Deaconess Jean Morrison DCS

Deaconess Jean Morrison DCS (12 June 1936 – 2024), Diaconate of the Church of Scotland

Born in and brought up near Glasgow, Jean Morrison worked first as a school teacher then as a parish Deaconess in Castlemilk. She studied adult education and pastoral psychology for a year in Chicago and California, and for three years trained youth workers in Australia, before coming home to take up a national appointment in the Church of Scotland as the assistant Director of Counselling Development in the Church of Scotland and then Group Relations Adviser. She married Bill Morrison. With her husband she fostered Julie and Jim before returning to employment as the first director of the pastoral foundation in Edinburgh. Jean served as a counsellor, supervisor and trainer in private practice, and during that time became a Doctor in Psychotherapy with a focus on Transactional Analysis.
Jean wrote many books including Loss an invitation to grow by Jean C Grigor and Wake up to your dreams by Jean C Morrison.

Jean served as Diaconate President and trained Deacons and other workers at St Colm’s College Edinburgh. At this time she used her knowledge of transactional analysis to give people working in a parish a framework for listening and reflecting on thoughts and feelings. Jean was active in the Edinburgh group welcoming many to her home over the years. She was passionate about Diaconal ministry. Bill and Jean lived a full life together and in later years they moved north to  Pitcairn Lodge near Skene. After Bill’s death Jean was grateful to be closer to her brother Stewart. She appreciated gratefully to connection with the Northern lights. Jean was a reliable and trustworthy friend and would go that extra mile for many individuals within the Diaconate. Rest in peace good and faithful servant

Tributes from Jean’s memorial service on 6th July 2024
We are each here today to remember our family member, friend or colleague Jean Morrison.  Many of you will know that Jesn was  member of the Diaconate of the Church of Scotland.  The Diaconate is a historic office of the Church, first noted in the New Testament as a compliments ministry to the ministry of the apostles.  In the late 1800’s Charteris revived this ministry got the church of Scotland in order to support the church through a time of great social change when people were moving from rural to town life and who had lost there connection with the church. Today we described the Diaconate as a ministry of Word and service and it is in the light of this service that we remember Jean.
After training as a primary teacher Jean entered at Colm’s to train as a Deaconess. This 2 year retaining positive Jean for working the Castlemilk parish , which she did for 8 years in total.  She served as Sunday school leader,  visitor and engaged with the local community.  Jeanette Mc Naughton DCS remembers her time there with fondness.
“Jean was appointed to Catlemilk West Church in 1963.  There were two congregations in Castlemilk at that time, the East and the West and both had Deaconesses.  I was a member of the Bible Class when she arrived and before too long she became the Leader.  The following year on the 16th September she was commissioned as a Deaconess.
She was very much involved with the many young people who were part of the congregation at that time.  A few years later she invited those about to leave the Bible class to a Youth Fellowship weekend she was organising.  I remember she was fun to be around and kept a watchful eye over the “young ones” as she called us.  Many of us became Sunday School helpers, then teachers under her guidance.
In 1968 she went off to Study in the States for a year and kept in touch with many of us over that time. She must have spent a lot of time writing individual letters and every so often she would send a batch to one person for them to distribute.  She returned to Castlemilk West for a year or two and finally bid farewell to her many friends to take up an appointment in Australia.
I have very fond memories of her as an educator and encourager.  She always had time for people and was interested in them. Caring and sharing so much with so many people.
It was during this time that Jean studied in America and began her journey with pastoral psychology. Jean was invited to go to Australia and to serve as a field worker with the Uniting Churches. Here,  Jean was able to apply what she had learned to the local congregations and to see the positive outcomes these new approaches could have.
Jean used her teaching skills on retrieving from Australia funding her niche as the Assistant director of counselling  development and training for the church of Scotland  Teaching people to support each other whether it be in small groups,  house groups or other forums seemed to be a way that Jean found to serve the church. As an enabler Jean was able to help other people to help themselves creating networks of support and understanding as she did this.  As with many Deacons Jean was always grounded in the practical of offering direct support to those who needed it , Jean particular are easily in being that of Bereavement care.
In the area of transactional analysis Jean’s served as the translator of knowledge from the American to the English ensuring that this tool could be applied to support many more than her daily life could touch.
Charteris once commented that the ministry of the Diaconate  was one of service,  following the example of Jesus Christ, who came to to be served but to serve.  Similarly Jean comments in her own CV “we were offering training and supervision for both clergy and laity using TA to help people understand themselves and their relationship within a faith context.  Jesus had commanded those who follow him to love their neighbour as themselves.” Jean practice both these people of being a servant and loving her neighbour as herself.

