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Tim Clayton


 Tim Clayton

Tim’s overall project regards retelling the story of Jesus with a lens to show his relationship to a living Earth and the more-than-human through his studies at the Yale Divinity School. His book on a reading of The Lord’s Prayer through this lens is coming out in June on Orbis Books. He leads a wonderful little church on Boston’s North Shore, where he lives in a wonderful but leaky old house with his wife and a humongous and bumbling Bernese Mountain Dog. One of his great passions is the outdoors and the wonder of the wild; he loves bicycling, ocean kayaking, and cross-country skiing.  


Trinity North Shore

EXPERIENCES
    Activity Time Information
    Show Date
    Fri 4 Sep 2026 11:00 AM to 11:50 AM
    Title ShortThe Lord's Prayer is Manifesto
    Venue UMC
    Experience DescriptionThe one Prayer Jesus gave us has a rhythm and a form that we have lost. That form shows us that “heaven” is not a spiritual place of escape, but the reality of God’s name being honored, God’s ways being lived, God’s desires for the Earth and all her children being manifest. Living the unity, the overlap, of heaven and earth is our calling as human beings. The way to live heaven into life is given to us in the three petitions of the lower half of the Prayer, which call us to: Communion with the Earth, based in gratitude and wonder, living in the dynamic present at all times. Communion with each other, based in nonretaliation and a just distribution of the means necessary for life. Communion with God, based in a trust that enables courageously living for justice. Jesus left a surprise at the end of the Prayer, that keeps the energy alive…
    Show Date
    Sat 5 Sep 2026 10:00 AM to 10:50 AM
    Title ShortJesus's Living Relationship with the Earth
    Venue UMC
    Experience DescriptionMany passages in the life of Jesus that we have read as being about saving souls for heaven instead show Jesus’s dynamic relationship to a living Earth, while also showing God’s great love for the people involved. There is a lens on the person and life and energy of Jesus that has always been in the stories but that we have lost. We will set this up by looking briefly at the way the Earth and Cosmos welcome Jesus in Jesus’s birth and how the earliest acts with or of Jesus (the Presentation, his Baptism, the Wilderness) show Jesus making deep solidarity with the Earth. Then we will walk through the story of the crossing of the sea and see there that Jesus is not calling the sea demonic but rather telling a friend all is well (“it’s okay, I’ve got it”) and then is not frivolous about the pigs once he reaches the other side (not showing that any expense of other-than-human is worth it for one soul), but is giving the pigs agency for resistance to Empire. Finally, we will hint at this in the Passion, when the Earth is finally granted justice.