Jim Cogley’s Reflections: Tues 3rd Nov – Mon 9th Nov
WOOD YOU BELIEVE
An Tobar Spiritans, Navan, Co Meath –
RECOVERY FROM LOSS – Fri 6Nov. 7.30 – 9.30pm
PERSONAL AND ANCESTRAL HEALING – Sat 7 Nov. 10am – 4pm
Bookings: 087-7640407; Facilitator: Jim Cogley.
This will be a small intimate group in an idyllic setting and eminently suitable for doing personal work and making significant progress on the inner journey. If you are free, be alert to the prompting of the Spirit. Soul investments pay eternal dividends!
Note: There will be a Healing Mass in Lady’s Island this Wednesday followed by the blessing of oils. Being November the focus will be on ancestral healing and participants are invited to present their family tree at the Offertory for healing. The Coffee Shop will be open after the service.
For ordering books at lowest prices go to jimcogley.com
Tues 3rd Nov – November – Remembering
Recently I had the privilege of celebrating the 10th anniversary Mass of a young wife and mother who died in her thirties leaving three small children. Her loss had been a devastating blow to her entire family and understandably had left them all broken and feeling shattered to pieces. Their grief has been a long and difficult road with many stops and turnings. Anniversaries can mark significant stages in the journey of recovery from loss, if there is ever a full recovery, since we just learn to live our lives around that open wound. Hopefully this is where we find the light coming through. In this case the family gathering for remembering seemed more than just the members coming together. It felt like a coming a coming together of all the pieces that had been shattered by her untimely death. It was literally a re-membering event not just for the members but for the bits of the members.
Wed 4th Nov – Dismembering
November is traditionally the month when we remember our beloved dead. The word November and Remember dovetail very nicely since they share the same ending. Remembering is a very basic need as it is a portal to how our loved ones remain with us in spirit. Sometimes to try and forget and to not remember is easier. We want to block out the painful memory of when we got that tragic news, the cruel disfigurement of the body following an accident or illness or the dying process and feeling helpless. We can be so traumatized by such events that we suffer seriously in a manner that seems to go on forever but we fail to grieve. In fact, our suffering masquerades as grief, but there is a difference, grief has a season with a beginning, a middle and an end, it does not go on forever whereas the suffering that arises from having blocked grief knows no end and leaves us with a sense of being stranded and abandoned.
Thurs 5th Nov – Grief or Suffering?
The vast majority of us suffer serious loss in the course of our lives but not all recover, many remain stuck in unresolved grief. The reasons for this can be both simple and complex. The simplest is carrying regrets. After a significant loss we look for something to blame ourselves for. So, it becomes the word spoken in annoyance or impatience or the words that were never spoken that needed to be. Self-blame and regret exercise a considerable power in blocking the normal grieving process and leave us tortured with a tyranny of ‘if only’s’. Most bereaved would like to honour a loved one but fail to ask the question, ‘Do I do so by my never-ending self-torture and self-punishment or by choosing to forgive myself and living my life to the full?’ When we ask what our loved one would be most pleased with the way forward becomes very clear.
Fri 6th Nov – Holding both Anger and Love
Nancy believed that between herself and her husband there has been no secrets for the fifty years of their marriage. She felt betrayed to find that his will had been made with only his brother knowing. Her reaction was ‘Blow him, if he hid this from me why should I bother grieving for him?’ She didn’t, but she did suffer his loss. To forgive a loved one is an essential part of grief. It might be some aspect of how they treated us. If death was by suicide, it could be the perceived selfishness of reneging on responsibilities, leaving a family without a parent, a mountain of debt, or a host of unanswered questions. The grief over suicide is extremely difficult because it demands performing a balancing act. On one extreme loving that person to bits, and at the other being violently angry at the mess he or she left on your doorstep plus that legacy for future generations. Both of these very different emotions need to be held gently and accommodated long enough for resolution to take place.
Sat 7th Nov – Grief – A Complex Journey
Not long after ordination, I attended a six-week course on bereavement. It was neatly packaged along the stages outlined by Elizabeth Kubler Ross in her seminal book On Death and Dying. Now with the wisdom of years, I would feel appalled at such a simplistic approach and would recommend a much more in-depth understanding for grief counsellors. For that much-needed work to be effective there needs to be understanding of how past losses, that are not always related to death, can influence the process. The counsellor needs to have essential emotional literacy themselves in order to hold the rawness of another’s grief. Also, they need to have an understanding of ancestral grief and how this can impede the grieving process. Not only that, but an essential tool is to be able to recognize how womb trauma, womb loss as in a twin, and sibling loss can even render someone pathologically incapable of dealing with later losses unless it is addressed.
