On the Margins

Stories & spritual reflections from meeting those on the margins of society.

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  • Sexy Serial Killers

    ‘The Fall’ is one of those TV dramas that many revisit and of course it’s invitation to have murder in mind. …..

    James Dornan, the immensely talented Irish actor, will forever sit in the mind of many as a serial killer. A lasting impact I guess, of the unrelenting intensity he conveyed in his portrayal of Paul Spector via the awesome production of ‘The Fall’.

    Just as the books about ‘Fred and Rose’ flew off the shelves in their millions, so too does the darkness of ‘The Fall’ appeal to a society which still struggles to really comprehend the capacity of the human condition for the vilest of offences. The only way it seems that we can get our heads around the fact that the human condition can be murderous is to convert it into entertainment.

    As long as we place the dark capacity of the human condition into a book, painting, play, poem, dance or TV series, especially one as good as ‘The Fall’, then we can keep all our primitive darkness, murderousness, perverse desires, violence’s, rages and destructiveness separate, away from us, unintegrated and, just as dangerous as the serial killer does, ‘split off’.

    Evidence of our need to ‘split off’ our capacity for primitive violence is also expressed by many who conveyed their surprise at how handsome, sexy and good looking was Paul Spector. Such comments, and they were many, reminded me of the very first group therapy I facilitated for men who, like Paul Spector, had raped and murdered.

    In the weeks leading up to starting the group myself and my co-clinician met with about fourteen referred men to carry out individual assessments to see if they were ready and suitable for intervention. We needed a group of no more than eight. Over several weeks we divided up the men and conducted the assessments on a one to one basis. My co-clinician and I shared an office. I remember well him returning after conducting one assessment looking red in the face, slightly energised and unsettled but grinning all over his face. He noticed my immediate curiosity, sat down and said to me “Oh my God! that one was absolutely gorgeous”, We laughed long and loud.

    Murderers, rapists and especially serial rapists are not meant to be ‘gorgeous’ and certainly not sexy. The fact of course is, that there is absolutely no reason why they should not be and, having met many, I can evidence that many are indeed ‘gorgeous’. The issue for the forensic setting, for the wider community and my co-therapist, is not that they cannot be ‘gorgeous’ but that we should not be seduced by it. Gorgeousness and dangerousness are not as incompatible as we like to think.

    I loved the fact that Paul Spector was not only sexy, he was also a bereavement counsellor. What a great role for us and for him to fulfil the task of ‘splitting off’. Both, accurately fly in the face of the monster we need him and other men and women like him to be.

    My business is public protection, working with the human condition to make our world a safer place. The biggest challenge to achieving this is not the Paul Spector’s I meet; the real dangerousness and risk is in the minds of those who need monsters to look and sound like monsters. It is in the mindset that can entertain Fred and Rose when they dwell in the chapters of a book but not if they are living next door.

    Fred and Rose did not do what they did once we knew about them, it all happened when they were just neighbours. Paul Spector did what he did at the same time when he was busy being a; bereavement counsellor, a loving father, a boring husband and of course, being gorgeous.

    If we can bear to think what ‘The Fall’ invites us to, it could well be the biggest public protection crime prevention campaign we have ever known. We, and the unintegrated monster in us, needs it.

    Br Stephen Morris FCC

  • When Silence is a Sin

    The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse highlighted many times the horrific incidents of abuse within religious institutions.

    The Inquiry also made clear how a considerable number of faith leaders collude, cover-up and deny the experience of victims. In particular, the report mentions a series of religious groups including Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baptists, Methodists, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and non-conformist Christian denominations. Other reports have covered both Anglican and Catholic institutions. All are implicated in their moral failure.

    This report however brings something new to our attention; the fact that some seemingly integrated faiths, operate using abuses of control and power more readily associated with extreme sects.

    I have long been aware that within State accepted religious organisations, individual leaders can create and use the dynamics of a sect for their own ends. The indicators can be frighteningly obvious, but in religious cultures that often thrive within the guise of ‘chronic niceness’, they seldom get recognised for what they are. Even when suspicions are raised or evidenced all too often the wall of silence and the collusion with chronic niceness results in victims being ignored and their abusers remaining in power.