Kay McIntosh comments on how much she learned from Jean:
“She was my tutor at St Colm’s and thankfully I liked transactional analysis and found it useful. Later in life I studied Mod 1,2,3 and 4 in listening skills with Mary Lawson and Penny Wooding and then went on to do the diploma with the pastoral foundation and discovered that Mary and mostly Jean were to be my tutors. This wasn’t easy for either of us as we also went away frequently with the Diaconate retreat group. There were around twenty students in my tutor group and every year they had another fresh intake. Over the years Jean must have taught many people counselling. If we ever had an odd number in our group Jean always asked me to work with her, my fellow students weren’t always pleased about this but it did mean that Jean and I got to know a lot about each other as we had to reveal situations from our own past experiences of life.”

Moving forward in time Jean continues to exemplify the Diaconal ministry through her collaborative work at the pastoral foundation. Working ecumenicallly and with professional from other sectors Jean she served to remind us that the church does not stand alone and against the community but is here to serve the communities in which it is set.  Knowledge is not the domain of the few but is to be shared with those who will benefit from it.  I believe that the life and work of  our friend Jean,Morrison will have touched many more people than she will have met in her daily life as she trained those who have benefited others.
Jean saw herself as a “hands on practitioner “. Like many of her Diaconal colleagues she brought herself,  her cofactor to ask that she did.  Not wishing to be away from this front facing role Jean chose to teach, practice counselling and support those on the margins through Lothian Council for integrated living.
Throughout her working life Jean, the Deaconess, served her Church in various ways. In the local congregation she took her part. As president of the Diaconate from 1987 -1990 she was actively involved in celebration 100 years of Diaconal ministry.
As a member of presbytery serving on the superintendence committee, and in other areas nominations committee and the Panel of Doctrine. Jean was well respected for her professional insight and knowledge.  She served ably and willingly.
Her Diaconal call was fulfilled in so many ways.
“Jean had the ability to see things and gently approach a person and offer help be it listening or practically.”
We give thanks today for her faithful service.

