On the Margins

Christmas does not offer us respite from reality. This truth was writ large in the middle of a chapter I was reading recently. It resonated. It’s hard truth stayed with me and eventually brought relief of the kind that so often only hard truth can do. On reflection, it is a truth that I have long known and am reminded of on an annual basis.

My clinical role in recent years is sharply defined.I’m not required to work over the Christmas period. But throughout previous decades many Christmases were spent in responding to the forensic psychiatric demands in prisons, secure settings, A&E, police stations or in the back of ambulances. Each one a backdrop for unfolding events which proved many times over, for all involved, that Christmas does not, has never and will not equate with all that the tinsel, baubles, fairy lights and festive fare have conditioned us to believe.

No matter how much we may have invested in its trimmings, the reality is that Christmas always has and always will sit in the middle of the mess of life.

I shared in one event that stands out in my mind and has become, because of memory, an annual reminder of the hard truth of Christmas.

In one of the large London prisons on a Christmas day afternoon, I received an emergency call in the middle of association to go the fours (4th landing). The scene that greeted me was a tangled mess of officers and prisoners doing all they could to release a prisoner from the ligature he had tied around his neck before throwing himself under the iron stairwell. His positioning was precarious.

Four of the prisoners were trying to hold him up whilst the officers were trying to release him. Suddenly he was freed and brought onto the landing and laid on the ground. All involved surrounded him, not knowing what to expect, it was completely silent and that moment in time is fixed into my memory much the same as a nativity scene. But this occasion was not defined by new life, but by a new death. It was all too late. The prisoner was dead.

Over the weeks that followed, I met with the four prisoners involved. We met together in an empty cell for an hour each week to talk about what had happened and importantly what it had left them with. It had taken all their strength over a considerable amount of time and at risk to themselves to hold up the man.

Those moments of trying to hold onto life , which they all said felt like hours, they hoped that he would be ok and that they would have saved him. In the days that followed the reality of the loss of their hope did many things to them and that is what we talked about together.

In the very last session and just moments before the end, in the poignant silence that often characterises the last minutes of a special experience, one of the prisoners asked a question and in so doing made a statement “But what about all the Christmases to come? We’re going to remember this every Christmas. Christmas is fucked”.

Now in 2025 there are many of us in less dramatic circumstances who nonetheless, because of what life does to us, are able to identify with that prisoners’ statement of truth. Buying into any tinsel fairyland world does not serve us well. Failing to acknowledge that life is messy is,in its essence, the denial of our vulnerability and such denial always, always, always carries a high cost.

In the midst of the pains of life, to engage in thinking that life will just be the same will set us up for not only massive disappointment, but also for massive trauma. Being in conflict with reality is quite literally a madness, a form of psychosis.

There are voices of wisdom in our world trying to be heard amidst all the denial and delusion. The voice I heard that addressed this very issue by naming a hard truth was that of Pope Francis when he asked us to recognise that we can’t expect to live in a sick world without becoming sick ourselves.

I still hold those four prisoners in great esteem, they taught me much. Yes esteem, for the heroic efforts they made on that messy Christmas day, but more so for what they were willing to do in the life that continued. In our little cell they named their fears, angers, hurts and vulnerabilities. In so doing, they accepted the messiness of that Christmas day, of life as it was in the moment and the life that was to come. In the hard truth of all of that they gained a wisdom, a knowingness that I am confident is still serving them well. In the mess of Christmas, we have the same opportunity.

Br. Stephen Morris FCC

I recall this experience at this time each year. The only thing I change each year is the number of murder cases I have worked on in the previous months. This year the number increased yet again …

Justice is not restricted to a single outcome of right or wrong, guilty, or innocent. My work teaches me again and again that justice is complex and operates in both external and internal realities. As a forensic psychotherapist my task is often focused on the later and means that, although a legal process has arrived at a conclusion, there remains, a much longer process to achieve an internal justice.

For the offender, processing guilt, remorse, shame and taking responsibility requires much more than any judicial sentence could ever require. Enabling someone through this process is at the very heart of my work, it’s what gets me out of bed in the morning and often prevents me from sleeping all night.

To say that achieving internal justice is hard is a total understatement and for many it remains impossible, they simply cannot do it and I certainly cannot do it for them. It has always been the most challenging aspect of my career. Now, more than thirty years in, that challenge remains.