    In the context of religious organisational abuse, not all abuse is sexual; domestic, physical, psychological, emotional, financial and spiritual abuses all feature. Sects exist within mainstream religion of all faiths with the knowledge and often the blessing of their hierarchy.

    The report from the Inquiry usefully made clear indicators of high control sect like dynamics that, if present , should be recognised as a serious cause for concern, including:

    Victim blaming

    Not openly discussing matters of sexuality

    Abuse of power by religious leaders

    Men dominating leadership

    Lack of accountability

    Mistrust of non-religious agencies

    Misusing the concept of “forgiveness”

    Dealing with reported concerns in isolation

    Poor understanding and non- application of safeguarding procedures

    Exclusivity, favouritism of individuals or cliques

    The Inquiry also found that in some faith communities “the relationship between ideas of sexual ‘purity’ and social and familial standing are likely to make abuse markedly harder to report.

    The imperative not to speak is bound up with notions of honour, with consequences for an individual’s ability to marry, for their family and for the ‘honour’ of their community. In extreme cases, being seen as dishonourable can lead to violence against that individual or their family.

    It is this cycle of abuse I see played out on a regular basis with young gay men forced to deny their sexuality in order to please mum and dad. It never ends well. Secret lives are led, conflicted sexuality manifests in violence and murders take place. These factors are reflected daily in my work with those who also become involved in chemsex related crime. These men have often created many victims but they too are indeed victims.

    In all of this, silence is the most defining, dangerous and permission giving factor. Silence, I’ve concluded in this context is indeed a sin and is in need of an Inquiry report all of its own. In my career spanning over forty years, the one consistent message I have been required to give is the need for those who know of abuse, to speak out and to speak out even if uncertain. Inquiry reports speak out, but will remain limited in effect if others closer to home remain silent.

    Those who abuse, who collude and cover up are of course never silent …. leaving victims to persist alone.

    Br. Stephen Morris FCC

  • Madness is Often Very Intelligent

    I’ve experienced enough madness in my life and work to confidently recognise that its main causal factor is when a significant experience that we know to be real and true is denied by those around us.

    When our reality is not witnessed or affirmed it can take us into the realms of insanity. If you said to me each day that the sky was not blue it was brown and if those around remained silent and did nothing to affirm my reality of seeing it was blue, I would eventually become very mad indeed. This process is often experienced by those who have been abused in one way or another. No one witnesses it, those around do not believe it, the perpetrator denies it, then the impact of that over time is madness.

    Activists and those who work for truth and justice can also be vulnerable to such damaging levels of denial. If you are saying something that others do not want to hear, if those around you cannot tolerate anything other than their own agenda, if the truth of your message is uncomfortable then, again and again, you will be confronted with the negation of your experience, belief, identity and value.

    Whatever our cause, what we all require to keep us sane is a reliable witness, someone who is able to say’ you are right, I hear you and I get it. An effective witness enables us to recognise that when we have been made to feel insane, it is often because we have named something, revealed something that others with to think is unthinkable. These moments, rather than being silenced by self doubt or allowing ourselves to be convinced of insanity, are in fact moments when we can be reminded that madness is in fact very intelligent.

    Being witnessed and being a witness for others is a powerful reminder that we are not in this world alone. To experience both is a privilege indeed and often the very light that we all need.

    Br Stephen Morris CJ

  • She said Nothing .. so I Killed Her ….

    She Said Nothing, So I Killed Her ….

    ….then nothing was said ..

    A murderer once said to me … “She said nothing … so I killed her, so nothing was said”. This statement made me think about the power of silence and how we experience it. Here are my thoughts:

    “The dumb silence of apathy, the sober silence of solemnity, the fertile silence of awareness, the active silence of perception, the baffled silence of confusion, the uneasy silence of impasse, the muzzled silence of outrage, the expectant silence of waiting, the reproachful silence of censure, the tacit silence of approval, the vituperative silence of accusation, the eloquent silence of awe, the unnerving silence of menace, the peaceful silence of communion and the irrevocable silence of death Illustrate by their unspoken response to speech that experiences exist for which we lack the word”. – Leslie Kane (1984)

    For me, the sacredness of silence, I have come to recognise, has more often than not been experienced away from and outside of the environments commonly associated with prayer, contemplation, adoration and reflection. Yes, I love the early first hours of each new day, the closing hours of darkness and daily visits to the Blessed Sacrament, but these occasions are relatively short to what unfolds hour by hour in my daily work.

