Jim Cogley: Reflections Tues 28th Jan to Mon 3rd Feb 2025
Tues 28th Jan – The Curse of Perfectionism When we think back on the religion of our childhood much teaching centered around the pursuit of perfectionism. As a child serving Mass, I used to think that the priest of the time had no other sermon. Judging by the way he treated us his teaching wasn’t […]
Bro Jim C Salonoy - News Moderator 
Tues 28th Jan – The Curse of Perfectionism
When we think back on the religion of our childhood much teaching centered around the pursuit of perfectionism. As a child serving Mass, I used to think that the priest of the time had no other sermon. Judging by the way he treated us his teaching wasn’t working for him, and neither was it working for anyone else that I knew. It was really a dangerous aberration of genuine spirituality that gave the impression that a saint was someone who had never blotted their copybook, who from day one had lived an immaculate life and was returning to God as pure as the day they were born. There was no room for transgressions or errors, and it was this kind of religious thinking that allowed for no second chance that gave rise to that statement that was so devoid of compassion, ‘you made your bed and now you must lie on it.’ In contrast, Christ’s word was ‘Take up your bed and walk.’
Wed 29th Jan – No Respite
It was largely our spirituality of perfectionism that afforded no second chance that justified the cruelty and abuses that took place in so many institutions until recent times. Magdalene homes and psychiatric institutions had so many inmates who having ‘strayed’ were forced for the rest of their life to suffer in atonement for their mistakes. It was also this kind of spirituality that made society so lacking in compassion as to not take into regard that many such unfortunates were victims of abuse, rape or incest. It was a society where all negative behaviour was harshly judged and deemed to merit punishment while there was absolutely no compassion or seeking to understand why such behaviour had happened in the first place. What was happening back there reflected the kind of God they believed in, obviously a one of punishment, since nothing influences or legitimises our actions as much as our image of God.
Thurs 30th Jan – Change Thyself First
It is a spirituality of perfectionism that gives rise to that all-too-common trait called projection. This is where we want to so identify with the bright side of ourselves that we can’t admit even to ourselves that beneath our veneer of respectability lies a dark murky side we call our shadow. Our way of keeping that well hidden is to project it onto others. It’s so much easier to see and judge in others all our nastiness that we are blind to in ourselves. Seeing how others need to change becomes our focus while we are completely blind as to how change needs to happen within us. I rather like the version of the Alcoholics Anonymous prayer that goes, ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the one that I can and the wisdom to know that it’s me.’
Fri 31st Jan – Know Thyself
Much ancient philosophy could be summed up in two words ‘know thyself’. Becoming aware of where and how I need to change is the beginning of wisdom. The story is told of Ghandi who had a woman come to him bringing her son who had a problem with smoking. He sent them both away with the instruction that they return in a month. When they returned, he just spoke a few strong words to the boy, and it worked immediately even throwing away his packet of cigarettes. The woman returned to query Ghandi as to why he hadn’t spoken the same words when they came first. ‘At that time, I had no authority’, said Ghandi. ‘I first needed to give up smoking myself.’ The Scriptures say that Christ spoke with authority and not like the scribes and the pharisees. It was obviously from a place of awareness and self-mastery that he spoke and so his words made such a deep impression on everyone.
Sat 1st Feb – A Copernican Revolution
It was a spirituality of perfectionism that insisted that God only valued perfection and an idealized morality. This then gave rise to a fear of God who was always ready to punish everything that was imperfect. So, we learned to be afraid of our dark side and whenever it reared its ugly head, we were encouraged to employ moral surgery to remove it. Experience has shown over and over that the more we repress the negative the more relentlessly it will pursue it. Our attempts to destroy it can lead to our own destruction and the more we deny it the more it will tighten its grip upon us. If there is a Copernican revolution needed in our religious thinking of today it has to be about coming into a new relationship with our shadow and learning to befriend it after centuries of pretending it didn’t exist or trying to eliminate it from our lives.