In Jean’s own words (from Engaging with a history of counselling, spirituality and faith in Scotland: a readers’ theatre script).
I was born in Glasgow, in 1936. It was a very snowy day in December. The doctor couldn’t get his car up the hill, so I was born with the help of the nurse. To my mother’s absolute terror, as soon as the nurse took me in her arms, she climbed on a chair and held me up. My mum said, “What are you doing to my baby?” And she said, “I’m holding her up to God before she comes down to the rest of us.”
That story was reinforced in all family life: I was to be a good girl, I was to be devoted to the church and prayer and all the rest, and go through all the different stages of church life as it was in those days. That’s just the way it was. The day after I turned 21 I had one of those experiences when I just suddenly knew something I hadn’t known before. The minister in our church said, “sometimes people give up well paid secure jobs to serve Christ in some other way” and at that point, I knew that God wanted me to give up teaching to become a deaconess of the Church of Scotland.
As a deaconess, the biggest challenge was pastoral care. The only training I had was that the lecturer at college, took us through the Gospel of Mark and showed us how Jesus had responded to people then told us to go out with the Bible and prayer and be with people the way Jesus had been with people. I remember sitting in somebody’s living room, on a winter afternoon as the room darkened and she began to talk about experiences of her dead husband coming back. I was scared shitless. I didn’t know how to pray in situations like that. I didn’t know how to read the Bible to them in situations like that. People who were mentally ill, I didn’t know how to relate to them. People who had a drink problem, I had been brought up to be teetotal, all I could do, was to tell them that they should really try to get off the stuff. I hadn’t the foggiest. I felt so de-skilled.
I was awarded a scholarship to Chicago Theological Seminary, and there were courses in pastoral psychology, and I thought, “gosh, this is what I’m wanting.” It was the beginning of my exposure to the whole counselling world. I must have spent most of that year with my mouth open in awe. I’d no idea people could be so skilled, could be so compassionate. I had just been full of fear with the people who needed me. When I realised there was training I could do, that really launched me off.
When I got back, the Church of Scotland had made a new job for me, working with Archie Mills, who was Director of Counselling, Development and Training. We’d both gone to an introductory course in Transactional Analysis, TA for short, and as we talked we said, “this is a wonderful tool for us to use to help people understand how to be a Christian. It’s a secular tool, but it’s as if it’s a fulfilling of Jesus’ command: love your neighbour as you love yourself.” So we asked permission to take professional qualifications in TA. In the 70s, the Church of Scotland was creative and open to new things. One of the big theories of TA is, “I’m OK, you’re OK.” Now, that was confronted hugely by people who said, “that doesn’t fit with our theology because, of course we’re not OK. We are people with original sin, so how can you possibly say, I’m OK, you’re OK? I’m a sinner, you’re a sinner. And you live with that. And of course, through Jesus, he sees us as perfect and God sees us as perfect through Jesus.” That’s the theology. We tried to explain that what we saw in the Gospels was the same as we were understanding in teaching TA. We would say, “this is the way Jesus behaved with people. He believed in them. If he said, go and sin no more, he believed in them enough to believe that they would at least try and be better.” But some people said, “well of course, Archie and Jean are just preaching the gospel of TA, not the gospel of Jesus.”
This is a truism, but God knows me so much better than I know myself – I have been conscious of being led through life sometimes so that I was carrying out my calling to be a deaconess, to serve Him, working in the community, working in the church even in retirement. My life sort of makes sense to me looking back.

A reflection by Tom Gordon
Today, I honour someone whose life and work lived out the truth of the words above. Her name is Jean Morrison – Jean Grigor, before she married Bill – and she died recently after a long and full life. I had the privilege of paying tribute to her at her memorial service in Edinburgh, and to thank God for the enlightenment and wisdom she brought me, and many others, which gave me a foundation for my own life and work.
A Parish Deaconess in the Church of Scotland and having been a key person in the Church’s approach to Counselling and Group Relations, Jean was appointed as the first Director of the Pastoral Foundation in Edinburgh in the 1980s, an ecumenical development whose ethos was to train ministers and Church leaders in group work, bereavement care, listening skills, pastoral care and counselling. Her methodology of choice was Transactional Analysis (TA), a way of understanding human behavior developed by the Canadian-born psychiatrist, Eric Berne, in the 1960s. TA is predicated on the insight above offered by Laozi: “Knowing oneself is enlightenment. Mastering oneself is true wisdom.”
Through participation in Jean’s courses and benefitting from her support as my Counsellor, I came to recognise that self-knowledge was vital in ministry. I’ve been immersed in pastoral, end-of-life and bereavement care all my life, and I would not have survived if I didn’t have access to the wisdom and enlightenment of some self-knowledge. There are other methodologies, of course, which are as effective as TA. But whatever we use, unless we are willing to develop our knowledge of self, we are no more than robot-like machines, and easily broken or damaged.
Jean Morrison, I thank you. Whatever self-knowledge I now have, began with you. The life-long adventure of understanding self, began with you. Knowing that the gaps in my self-knowledge can still be usefully explored, began with you. Thank you, Jean, for putting me on the road to enlightenment and true wisdom.