    For the majority of each day I am in constant dialogue and relationship with others. The context of a Police station, a court room, probation office and a prison wing, is one of immense business, the noises of distress, internal and external conflicts, negotiations, relief and … the list goes on. I guess the same can be said about many different working environments including yours.

    But of course, sacredness and its many manifestations of silence is to be found in all of these places, experiences and contexts and is not limited to the cloister, church or chapel.

    My awareness that silence and its sacred contents did not come from known holy saints, priests or spiritual directors. My eyes and heart were opened to silence by the very first prisoners and offenders I met and by others who worked with them.

    In the early days of my forensic training, I was privileged to be taught by Consultant Psychotherapist, Dr Murray Cox. Murray was also a Shakespearian scholar and integrated his immense knowledge fully into his clinical thinking at Broadmoor. He inspired me as no other, to understand silence as one of the most meaningful communications and introduced me to the work of Kane as quoted above.

    Murray died many years ago now. I continue to be reminded of him daily as I now consult to younger clinicians, police and probation officers helping them to develop ways of being with people who often no other wants to be with. When seeking to support them in this challenging task, it is not unusual for them to express relief and delight because their client is talking about his or her offence with great ease “He’s doing very well Stephen, he talks about his offence all the time”. My response is seldom one of joy. In this situation I am only too mindful of one client who declared; “She said nothing….. So, I killed her, then nothing was said”.

    This powerful statement on silence enabled me to recognise that when a client, tells their story easily, this usually signifies that it is not the part of the story that needs to be told. Casual telling, always indicates that there is story, a much earlier story, that the client may not be able to bear to tell at all. It is this story that needs to be told and it is this story, if no more people are to be killed, that needs to be heard.

    We all have stories that need to be told and we all need silence in which to tell them. Silence alone can take us beyond our initial telling. Beyond the story what we first tell ourselves, others and God. It is this story that needs silence to emerge in its fullness, no matter what it sounds like and no matter what it holds. Even our untold stories can have a murderous effect.

    The importance of allowing and staying with silence is not only crucial for my forensic clients but is also crucial for us all. We can all move through the day being more aware of the many communications within silence. Not only we will start to hear the important untold in our own stories, but a myriad of other communications will also open up to us in the lives of others. The sacredness of this process can of course happen in all the places we have been conditioned to consider ‘holy’ and in many other places, equally ‘holy’, but outside of our conditioning. Perhaps, even more often than we allow ourselves to notice, the sacredness of silence happens and is happening in the groundedness of our untold stories, in the fullness of life and in all its glorious noisy mess and messy places …

    But first I guess we have to learn to shut the fuck up!

    Br. Stephen Morris FCC

  • Being Like Jesus …. in Soho

  • Shame and Shaming Does Not Justice Make

    Throw away the key’ is a term applied by some, to most if not all, of the men and women I have worked with in prison, probation and policing. It’s a term informed by hatred of a person rather than an informed understanding of how that person behaved at a particular moment in time. The term holds an implied wish to impart suffering rather than a restorative, redemptive justice.

    It’s an appalling indictment on the UK Government that, on an almost daily basis I am reminded how such a revengeful wish can also inform the thinking of politicians and government ministers.

    It never takes very long for statements made by desperate prime ministers to make claims about how they will reap revenge on those who do wrong. In a barely disguised wish to shame and humiliate, it’s not that long ago the UK government announced a plan to make people sentenced to community service wear hi viz jackets identifying them as such. Such thinking can only be recognised as abusive and deeply inhumane.

