Jim Cogley’s Reflections: Tues 14 July – Mon 20 July 2026

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Tues 14^th July – You are my life

In the realm of close relationships, especially where romance is involved, it is easy to fall into the trap of making another person the centre of one’s life. This is where everything revolves around that most significant other and all life then comes through him or her. It is a blinkered existence that allows only restricted vision. It also means that I no longer have my own centre and so am in a state of acute dependency as to how that other behaves towards me. Essentially, I have sold out on myself and given to another the power to make me feel good or bad, sad or elated. Perhaps without realizing it, I have substituted a second love for a first love and so have set myself up for disappointment since no other person can fulfil the deepest needs of another’s heart.

Wed 15^th July – Neither Together nor Apart

To be told I am the centre of another’s life can be an enormous ego boost and I may well fill that role for quite some time especially if I equally want that other to be the centre of my world. This is the formula for classic co-dependency that might last for a lifetime. However, like two birds tied together, while they have four wings neither will be able to fly. Peaceful co-existence may be possible but more likely there will be an inner build-up of frustration and tension resulting from always trying to fulfil someone else’s expectations while not having my own met either. This often results in two people who love each other deeply being unable to live together, but so enmeshed in their mutual need that neither can they live apart.

Thurs 16^th July – The Foundation of Sand

Placing another person at the centre of my life, even if it be endemic, and regarded as normal, is really a form of idolatry and always comes at a high price. While it would appear that God is not given His rightful place, neither am I at the centre of my own life and this creates a huge void. Anything that threatens to displace that significant other, or rock the pedestal I have placed them on, is very threatening. Other friendships are potentially a threat and viewed with suspicion. My inner void screams out to be filled and so I can be possessive and controlling. My insecurity comes from lacking my own foundation and so any wrong move from the one who is my rock threatens my entire existence. With time my neediness becomes more acute and this in turn begins to push that other away leaving me desolate and feeling that I could implode from loneliness. What feels like a missing of the other is more that I am now missing myself.

Fri 17^th July – Are you My life or In my Life?

Whether someone is my life or in my life carries huge implications. It can happen when children are being reared and a parent’s life has to go on hold for many years. Particularly if the parental relationship is difficult, it is all too easy for one party to make the children or a particular child the centre of their life. Also, in situations where marital breakdown has taken place, death of a spouse, or for a single parent, how easy it is for the parent to say, ‘My child’ or ‘The children are now my life’. This exalted position gives the child enormous power over the parent where proper discipling will be difficult and boundaries will be blurred. The child in question may well feel spoiled and special for many years but sooner or later, especially in teenage years, will feel uncomfortable at being an extension of mammy or daddy and need to assert their own independence.

Sat 18^th July – Selfhood begins in the going away

Love is proved in the letting go.

In therapy work many parents come with broken hearts and enormous questions as to why their children want so little to do with them? After all that was done for them how could they be so cruel and unkind as to cut the parent out of their lives. What is often going on here is that the child may be reacting to carrying the unlived life of the parent whose shadow side has never been acknowledged. Where children have unconsciously sensed the parents’ neediness there is an instinctive drive to break free and find their own individuality. This strong drive for selfhood can seem like cruelty to the parent while for the person involved there may be little emotion and it just seems like the right thing to do.

Sun 19^th July – Wheat and Weeds

There are many people who don’t have much time for the Catholic Church. I can easily empathise with them becaause, there are a lot of things about Church that I don’t have much time for either. However there’s still more than enough that I do agree with and have invested my entire life into. We are part of a Church system that so often didn’t teach what Christ taught and on many occasions got what he was saying completely wrong. The parable of today is just one such example. A man sows good seed in his field and when his back is turned his enemy sows weeds. Later he looks with horror to find both weeds and wheat growing together. His servants suggest that they go in and pull out the weeds but the master in his wisdom forbids then saying, ‘Allow them both to grow together until the harvest then the good can be separated from the bad.’ Why did he give that advice? There are a few reasons that come to mind:

First the presence of the weeds growing alongside the wheat creates a more challenging environment for the wheat to grow. Precisely because of the darnel the wheat will be forced to grow taller. If we apply that to our lives it invites us to accept people and circumstances as they are and not as we would like them to be. In other words imperfection is part and parcel of life at every level; there always will be weeds. We will never have the perfect community or the perfect family or the perfect job or the perfect partner, or perfect leaders and neither will the church ever be perfect. The challenge is to accept the imperfection that is part of life and rise above it.

