Originally published at crisis magazine
At the end of 1981, I thought that I had been sacked by the general of the Dominicans Sisters, whose Retreat Center at Chingford, in London, I had run for twelve years. But, two years later, I discovered that I had, in fact, been sacked by God. While I had been encouraging the sisters with whom I worked to go to Rome to study traditional Dominican Spirituality at the Angelicum, another group had been encouraged to seek renewal at a Jesuit retreat center in Denver, Colorado. The renewal course in Denver taught how to combine the teaching of modern Depth Psychology with traditional Jesuit Spirituality to change oneself, the community to which you would return, and other religious communities throughout the world.
Before returning to renew their community at Chingford, a group of Dominican Sisters came together to discern how best to accomplish the task before them. In the discernment process, they came to discern that I was the major obstacle to their plans. I must, therefore, be sacked. This decision was not theirs but God’s, and the letter from the General was just the instrument of His will. A renegade later told me that they knew that it was