    Such public labelling repeats the very experiences of what often informs the early lives of many who offend. What we in criminal justice attempt to achieve is to address the unhealed trauma of the past by facilitating the growth of self-esteem, self-worth, self-respect and, crucially important, the instillation of hope. It is these aspects of the human condition that prevent re-offending. Since when did public humiliation ever serve to redeem and make whole again? Never. It cannot.

    Acts of revenge, naming and shaming are dangerous., They are also especially damaging when done to the powerless by those in power. Shaming and humiliation are never useful experiences, they are weapons of abuse. Having commissioned an offence people, starting out on a journey of reparation, require every encouragement to change and to be different. The most powerful motivating factor is for them to grow and discover hope.

    Labelling someone as bad at that point, at any point, removes the essential essence required to change, live and remain living. That essential essence being hope.

    No one therefore has such a right to ‘throw away any key’ in whatever way they choose to do it or imply it. As a forensic clinician, I learned early on, no matter what psychological torment or anguish I was being asked to address, my main task was the instillation of hope. For without hope little else is possible. Without hope, what are we?

    During my year of specialising in the treatment of trauma at the Tavistock Clinic. I was privileged to be tutored by Caroline Garland. It was Caroline who introduced me to the term ‘the instillation of hope’ She described hope as like a mineral, it grows and diminishes according to its environment and treatment. In the lives of the many I have worked with I have now seen this process repeated many times.

    There are two environments that have taught me most about the instillation of hope. I know both environments well; the prison and the monastery. Without a doubt they are both most certainly places where the human experiences of hope and expectation manifest in their fullest. On arrival in both settings much has usually occurred in the external world to have diminished hope to the point where there is often little if any left. In the solitude and separation provided by both settings, and contrary to often naïve public understanding, both prison and monastery provide the ideal conditions for hope to grow and be lived again.

    Both Prison and monastery, if allowed and resourced, to fulfil their task will make clear the potential of a future, a vision and a way forward.

    Hope is not to be found in complex interventions, formation programmes or expensive schemes. It is found and manifest in human connection, in human valuing one to another where the harms of the past are not repeated. Human connection can be as simple as a smile. On a prison landing a smile and a authentic greeting can be immensely powerful. Many prisoners over the years have taken time to thank me just simply for that.

    Across the world, in prisons and monasteries, there are awesome examples of manifest hope and transformation arising from environments where a sense of connection and being in the mess of life together has been allowed and nurtured.

    In a humane society we can all share in the responsibility of holding hope for others and indeed playing an active part in hopes installation. The main resource we can offer is ourselves. We know that it is the relationship we establish with those who have offended that can provide often longed for experiences of safe connection. Our relationships can offer the experience of a secure attachment. Such relationships founded in hope affords respect and dignity. When founded in authenticity, hope is installed and lives are changed.

    To identify someone who has offended by dressing them up in a labelled hi viz jacket comes from a sadistic mindset. It is vile and beyond the sacredness of humanity. In the redemption of the world, we are all called to be so much more than that.

    Br Stephen Morris FCC

  • Meeting Ourselves in Silence

    ,

    “Silence teaches us to go down inside ourselves to find real life rather than to reach for it always and forever outside ourselves”.

    So, Sr. Joan Chittister reminds us.

    I witness much fear in the consulting room, but none compares with that which some show in the presence silence. It requires much effort to resist the compulsion to break a silence, especially when the client appears tortured by it. Some just won’t allow it. But if real life is to be found then, allowing it, we must. If silence allows for a meeting with our real selves surely this is something to not just be welcomed and encouraged, but also something to be celebrated.

    Such a fearful response reveals how so many carry an image of themselves as someone who is so horrific as to be not allowed and therefore distracted from at every possible opportunity. Such are the tragic consequences of internalised toxicity rooted in experiences of shaming, humiliation, rejection not being ‘good enough’ and of course being considered ‘other’. No wonder the noise of life has become so essential. Silence for many is a risk too great.

    However fact remains, emergence of the real self absolutely does require silence. How else in this world will it ever get a chance? Silence provides us with the harrowing ground of the soul. It breaks up the clods and boulders of our lives. It roots out the weeds, it levels the rocky and unstable ground in which we’ve grown.