The challenge of my work is a revolving paradox. It is full of horror (murders, countless sexual assaults, rapes, many incidents of child abuse, bestiality, stalking, harassment, domestic violence, robbery, arson, stalking and suicides present on a regular basis). In equal measure my work is also full of inspiration (kindness, compassion, resilience, courage, hope, recovery, healing, and creativity). Each one of these features has characterised and shaped each day of my working life.

I recall from a few Christmases ago that late on a snowy Tuesday evening I received a message that a bed had been found in a therapeutic medium secure unit for one of my most complex, troubled, and very young offenders who had become involved in chemsex, offending violently and repeatedly in that context. He was dangerous to others and himself.

Medium secure care provides intensive therapy in a safe, respectful, and comfortable environment. When all else has failed, it is very much a last chance and so incredibly precious. It is also very much in demand. So much so that I often will not even begin the process of trying to access it for anyone as it usually impossible.

Also, often impossible to achieve is the consent, motivation, and willingness of the client. For many, it just asks too much. On this occasion and in relation to this young man I did not know what his response would be. What I knew for certain is that I could not risk delaying him the opportunity and needed to go to him in person to try to get him to say ‘yes’.

So, on an equally snowy morning morning, instead of Christmas shopping, I sat in HMP Liverpool with my ‘chemsex client’ and asked him if he would take this opportunity, this last hope, and to be willing to subject himself to daily therapy over two years and even beyond the expiry date of his sentence. A massive ask!

This young man is not stupid, he has insight, capacity, and awareness. The mayhem of chemsex had over several years made it almost impossible for him to access any of those qualities. The madness of chemsex had diminished those qualities with repeated trauma inflicted on him and yes, by him. Repeated incidents of extreme violence, exploitation, abuse. Repeated incidents of vulnerability along with many episodes of paranoia and psychosis.

His capacity for intelligence, insight and awareness had also been ignored and abused by so called professional services. One LGBT service who purports to work with victims of crime absolutely rejected my requests for them to work with him and address his victim experiences, instead they found it possible to write a report on him that was the most biased, damming, and judgemental report I have ever seen written on anyone in over thirty years practice.

But back in HMP Liverpool and in spite of being written off by that so called ‘LGBT charity’ this young man, with awareness, integrity and hope said ‘Yes’.

After agreeing and without prompting, the young man then went on to say, far better than I, why we should never give up on anyone, why access to internal justice is crucial and why, on occasions, Christmas shopping can wait:

“I’m saying yes Stephen. I want to go as I know that if you just leave me to come to appointments by myself once I’m out, then I’ll come on the Tuesday, the Wednesday and maybe even the Thursday but on the Friday I’ll go on Grindr and by the afternoon I’ll be slammed up, I’ll be fucking for the next three days and then shit will happen and you’ll be putting me back in here. In this new place, in there, I won’t be able to do that, and I might kick off and threaten the nurses and bite them and all that, but I will still end up in the therapy session and that’s what I need and what I’ve wanted for so long. Will you come to see me when I’m there? and do you think when I’ve been there for a few months we could go out for an afternoon? And will you ring my mum for me and tell her I’m going to go; she will be smiling like mad when you tell her. I’ve needed someone not to give up on me and you haven’t and neither has Seb (his Probation Officer), tell him thank you, can you ring him and tell him thank you. Will they let me go there this afternoon?”

Br Stephen Morris FCC

“The evolution of culture is ultimately determined by the amount of love, understanding and freedom experienced by its children… Every abandonment, every betrayal, every hateful act towards children returns tenfold a few decades later upon the historical stage, while every empathic act that helps a child become what he or she wants to become, every expression of love toward children heals society and moves it in unexpected, wondrous new directions.”

The above quote by Lloyd deMause holds an immense truth that goes unheeded by a significant number and with disastrous consequences. Failure to recognise the abuse of a child or worse, to recognise it and collude with it, results in, as deMause indicates – repetition.

Whilst sexual crimes against children are more widely recognised other abuses involving psychological and emotional abuse of children are not. Television programmes, adult comedy and often on FB, it is possible to witness repeated acts of the humiliation of a child for no other means than the ‘entertainment’ of adults.

Even when the process of humiliation is staged, it serves to reveal the ability of some adults to engage in, collude with and support the objectification of children. To gain pleasure from witnessing the emotional distress of a child is sadism and needs to be considered perverse.

