Jim Cogley’s Reflections: Tues 3rd March – Mon 9th March 2026

Note: Healing Mass in Lady’s Island this Wednesday 4th at 3pm

Tues 3^rd March – A Remarkable Story

While facilitating a retreat in Ballyvaloo Conference Centre recently I was privileged to listen to a remarkable man, a retired pharmacist who with some gentle encouragement began to speak of how and on what basis he had run his business for most of forty years. His was the story of a man whose heart was so in the right place that it deeply touched the hearts of those at table with him. He spoke humbly and didn’t seem to realize how revolutionary his approach was, how counter intuitive, and how deeply he had rooted his commercial interests in Gospel values. The following is his story as it unfolded and is printed with his permission:

Back in the 80s, I took over the ownership of a pharmacy in a West Cork town. While I knew that it was not a deep, vocational calling, I had reasons to commit myself to the plan. I soon became aware of a few concerns I had about how I might play the role that I had chosen.

Wed 4^th March – Compassion & Commerce – Are they Compatible?

I wondered if the commercial / business aspects of running a pharmacy would be incompatible with the compassion required  in the provision of healthcare. I struggled with the notion of profiting financially from the suffering of others. I invited the staff into conversations about how we would run the pharmacy. I told them that I was uncomfortable with the idea of people working for me. I asked if we could agree that they were working for themselves and their families, while offering a service to people, but that they were working with me. Changing one small preposition seemed to support a change in culture.

Thurs 5^th March – A Kingdom Model

I disliked the idea of being somebody’s boss. I told them that I didn’t want the power, the pressure or the responsibility of determining / dictating somebody’s terms and conditions of employment. How could I determine the monetary value of the work of another human being? So, we agreed that they would take joint responsibility with me for determining the terms and conditions that were acceptable to them, and me. I didn’t want anyone to have to go through the dehumanising humiliation of coming to me looking for an increase in wages, or asking for a day off, or a week off etc. We agreed that we would not run the pharmacy on the basis of making a profit. We agreed that we were there to serve the people who granted us the privilege of their trust. The needs of those we served were to be the north star guiding all of our decisions. Furthermore, we declined all seductive offers from drug companies to promote their products.

Fri 6^th March – Generosity of Spirit

Over the years, it was I who had to approach the staff to bring up questions around increases in wages. A number of times the staff assured me they were happy with our arrangements, and they were not looking for any changes. At one point, I took on a local girl on a probationary basis. After 6 months, I decided to increase her wages, as I was very pleased with her work. However, she handed back the increase. She expressed her preference to wait a further 6 months as she felt she wasn’t doing as much as the members of staff. (She reminded me that all decisions were to be based on consultation and consensus. I had increased her wages without having consulted her!)

Sat 7^th March – The Fruits of Kindness

I remember bringing up the subject of bonuses as an aspect of wages. I had read an article on it and I thought it appropriate to address it. When I introduced the matter at a casual meeting, one lady expressed her surprise, and indeed her disappointment that I should be concerning myself with the issue … saying, “Why do you think you would have to pay us more money to do what we like to do for the people who come into the pharmacy?“ The staff made it clear there would be no such bonus scheme. We agreed that we would not refer to the people we served as patients, as that label implied there was something wrong with them. We agreed that we would not refer to them as customers as that label distorted our relationship with them by associating them with a financial transaction. We simply agreed to call them by their name!

Sun 8^th March – The Woman at the Well

The Inner Well

A family who had just moved into a new neighbourhood had a late start one morning. As a result their seven-year-old missed her school bus. Though under pressure to get to his own work on time, the dad agreed to take her to school if she gave him directions. Up to that he had never been there himself. After twenty minutes of apparently going round in circles they finally arrived at the school which turned out to be quite close to where they lived. The dad was steaming and asked why she drove him all over the place when the school was so close to home. ‘We went the way the school bus goes,’ she said. ‘That’s the only way I know.’