    When silence faces us with our own cries of fear, pain and resistance then the knowing of ourselves is without doubt happening. It is only in silence that these things can be addressed and only by that process can the real self emerge.

    Getting beyond the fear of real self and silence, means disengaging from all that blocks us and keeps us separated from whom we really are and have ever been.

    It is in silence that fear can be confronted and its darkness removed. It is in silence that we move into greater light and growth. This very process of darkness into light, inherent in nature, is constantly occurring all around us. We need silence to notice and in noticing be assured.

    Silence is not to be restricted to the limits of the clinicians consulting room, vital in fact that its not. The therapy room is by its nature removed from real life. At best it is a box of mirrors. No, real life happens outside the therapy room and it is in real life that we so need to allow for, integrate and enable occasions of crucial life giving silence.

    This wonderful quote from Leslie Kane provides encouraging example on example of allowed for silence in daily life and where we don’t need to have a word:

    “The dumb silence of apathy, the sober silence of solemnity, the fertile silence of awareness, the active silence of perception, the baffled silence of confusion, the uneasy silence of impasse, the muzzled silence of outrage, the expectant silence of waiting, the reproachful silence of censure, the tacit silence of approval, the vituperative silence of accusation, the eloquent silence of awe, the unnerving silence of menace, the peaceful silence of communion and the irrevocable silence of death Illustrate by their unspoken response to speech that experiences exist for which we lack the word”.

    Silence can begin today, it can fill today and can start by courageously asking the most challenging question of all: What is it that we are hiding from that our flight into noise holds at bay?

    Br. Stephen Morris fcc

  • The Full Stops of Life

    I am working with six people at the moment where, directly or in some other way, all are telling me; ‘I’m not sure how much of myself is real anymore’. It takes a lot of humility for that statement to be made. But in prisons up and down the land, custody suites and courts, it is something I have often heard. It is perhaps among the most useful realisations anyone can ever have. The tragedy is that it often takes an experience of prison, or some other ‘full stop’ in life, to cause the issue of the false self to be recognised and spoken of.

    To just be ourselves is not easy anymore. All forms of media tell us where to go, what to do, to buy, to own and how to look. The process of getting, hoarding things and hiding things in order to meet these demands and create a public image smothers life even before it starts. When enough is never enough, happiness is always just out of reach and unrest is pervasive.

    It is often the search to get enough that ends up for many in prison and if not the brick and mortar kind then one of our own making. As Sr Joan Chittister reminds us; The truth is that too much of anything erodes its essential power. Too much partying leads to a loss of concentration. Too much travel leads to exhaustion. Too much make-up distances us from the glow of the natural. Too much self-talk identifies us as narcissists. Too much posturing, too much affect, too much drama leaves us clown like and alone on the stage of life. There’s no one to talk to because few are really sure enough who this person is to risk interaction.

    Indeed, too much of anything robs us of the rest of ourselves. It cuts us off and separates us from others. But of greater concern and pain it also separates us from ourselves.

    So, when someone at the start of their work with me is able to state they no longer know who they are, it heralds the start of a challenging process in which pretence in its many layers starts to fall away and a more real authentic person emerges.

    The falling away process nearly always involves the letting go of complexity. The letting go of everything that we have invested in to meet the need of ‘enough’. Only to find that, as we shed it layer by layer, it has only covered up everything that we always ever had. So, although at the start the falling away is feared and experienced as loss, it really is a process of much gain.

    Being simple in our place in the world and by not playing at being anything we are not, we start to be all that we have always been. If we are content with less than the latest of everything, we cannot be frustrated by the fact that others have newer, better versions of anything. If what we have does everything we need to have it to do, why bother to want it to be bigger and better?

    Importantly, if we are content with who we are, we can’t be insulted by anybody. Nor then we will doubt or despise ourselves. We will know who we are and what we are and what we are not. Being content with our reality frees us from self-aggrandisement and from our false selves.

    Living a more authentic self enables us to take life more as it comes. It relieves us of the burden of the superfluous, the inauthentic, the masquerade and brings us closer to the best we have to give to the world.