Research tells us that repeated humiliation of a child is even more psychologically damaging in the long term than sexual abuse. Yet when such abuse is challenged it is often met with derision or dismissal. The fact the FB does not have a category to enable psychological abuse to be reported is an indicator of how collusive adult society remains in relation to the abuse of children.

It was not that long ago (1980’s) that I, as a young clinician, when pioneering the need to recognise child sexual abuse, along with others at the time were totally derided. Many attempts were made to silence us and discredit us. In relation to sexual abuse, that thankfully would seldom happen now – we all paid a cost but it was worth it.

However , It is woefully tragic and an indictment on adult society that other abuses remain acceptable by many. So, as in the 1980’s, children need voices that will not be silent. The issue of the psychological and emotional abuse of children is demanding the same. There is now in 2023 every need to speak for and voice for the voiceless – we must ! The cost of silence is ignorance and more, made clear in this closing quote from Alice Miller;

“It is not true that evil, destructiveness , and perversion inevitably form part of human existence, no matter how often this is maintained. But it is true that we are daily producing more evil and, with it, an ocean of suffering for millions that is absolutely avoidable. When one day the ignorance arising from childhood repression and humiliation is eliminated and humanity has awakened, an end can be put to this production of evil.”

Our prisons and probation departments are full of adults caught in the cycle of abuse always, always, always defined by shame and humiliation. I see and hear their stories everyday. It is a powerful reminder that I am privileged to have a role in breaking repetition. No matter how many times I’m invited to repeat that shaming and humiliation, I always resist. Yes, that invitation can come from those who are its victims, often it’s all they know. But more often it comes from others, the wider public and even at times other so called professionals. It also can come from political figures who want to name and shame or view broken lives as a “lifestyle choice”. How perverse and inhumane is that!

Truth is we are all responsible for breaking cycles of abuse. By our shared humanity, we are all called to not repeat shame and humiliation. We are all called to live our lives awakened and not to repeat the evil that is shame and humiliation.

Br. Stephen Morris FCC

Darkness has been on the agenda this week. With the changing of the clocks we lessened it in part but also increased it . This manipulation of nature only works for a short while, in a few weeks, darkness will take us all into its experience.

Yes, the days will grow shorter. Seldom is the process of equinox met with joy. This year, much like last, our journey into natures darkness is occurring alongside a range of dire warnings that could make even the most optimistic want to cling to the dying light. There is however every reason not to despair. Darkness, if we dare to go beyond our dread of it holds much for us.

The themes of light and darkness feature large in the living of faith and at times in associated celebrations. Our attention is drawn to this fact at this time of year more than any other. The equinox itself is an invitation for us to think differently and consider developing a different relationship by which we favour and value the darkness just as much as the light. It is the Pagan, or in reality not so Pagan, festival of Halloween that puts this particular paradox firmly on the agenda.

The symbolic significance of Halloween for people of all faiths and spiritualities can easily get lost in its commercialisation. In addition, misunderstanding of the festival has also done much to distract us from its real meaning. From ancient times until now Halloween invites us to recognise that this is the time in the cycle of the year when light and darkness are balanced., Halloween occurs within this annual period which, for us all, heralds’ transition.

All Hallows Eve, as Halloween is also known, proceeds of course All Saints Day, a time when we in the midst of life pause and remember those who have died. Across cultures and faiths Halloween and its position in the cycle of the year once again presents us all with the paradox experiences of night and day, light and dark, the life and death experiences at the heart of every faith. Indeed, at the heart of every life.

We often deal with experiences of paradox by choosing or favouring one or the other, it is our biggest mistake. Our failure to go to the middle ground, to bring the oppositions together always takes us into conflict. Yes, we avoid the struggle and yes, we create a comfort zone and preferring such over an opportunity for faith tells us, we miss out, we miss the point and we miss the opportunity for faith to teach us and enlighten our lives.

With Halloween putting darkness onto the paradox agenda in the particular way it does, it reminds us we can take a different approach. Rather than banishing the approaching dark season we can start to think of the approaching winter as an important time for our experience of faith and our struggles with life.

Darkness is the winter of the soul, a time when it seems that nothing is growing. We also know that winter is the fallow time of the year. The time of the year when the earth renews itself. It is also exactly this process which sits within struggle. Unbeknown to us, struggle is the call and the signal that we too are about to renew ourselves. Whether we want to or not.