In a way that’s the story of so many of us. It was certainly the story of the lady in the Gospel today the Samaritan woman. After five failed marriages and now with a live-in lover she was a woman who obviously had a big thirst, or perhaps I should say, a great lust for life. She was definitely looking for something and going the long way round in order to find it.

There were three sides to the woman in the Gospel of today. First she was a Samaritan, second she was a woman and third she was a prostitute. The Samaritans and the Jews were engaged in an age-old conflict and it was an unwritten law that any self-respecting Jew would neither speak to or associate with a Samaritan. In speaking to her this was the first big divide that Jesus crossed. He also broke the taboo that a rabbi would not speak to a woman. Such prejudice has taken two millennium to shift. Finally it was believed at the time that if you were a holy person and you associated with sinners you would automatically become contaminated. This was what shocked and scandalized the so called religious people at the time that Jesus was always to be seen eating and drinking with sinners and even more surprising was the way they felt perfectly at home in his company.

In all three cases Jesus crossed the age-old divide and met this woman exactly where she was at, and with no judgements on her life journey.

Like so many the Woman of Samaria suffered from the myth of finding the perfect person who would make all her dreams come through. She was looking for that special someone who would make her feel whole, complete and be the answer to all her problems. She was stuck in a pattern of repeat relationships like someone looking for milk in a hardware store. She wasn’t going to find what she was looking for where she was looking.

She comes across as a lady who was a bit needy and insecure. Someone who may have had a difficult childhood where a lot of her basic needs for love, acceptance and affirmation had never been met. As a result she probably came to each relationship with a bagful of expectations. With an attractive smile and a nice body she had no problem attracting men. Then her neediness came into play with each one feeling suffocated and expected not just to be husband but mother and father as well – so they just ran and who could blame them? Like so many needy people she just pushed the very people out of her life that she most wanted to have. No one likes being used in order to fill another person’s vacuum.

The search for wholeness in someone else is based on the belief that we’re not enough in ourselves, that we’re not complete, that we can’t generate our own love or create our own happiness. In other words that we need someone or something outside of ourselves in order to feel happy or complete. It’s this desperate need for love that can cripple any relationship.

If we want more love in our life then we need to fall in love with the life we have. It’s more important to be relationship material than to be in relationship.

Instead of trying to find the right person it’s more important to be the right person. ‘If your own boat doesn’t float no one will want to sail across the ocean with you.’

Many go through life feeling that they have never found love because they have never met that special someone. Whether we do or not doesn’t prevent us from finding special love in our lives. To equate love with romance is to blind ourselves to the love that may be all around us.

There’s the world of a difference between wanting a loving joyful relationship and needing someone to make us feel complete and good about ourselves. If someone feels they are nothing without Mr. Right then sooner or later those feelings of nothingness will surface in the relationship. Even if Mr. Right comes along it might soon be discovered that his first name is ‘always’.

The answer to our loneliness is not to be found outside of ourselves in relationships. It is fairy tale thinking to believe that someone out there will fix us.

Looking at a partner and seeing what’s wrong with him or her is a huge distraction from what we really need to be looking at – ourselves. As the saying goes, ‘How empty of me to be so full of you’.

The essence of the story is about a woman who came to the well with a bucket because she was thirsty and through her encounter with Christ went home with the well. He revealed to her what she didn’t know she had, her own inner spring. She had discovered that what she always needed was already inside her but much of her life she had been going round in circles and searching in all the wrong places.

Mon 9^th March – The Reliable North Star

Maybe I was fortunate that I experienced deep satisfaction in gaining and honouring the trust of the people we served and of the staff involved. We enjoyed working together as a team totally dedicated to the welfare of those we served. We were fortunate also to be free of the dehumanising impact of trying to make money, in the unquestioned quest to be successful. Yet in a very different way we were very successful at every level. People felt loved and we found that reciprocated in their loyalty and love. We were compliant with all the financial management aspects of running any service or business. Ultimately, it was deeply meaningful to discover that compassion and commerce are not incompatible. Prioritising the needs of those we were privileged to serve (including the needs of each member of staff) proved to be a very reliable North Star that guided us through the joys and challenges of nearly forty years of business and service.