    Enabling ourselves and others to become free of the many prisons of the false self takes courage and more. It requires commitment, determination, a letting go and a saying ‘goodbye’ to all and sometimes ‘goodbye’ to those that played a part in enabling a covering up of authenticity. We tend not to like the ‘full stops’ of life because we fear the losses of ending. But ‘full stops’ are also often the very point where new things begin.

    Br. Stephen Morris fcc

  • 7/7, Who Are We Remembering?

    “I looked at the picture of one of the bombers expecting to see a monster but, I didn’t see a monster. What I saw was a young man” – Gill Hicks. Survivor of 7/7 …

    Today many will be remembering the lives lost and rearranged on the morning of 7 July 2005. I have.

    The events of that day confronted us with many things. Horrific events like that do, and repeatedly.

    The reminders of that time will, for many, occur in the context of anniversary remembrance, news footage which with the passing of years get shorter and shorter. For those who lives were rearranged on that day the concept of an annual anniversary is often meaningless. Each day, and for some, each moment holds a myriad of anniversaries. Traumatic loss in its many forms tends to have that effect.

    Collective traumatic events, as indeed 7/7 was, one way or another insert themselves into our memories and remain. Whether the anniversary effect is moment by moment, daily or annually we will be remembering. ‘Who we will be remembering’? however, is an important question, so obvious, so assumed in fact, it seldom gets asked and in the not asking misses the point that memory is highly selective.

    Selective memory is often defined by acceptable memory. Some memories we allow and are allowed, whilst other memories are banished, not allowed, not deemed accepted or wanted. The memories of 7/7 are one such example of acceptable and unacceptable memory.

    The acceptable memories of the day are literally set in iron in the southeast corner of Hyde Park. Here 52 people have been named, memorialised into cast iron pillars. It’s a powerful setting and a powerful statement. But it is partial, it is incomplete, it does not tell or symbolise the full story and does not give permission for the full story to be remembered. In the later sense it is an edifice to banished knowledge.

    The invitation of the memorial to remember extends only to 52 who died and not to the whole figure of 56. The names of Habib, Germaine, Mohammad and Shehzad are missing. The message is clear there are those we are allowed to think about and those we are not, must not. We must not think about the four young men who birthed 7/7 and the way it rearranged life. Equally, we may say defiantly ‘but I don’t want to think about them’ .

    The exclusion of the four young men from the symbolic memorial is symbolic in itself. I get the varied reasons for this exclusion, but the meaning causes me difficulty to say the least.

    When thinking about something or someone is not allowed, if we ourselves make this choice, it marks the beginning of exclusion, a splitting off, a fragmentation. When applied to a person, to people, it creates ‘other’. Truth is, in the context of Habib, Germaine, Mohammad and Shehzad, it was the creation of ‘other’ that birthed 7/7 into reality.

    The process of making ‘other’ is a process of creating ‘less than’. It’s the process of objectification. The reduction of person into object. If we want to understand why and how 7/7 happened in first place, in those six words, there we have it.

    Crimes of all sorts are commissioned because in the mind of the perpetrator they have consciously or unconsciously engaged in a process of division and of reduction. The ‘other’ quickly becoming ‘less than’ making anything possible. It’s not a question of ‘who’ is being killed? but ‘what ‘is being killed? In the mind of the one who’s doing the killing they are killing ‘something’, seldom is it a ‘someone’.

    This is not a process unique to those who go on to enact such a process of objectification individually. Governments, organisations, communities, rulers etc do it all the time. Approve it all the time. The creation and use of the very term ‘terrorist’ a prime example how the State operates on the dynamics of objectification, findings ways to legitimise the treatment of others as less than and enshrining laws that make it ok for them to objectify but not for others. This process can be referred to, understood and witnessed time and time again in world over the dynamics of oppression.

    If the process we follow is one that results in objectification, then, State, Religion, Politics or indeed our own mind then the consequences are likely to be the same. We are all in peril.

    So, what to do?

    Let’s be clear, the process of all that unfolded on 7/7 began in the mind and it is to the mind where we must go if any different process is to be given a chance. We need to be able to invite our minds to start to comprehend its understanding of the very antidote to the process of objectification, that antidote being the process of wholeness. Easier said than done. More so because our understanding of wholeness is often deeply flawed.

