I wanted to spend some time with what Father Cyprian shared. “Dialogue is not a crossing of two monologues,” he said.
The question then becomes: How do we fight against this? How do I keep my ego in check, in real time, that longs to be right or prove a point? How do I fight against formulating a response in my head while someone else is talking? How do I play my part in entering into the mystery of dialogue so that a new land might begin to form for us to explore?
These words from Father Cyprian’s essay, “A Body You Have Prepared for Me,” included in his book “Epiphanies of Nature and Grace,” invite us into an inner posture of silence and stillness that makes our souls more receptive. Receptivity, I think, is such an important spiritual posture to cultivate. It is difficult to see the truth, goodness, and beauty of the other if we are not even open to receiving it.
Father Cyprian writes: “Therefore, silence ought to be the fundamental condition of our heart, maybe even of our bodies. We empty ourselves, and sit, waiting. It is for this that a body has been prepared for us, so that the Word would make a home in our heart, so that our whole being—body, soul, and spirit—would become a receptivity, and the Word would take flesh and become incarnate in us too, and we once again and continually give birth to Christ in the world.”
—from Franciscan Media’s Off the Page
with host Stephen Copeland, featuring Cyprian Consiglio, OSB Cam.