Halloween and its ancient symbols remind us to reflect on aspects of life we would often rather avoid. Darkness like winter we think holds nothing of promise. But faith, once again via the experience of our struggle with paradox, tells us something different. Faith tells us that the approaching darkness of winter is a lesson about the fine art of loss and growth. Its lesson is clear; there is only one way out of struggle and that is by going into its darkness, waiting for the light and being open to new growth. That sounds of course like the very last thing we would want to do. Faith as always tells us different.

This Halloween like all those gone before from ancient times until now is, as ever, occurring at a time of struggle. 2025 does not in fact have the monopoly on struggle, or on faith. Throughout our ages, struggle is what forces us to attend to the greater things of life for ourselves and yes, at times for others.

Day after day in the prison and probation service I and colleagues are confronted with lives at their barest, we are presented with people’s pasts shaped by the harshest of the winter of life and the darkest of nights. It is often an act of nothing but faith when we give the message that the task is to begin again. An act of nothing but faith when we ask the men and women we work with to take the seeds of the past and give them new growth. But over time it is faith in humanity that enables us to see that indeed, given the chance, people do.

So as the ancients believed that Halloween was the time when the boundary between opposites was thin, we too can, for those we work with and for ourselves, recognise that it is growth that is the boundary between the darkness of unknowing and the light of new wisdom, insight, vision, new life.

Faith tells us that life begins on the other side of darkness. That life does in fact begin again after the particular winters of life, after the losses, rejections, the failures. Life goes on. Differently, but on.

After darkness we are never the same again. We are only stronger, simpler, surer than ever before that there is nothing in life we cannot survive, because through life and its changing seasons are come to accept that life is bigger than we are and in it we are meant to grow to our fullest dimensions.

As Og Mandino says of darkness and light “I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars”

Br. Stephen Morris fcc

A friend has made a film, its him talking with a friend of his who is dying. He’s posted it and I may have shared it, I don’t remember.

Right now, I don’t want to check that or even attempt to share it again because, since I watched it, I’ve remained with it, it’s been with me and I don’t want to disconnect with what it has given me, what it has connected me to and how it is still speaking to me.

The film is about a life and life, it’s about things that don’t get talked about, it’s about lived experiences and depths of pain, longing, despair and madness that nearly all the time we push away and do so in a million of ways and for most of our lives, until we reach the moment where, as in this film, all the pushing in the world does not make it go away. Most of us don’t know what happens then, for me, my friends film is about that moment.

The two men in this film and in the situation which life has visited upon them, as it will do eventually with me, are doing something radical and revolutionary in the face of it and I don’t know if I will or can do the same.

In a very calm almost understated way and with great dignity they are talking about it, they are being with it, they are naming it, they are sharing it. They are not pushing away, its horror, its pain its madness and they are allowing it to be lived.

Several times whilst watching the film I wanted to stop, I wanted to fast forward, it was uncomfortable, it brought back memories and it was painful and I cried and I hurt. But as I allowed it, as I didn’t push it away, something else started to happen and only in writing it now can I name that.

What started to happen was not what I expected and the words that eventually came to me to describe it, were even less expected and to the point of shock…. here are those words …

‘The peace that passes all understanding’.

That’s what happened.

A depth, a breadth and an overwhelming sense of peace beyond my understanding and transcending even the ‘religious’ type language my simple mind resorted to describe the experience.

I have had this experience only once before, many years ago, in the home of two very young friends, both were dying and both were naming it, not fighting it, not pushing it away and both were living it. Their home previously filled with the conflicts, despairs and pains of life was transformed into an experience of a peace beyond understanding, I remember it filling the air, in every room and over days and throughout long nights. Even having experienced that whilst still very young myself, I still chose to forget it, to push it away, until now.

I’m not sure what I will push away today, I’m not sure what I will chose not to name, or not to talk about today. I don’t know what life will visit upon me today. that I will deny or seek to avoid and self-medicate as so often before. Right now, all I know is my friends’ film and his friend, who is now at peace, are inviting me to do something different. I love you David and I love you Stephen, even though I never met you Stephen, and thank you both for this experience of peace.

Coda: Since writing this peace, David has also died and in a way which he decided for himself. I can only hope, can only pray that, for him, it was not an act of pushing away but an embracing of a peace that the world could not give… Sometimes I guess it is like that.

Br. Stephen Morris FCC