    If 7/7 made anything clear it was that we live in a culture of dividedness and fragmentation of the self. The very opposite to wholeness. When we contemplate what it takes to live a peaceful life, we extol wholeheartedness and a version of wholeness that is only constituted of all the perceive to be good. But being wholehearted, being whole, is only sufficient if your heart is your whole self; being whole is only sufficient if your mind is all you are. We are, of course, so much more expansive than our hearts and our minds or whatever fragment we choose to fixate on. But we compartmentalize our experience in this way, divide it into fragments, as if to divide and conquer it. We banish ‘bad’ and delude ourselves that only ‘good’ has a place if we are to be whole. We could not be more wrong.

    By its very nature wholeness is the coming together of all that we banish in the name of ‘badness’ with all that we embrace in the name of ‘goodness’. It is the unification and acceptance of this paradox which takes us unto wholeness and prevents process of ‘othering’, splitting, making less than, objectification and all that follows in its wake. The 7/7’s of our world.

    On this day of remembering there are of course those who knew Hasib, Germaine, Mohammed and Shehzad. They knew them before they became victims of the process of objectification. They knew them with fuller lives that were not reduced to a piece of media print, and some, if not many would have known them with the human capacity for love as well as hate. They may not have a column of steel erected in their memory but as members of the human condition they were not immune from attachments and all that lasts from such a sacred fact of life.

    Banished thinking and banished knowledge may make us feel comfortable with ourselves. Being selective with the lives we choose to remember may make us feel right and just. But unless we start to recognise what it is that gets repeated in this then the cycle of 7/7 we will surely need to repeat. Remembering what less than wholeness looks like, will only serve us well if we can bare to remember what wholeness actually is.

    Br Stephen Morris fcc

  • Broken, Always Demands Our Best

    Some time ago, I was delivering a briefing to trainee police and probation officers, I presented a heartbreaking case of a young man. I asked the trainees to describe to me what hearing about this man’s life made them feel? My question was met with silence. I’m good with silence, so I let it continue. I eventually prompted; “Anyone?” More silence. So I took a direct approach and started to go around the group. The first trainee gave me his response “I don’t feel anything”, delivered with something akin to arrogance and so I continued to go around the group. Still, no one was naming a feeling. To say I was pissed off is an understatement. But I was also despairing. What have we come to when brokness is met with such an absence of feeling.

    Broken, always requires our best. Always requires more of us than we know we have and is always deserving of even much more. The broken, I have learned over years, have much to give us. It is they who, one by one and by their own uniqueness, have made me what I am today – that started with being able to feel. Right now, it would seem, we need the broken to teach us as never before….

    The broken among us teach us.

    What sustains me is this knowledge, that it’s really the broken among us that can contribute a lot to our quest for full, equal justice.

    When you’re broken, you know something about what it means to be human. You know something about grace. You learned something about mercy. You learned something about forgiveness. It’s the broken among us that can teach us some things. And knowing that you don’t have to be perfect and complete gives you a way of moving through challenge that would be hard if you think that that’s not something that’s possible.

    And so I tell my young officers, you can’t do this work, you can’t be in some of the painful places we’re in, you can’t hold children who’ve been abused, and look into despiring eyes and not be impacted by that.

    You’re going to shed some tears. You are. And you’re gonna be overwhelmed, you’re going to get tired, you’re gonna get pushed down — all of those things are going to happen, and it doesn’t mean you’re weak. It doesn’t mean that you’re not up to the task. It doesn’t mean you’re incompetent or incapable. It just means you’re a human being. And that’s what, is exactly what is needed.

    And so what sustains me is, in part, this knowledge that I can’t always feel confident and sure and clear; that there are going to be times when it’s uncertain what’s going to happen. And I’ve tried to appreciate that.

    We can all in our brokenness be lifted up by the spirit of people who have endured way more. But we must, we must be able to connect with them, see ourselves in them and feel with them. Anything less than this is not our best.

    Br. Stephen Morris fcc