It’s just all too easy to fall into a negative and judgemental mode where every sentence we make is laced with a complaint or judgement against something or someone and in the end the only one we are hurting is ourselves. There are even serial complainers who may well be the last in the world to recognize their problem. Like the boy who was compaining about his cheese sandwiches day after day at lunchbreak. His friend suggested he ask his mother to put in something different, to which he replied, ‘Mum goes to work quite early and I make my own sandwiches’! In the acceptance of what is we find peace whereas peace eludes those who are always complaining.

Dom Helder Camera put the teaching of that parable very succintly when he said, ’Don’t seek perfection in anything or anyone, rather seek to perfect your love’. Another part of Buddhist teaching is that things are the way they are and it is only in accepting them as they are that they begin to change. It’s so refreshing to meet someone with a positive optimistic outlook, who looks at reality through the eyes of acceptance and love. You go away feeling refreshed and energised. On the other hand when you meet someone who is a moan a minute we end up feeling drained and wanting to get away.

Going back to the Gospel another reason for the master wanting the wheat to grow alongside the weeds is a very obvious one. When the two begin to grow how is it possible to clearly identify one from the other and more importantly how are are you going to eradicate one without damaging the other. Can you imagine how much wheat you would trample on as you went around looking for weeds? This is where Church teaching that was  so prevalent in the past would now be recognised as being so wrong and even destructive.

This was teaching that encouraged self-discipline and bodily mortification as the way to becoming holy. When something immoral raised its head like a negative emotion, a wayward thought or a sexual urge you were expected to deal with it harshly and employ moral surgery on yourself in order to eliminate it.

Unfortunately, that was the thinking of the time. The shadow side of human nature was bad news and needed to be treated as an enemy, beaten into submission or destroyed altogether. In other words, eliminate the weeds. History has shown that it just didn’t work. The litany of child abuse that reared its ugly head in the Church is a prime example of how the sexual repression that was part and parcel of clergy training became so destructive. These were men who at 20 years of age were told that if you had sexual feelings, they were sinful and if you saw a female walking towards you on the street you should go to the other side to avoid temptation! How sick was that kind of teaching and what an insult to women and to the God who became human. When we try to block a river it’s bound to overflow and affect the surrounding plains. To deny any part of our humanity or sexuality is asking for trouble and in our church the chickens of denial and repression just came home to roost. The scandals we heard about were not just individual failures but the failure of a system that was not doing justice to the central tenet of its faith, the Incarnation.

The tragedy is that so many good sincere people went down that road of self-denial and repression that only led to suffering and alienation. It was never the gospel road in the first place, no matter how much it appeared to be. Jesus always preached, love the enemy whether within or without. In the parable remember he didn’t allow the servants to pull up the weeds, much as they wanted to do. The more we try to disown our negative qualities the more they will continue to control us even to the point when they can ultimately destroy us.

The Christian life is not about weeding or using the scissors treatment on anything that we discover about ourselves no matter how unacceptable it may appear. Rather it is about accepting it for what it is and owning it as ours rather than projecting it onto someone else. Without the weeds our lives might be easier but would they be more fruitful and might they not be a lot less interesting as well.

Monday 20^th July – Work is my Life

As easy as it is for a partner or child to be my life it is also common for work and what I do to become my life. This is probably more common for men as women since the latter tend to have more interests and are better talkers. Where my work is my life so much of the rest of my life will be sacrificed on the altar of ‘doing’. Relationships can suffer greatly with children never knowing dad who is seldom at home. Even when he is there, he may not even be present. This identity with work will inevitably create an inner void that can only be filled by taking on even more work. Eventually when retirement looms it will be viewed with terror and may feel like falling into a bottomless pit. So many retirees die early many because  of never having made the transition from ‘I am what I do’  to ‘This is who I am’.