The Tree of Life: Models of Christian Prayer (review)

In her blurb on the back cover of Steven Chase’s The Tree of Life: Models of Christian Prayer, Margaret Guenther has it entirely right:

Chase has written a book of great depth and scope, demonstrating an impressive knowledge of the Christian tradition from the earliest days to the contemporary writers on prayer. This is not a book to be skimmed but rather one to be read slowly and savored, then to be put on the shelf as a good friend and revisited frequently. . . .

Steven Chase’s book is comprehensive and is both an excellent refresher on sources and methods of prayer that one already may know; and an introduction to materials on prayer that one has yet to read. Furthermore, Chase’s book is both ecumenical and interdisciplinary. As a Presbyterian minister who earned his Ph.D. at Fordham University, his compendium on prayer provides a solid ecumenical bridge between the Protestant and Catholic traditions. Additionally, he draws upon the social sciences, citing for example Jean Piaget and Victor Turner as their work relates to prayer.

The overarching metaphor is the tree of life, used to illustrate five models of prayer:

1) Conversation (roots); 2) Relationship (trunk); 3) Journey (branches); 4) Transformation (leaves); and 5) Presence (fruit). The three major divisions of the book intimate, too, Chase’s keen interest in the environment. The first, “Habitats of Prayer: Formation and Tradition,” lays out prayer as a way of life. The second, “Models of Prayer: The Tree of Life,” expounds on the five models listed above. The third, “The Ecology of Prayer: Sustaining Connections,” shows that prayer is the breath of life.

The reader immediately gets a hint of Chase’s ecological interest in the acknowledgements, where he cites his “special friends, the general class of birds known as raptors” and writes that the “fire of God’s imagination blazes in them, and more than once these birds have allowed me to see a bit of the flame” (9). Chase talks of “stilling,” taught to him by a red-tailed hawk he saw at close range during its migration. “Every nerve and muscle was attentive, ready. Yet in her practiced flight, she was still—still to the wind, still to the earth, an anchor in the sky.” This, he thought, was prayer and he goes on, in the fashion of St. Francis of Assisi, to “praise God for sister red-tailed hawk, who is precious and wild and free and whose offspring today are no doubt practicing their stilling to remind us that connections and courage and joy are prayers” (10).

The title of this book is taken from Bonaventure’s The Tree of Life. The tree is the Cross and the Cross embraces the life of prayer, which “planted in the soul bears rich fruit in Christian faith and life as the believer grows and flourishes in God’s grace and love.” In a way, Steven Chase writes like Teilhard de Chardin or Francis de Sales, interweaving his own teaching text with his prayer for his readers. The “Preface” concludes with this, his own prayer for the reader:

May God grant you wisdom, protection, and growth during exuberant years and thin. May your prayers be like the giant redwood—always greening, embracing heaven, and grounded in the good soil of earth

(11).

The author’s purpose is “to awaken readers to prayer as a way of life.” As such, prayer is as comprehensive as is life. Prayer is “stillness and in constant motion; . . . as trivial as it is profound; . . . a walk in the forest [or] a pause for tea or espresso in an enlivening but tiring city. It is loneliness. It is communion. Prayer is a way of life” (19).

To fulfill his purpose, Chase takes the reader through key concepts on prayer, and with each concept he provides historical teachings on prayer, often linking contemporary sources to ancient or medieval ones. He juxtaposes, for example, the work of Margaret Farley...