Sun 6th Nov – Remembering a Good Friend
November is the month of remembering our loved ones, friends, relations and family. This year I find myself thinking about a close friend from seminary days that I soldiered with for many years. He was a man from Cloyne diocese, very intelligent and always full of fun and wit. On so many occasions in the wee small hours we climbed over ten-foot-high walls to get back into where were never supposed to have left, having spent the night at various student gatherings and parties. We could never be classed as being ‘good’ boys’.
About a year before ordination Derry spent the summer in France and came back a different person. It was hard to put a finger on what had changed but it was as if the light of his little lamp of faith had gone out or been put out. Either way he hit a faith crisis and felt it would be highly unwise to get ordained at a time when his inner world was in so much darkness and confusion.
He came to visit me just a few months after coming to Kilmore Quay and said that the following week he was due to travel to Sierra Leone where he was going to be part of an organization doing lay missionary work. I wished him well on his travels and as he was saying goodbye, he said something that stayed with me in an alarming kind of way especially in the light of what was to happen. It was a revealing statement about where he was at in his inner or soul life – a typical throw away remark of his that was laden with significance. It was ‘I guess life will always be a bit ambiguous but at least we have plenty of time.’ I heard it as the remark of a troubled soul that was still in darkness, and it left me feeling concerned for his welfare.
Not many months later word came through that a dreadful tragedy had happened. One sweltering hot day he asked if any of the team would like to go swimming, but no one did, so he went on his own. It was crocodile infested water and nothing of him was ever recovered. He would have been utterly naive in relation to the dangers and paid the ultimate price.
Like the ladies in the Gospel of today he thought he had plenty of time to fill his lamp with oil and get it burning again, he was a young man of 25 with his life ahead of him, so to my mind at least he didn’t seem to be too concerned.
He appeared to have slipped into the illusion that so many of us live with, thinking we have lots of time we give it to everything except what will outlast time. The lamp of our soul goes unattended while we tend to everything else. That’s the foolishness of life.
I wonder about his fate and pray for him with very fond memories particularly in relation to the Gospel of today. One year in college we had what was known as sermon practice. This was where each student would be handed a Gospel passage and asked to preach for three minutes on it in the big chapel while students from the main university would be invited in to give their opinions on our performance. Derry pulled the short straw of the parable today – The five wise and the five foolish virgins – a piece that is difficult to say the least and understandably he drew a blank. The day came and he had nothing prepared. We watched him sweating as his turn came to stand in front of the assembly so to buy time, he blessed himself and slowly repeated the title of the passage. The five wise virgins and the five foolish virgins. Then with a sudden burst of inspiration he said, ‘I guess that it would be hard to find any man among us who wouldn’t prefer five foolish virgins in the dark to five wise virgins in the light. Is that not a clear case of where God’s ways are not our ways?’ Then he blessed himself and went back to his seat with the place in uproar. The professor who was in charge had to be pretend to be indignant and barely stifling his laughter said, ‘Mr Murphy, when it comes to preaching, you are meant to be feeding the sheep and not amusing the goats!’ I never could agree with that one because sheep tend to be curious creatures and by amusing the goats you get them interested as well.
Such is the story of my good friend Derry Murphy, and I pray that whatever cloud or darkness that seemed to envelop or even devour him long before any river creature would be fully lifted and that his lovely soul would be at peace.
Mon 7th Nov – Separation or Continuation
When grief is resolved there is a real sense of death being a continuation rather than a separation. Once grief has passed the love that was always there is still there, and while there is the awareness of physical separation there remains a sense of communion and connection. Two people can sleep in the same bed and be light years apart while another couple can be in different continents and enjoy an incredible closeness that is ever deepening because of their physical apartness. The dangerous myth is that only when we get to the other side of life can we be reunited. This belief can make us give up on life and often gives rise to suicide. The truth is that we need to get to the other side of grief in order to find connection and be re-united. There we find that a loved one while no longer with us as they were, is still with us wherever we are.