without being unfaithful to either side. These too have experienced awakening and are happy to remain within the system. This has been my preferred position where I can be faithful to both without being tied to either. Even as a priest having spent my entire life working within the system, I still feel very free of it, to be a loyal critic and able to translate much of its richness to that other side where otherwise it might never be known to exist. The Catholic tradition has so much to offer in terms of wisdom for long-term survival to that newly evolving church. Likewise, that new, parallel church has lots to offer the old church when it comes to areas like openness, energy, enthusiasm and psychological insights. For example, it would be entirely foreign for traditional believers to talk about their emotions and be honest about their life story, while from an evolving church model such openness would be considered normal and even essential.