Steven Chase is resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research and is the author of two previous books. In this paperback, he maintains that the spirit of Christ is working through the natural world to transform our minds, bodies, and souls. God resides in nature and draws out our attention and respect for its mysteries. God has given us nature as a place to heal our wounds and to lift our spirits. God speaks through nature and we are called to listen.
For Chase, nature is a wonder-world containing the visible and the invisible, the mundane and the sacred, the ecological and the sacramental. Part of the adventure of faith is recognizing that the cycles of nature are themselves ritual and liturgy. Another part is to view contemplative prayer as "stalking mystery." There is no end to the miracles which abound in oceans, trees, plants, and animals. And there are even messages and signs in "the dark night of the planet."
The last three sections of Nature as Spiritual Practice cover this arena of God's activities as a place of healing and solace, as a spur to moral action, and as a place of enchantment. Chase ends with a list and explication of what he calls the nine Green Beatitudes. He notes: "Through these Green Beatitudes humanity blesses and is blessed by creation now and in the future."