Sun 2nd Feb – Presentation
St Luke, who wrote the gospel of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, was known as the great physician. He had trained in the medical school of his time and was a master writer in the Greek language. While he had never met Christ in the flesh, he was also a master at ferreting out relevant information about him and particularly his early life in Nazareth. He was writing, not for a Jewish audience but, for outsiders who had been converted to Christianity. He did so in order to assure them that the hope they had in Christ was secure and well founded; that he was the long-awaited messiah and the rock upon which they could build their lives. Also, that the evidence for this was there from the very beginning.
Where did he get all his information? Obviously from Mary whom he knew quite well and who would have been in her 80’s when Luke was writing his gospel. Even at that age she could recall in vivid detail all the happenings that surrounded the early years of her son. She and Joseph knew from the circumstances of his birth that he was the Son of God and that of all women God had chosen her to be the mother of his son.
Like all mothers she would have remembered so well all the things that were said about him and particularly the ones that had prophetic undertones that she would later see played out in his life. She was a woman, we are told, who pondered everything in her heart, in other words, she reflected deeply and so, while her son grew in wisdom and stature so did she.
She remembered that day when as parents both she and Joseph brought him to the Temple to be consecrated to the Lord. For her it was not just something she did because it was the done thing, it was truly her and Joseph’s way of giving back to God the child He had entrusted to them. Ideally that’s what baptism should be about, recognizing that as parents a child has come through us, but not from us, and ultimately belongs to God. Unfortunately, some parents go through the ritual of baptism but miss out on its significance and still hold on for a lifetime.
She remembered Simeon who at that precise time felt led by the Spirit to come to the Temple and how taking the child in his arms he exploded in gratitude for the great privilege of seeing this child of the promise. For 1,000 years his people had hoped and prayed for a messiah to be born and here he was, now an old man, with this child in his arms. No wonder he was ready to die in peace. He had waited all his years and now his soul’s purpose was complete. We had the funeral of a young woman of 52 here a few weeks back and her words were something similar. She said, ‘I feel as if my soul’s purpose is now complete and there is nothing left for me to do here’. That would be a nice way for anyone to go and it also implies that in life they had come to know what they were here for. Albert Einstein once said that the two greatest days of his life were the day he was born and the day he knew why. For Simeon it was at that moment that all his dreams had come through and no wonder he was ready to die a happy man.
The prophetic words that Simeon spoke on that day must have never left Mary throughout her life, that all would not be plain sailing for her special child, that he would be rejected and like any mother a sword would then not just pierce his side but her soul too but out of that wounding the secret thoughts of many would be revealed. Herein lies a wonderful truth that applies not just to Mary, that out of our deepest emotional woundedness the deepest compassion can flow. The wounds and hurts of life are never meant to leave us bitter but if we handle them properly, they help us to have compassion and so to bring comfort and healing to others.
Likewise, Mary remembered the old lady Anna who also recognized the child as the long-awaited Messiah. Anna was a devout lady who just happened to be there just at that time. Unlike Simeon who was prompted by the Spirit, Anna having said her Yes to God found herself in the right place at the right time. As we come to understand God’s ways, we find that if we say our ‘yes’ to Him there will be times when we will get a nudge or intuition telling us to do or say something but more often than not we will find that the unseen hand of providence has brought us into alignment with the Divine will and so in spite of ourselves we will be where we are meant to me.
I don’t think for one minute that Mary always knew God’s ways but like us all she needed to learn them, and this she did by pondering the events of life in her heart. For us the way hasn’t changed.
How badly do we need time for quiet and reflection for without that how can we grow in wisdom?
Mon 3rd Feb – Rejecting what God wants to use
I suppose there is no more counterintuitive spiritual idea than the possibility that God might actually use and find necessarywhat we fear, avoid, deny, and deem unworthy. This is what we mean by the ‘integration of the negative.’ Yet this is central to Jesus’ revolutionary good news. The old religion simply has not succeeded in changing peoples lives or hearts. It’s time to reboot our thinking in a new direction towards integration and befriending of our negative side and to see that this is our path to awareness and enlightenment. It was this understanding of integrating the negative that once turned the world upside down and it can do so again. Today, many call this pattern of admitting our shortcomings and failures as ‘embracing our shadow.’ It still comes as a shock to those immersed in the old religious thinking that God usesthenegative as our path to salvation. This truth stands at the core of the Christian message and so makes it good news.
