Jim Cogley’s Reflections: Tues 11th Nov – Mon 17th 2025
Coming Wood You Believe Healing Seminars with Jim Cogley & Luba Rodzhuk:
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 Nov 7.00-9.30pm – 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
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 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.
Tue Nov 11th – Our Fault Lines
Having and maintaining good personal boundaries is an area where so many of us struggle to get right. The boundaries that were not established in early years are like hairline cracks in a vase that holds together until it is put under pressure and then it splits along the fault lines. Life has an knack of exposing many of our cracks! Once I lived in a house that was situated in the heart of a village and close to the main road. It was an intersection spot between five towns and a very convenient place to stop for anyone who was in trouble or even for those who were not but were good at pretending to be! From the beginning my front door was too open as was my pocket. My Christian zeal and desire to help those in need became my undoing, and without knowing it I was creating a monster, that eventually would devour me. There came a point where I literally felt under siege in my own home with incessant knocks on the door and continuous phone calls.
Wed 12th Nov – Learning the Hard Way
Some years back I responded to a crisis situation by taking someone into my home who was homeless. It seemed the right and Christian thing to do and felt like fulfilling one of the corporal works of mercy. However before responding out of compassion, I failed to set firm boundaries in place as to how long this arrangement would last, how daily chores were to be shared and even if that person should make a contribution towards food and utilities. Nor was there any time set aside every few days to review the situation and discuss any issues as they would arise. As days flowed into weeks and then months, this person became more and more comfortable and was no longer showing any signs of wanting to move on. By this time I was feeling taken for granted and even resentful. When eventually it became necessary to confront what was going on, it was not a pleasant encounter, and we parted not on the best of terms. I could only hold myself responsible for not setting firm boundaries in place from the beginning.
Thurs 13th – Power and Control
A lady in her thirties had always had a difficult relationship with her mother. From day one she felt rejected and unwanted. She grew up and moved to another country. At some point she discovered that her grandad had been putting money into a savings account for her ever since her birth. It was her mother who had brought this to her attention saying that it amounted to €5,000. He had been quite wealthy so she was more than suspicious thinking that multiples of that might have been closer to the actual figure. The mother requested that she sign a waiver giving access to the money as she now needed it. She asked the mother for a statement but it was never given. Amazingly she still signed the document, as if in a trance, and too late realized what she had done. Why had she given the mother such power over her? The mother who withholds love from her child remains in control. The needy child will do anything to experience mother’s love and will even sabotage the adult needs and sense of justice in the vague hope of still being loved.
Fri 14th Nov – Roots of Bullying
Maria was a senior staff nurse who was considering early retirement on the basis that she found her work intolerable because of bullying by a colleague. Deep down she knew that a change of location or work was not the answer since the problem was in herself. Asked if she felt adult or child she replied, ‘Adult at home and child in work’. She then thought her problem might go back to her father who could be quite angry and had everybody walking on eggshells. Yet it was not male colleagues she had a difficulty with but female. On deeper reflection she came to see that the real one she had difficulty with was her mother for her cowardice in never standing up to her husband and allowing him to hold such control by his moodiness. What she hated in her mother she had discovered in herself and her own behaviour in relation to her colleague in hospital.
Sat 15th Nov – Regression
Jack was a man who felt his marriage was in difficulty. In early years they had enjoyed a good relationship but something had changed to the point where he felt deeply uncomfortable to be in her presence and for years there had been no intimacy between them. They had been for marriage counselling but to no avail; it stayed at surface level and didn’t meet where they were at. His unease in his wife’s company was indicative of him being regressed to a child and so the relationship was in a parent child dynamic rather than adult to adult. His father who was lazy was the obvious target since he left much of the hard work to his wife who also had six children. Next he saw himself spending a long time on his own and feeling abandoned in a play pen. In his child’s mind that could only interpret but not understand, it was his mother who was responsible for leaving him all alone. It was this childhood fear of abandonment that was creating such unease with his wife and it was this part of him that needed loving and integration.
Sun 16th Nov – Remembering – What is important
I invite you to take a moment and look around at all you see. All the things you are seeing now will one day be no more. Look around you and what you see of this beautiful church will one day be no more. Look at your hands and one day they will no longer hold anything. Look at your legs and feet, one day they will no longer carry you anywhere. Feel your heart and one day it will have stopped beating. Such is the mystery of life, given the passage of time all things change and like the people of Christ’s time we might well ask the question when will this happen and the only answer he gives is take care not to be deceived. In other words, don’t let your yourself be so caught up with passing things of life as to lose sight of the things that don’t pass away.
When will the time come? For all our loved ones that we remember in this month that time has come. Their earthly temple is returning to dust even as we speak but while they were but dust and now to dust returning, their essence survives and was never subject to the laws of change and decay. Another name for someone’s essence is their soul. In the words of the poet Henry Longfellow:
Life is real, Life is earnest, And the grave is not the goal.
Dust thou art and to dust returneth, was not spoken of the soul.
It’s so refreshing to meet someone in old age who while not wanting to die, is still excited at the prospect. Many have a deep sense that ‘no eye has seen and no ear has heard what wonderful things God has in store for those who love him’. That also is the testimony of thousands who had a glimpse beyond the veil having had a near death experience (NDE) and returned to tell of they saw and heard.
Such accounts are numerous, well documented and worth reading. They offer huge reassurance and hope as to what awaits us all. Not only that but they also show us that the way we live our lives in the here and now has such significance for what happens later.
Common to nearly accounts of NDE’s is that God is not there to judge us, but it is we who judge ourselves. For everyone after death there is a review of life. At this point there are just two big questions that seem to matter and only two. The first is how have we loved and the second is what have we done with our one precious life.
These big questions usually take place against the backdrop of meeting a being of light who simple radiates light and love and totally envelopes us in that embrace. Christians generally recognize him as Christ and many from other faiths like Jews and Muslims are surprised at meeting the one they were never taught to believe in.
One lady whom I knew and worked with giving retreats was a Franciscan missionary who, when I first met her, was deeply impressed at her ability to radiate love wherever she went and to all whom she met. I wondered what her secret was. She told me that her life had been completely turned round after having had a NDE while on missionary work in Egypt. One moment she was standing on a railway platform in Cairo and something struck her from behind. She remembered no pain and immediately found herself looking at her body as it lay crumpled on the ground and then going through a tunnel of light. A being who radiated pure love met her and with eyes of absolute compassion and understanding asked her how had she loved and to review her life in the awareness of absolute love. At that moment nothing else mattered. That then led to another question as to how had she lived and what had she done with her life? At some point she was told that her time had not yet come, and she had work on earth still to be done. Reluctantly she agreed to return but with the realization that her real work was now to be like the one she had seen, a beacon of light and a bearer love wherever she went. When I met her years later that was the only way I could describe what she had become a being of light and a bearer of love.
St John of the Cross is often quoted as expressing the truth that in the end of the day we are judged on love, so whether we are judged by God or judge ourselves it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that our life does not become a wasted exercise of pettiness where we judge and complain, blame and exclude and after all our nonsense find that the only one we were really hurting was ourselves.
Someone has said that ‘what we are is God’s gift to us, and what we become is our gift to God’. While we were busy wasting our time with our childish games of resentments and not forgetting our grievances, we were also forgetting what was truly important, our call to love and to make something worthwhile of our lives.
Mon 17th Nov – The Blame Game
Growing up on a farm I can remember my father having many heated discussions with neighbours when their sheep or cattle would trespass on our land and often do a lot of damage depending on the crop sown and the time of year. It was usually a blame game where the trespasser would be deemed fully responsible and my father would be quite irate and threatening legal action. It was ironic that he died when I was eleven while fixing fences. The significance of this took me years to appreciate. However, even as a small child I used to think who was really responsible? Was it the farmer next door for allowing his animals to trespass, or was it not my dad for being careless when it came to fencing and not having strong boundaries in place? It’s all too easy to blame the one who belittles us, makes us feel small, or even intimidates us, but it takes real maturity to recognize that this can only happen if my boundaries are weak in the first place.
