Adam McLain
Adam McLain is a PhD student in the department of English at the University of Connecticut and an incoming 1L at UConn Law. He researches and writes on dystopian literature, legal theory, and sexual justice. He has a BA in English, editing, and women’s studies from Brigham Young University, a master of theological studies, emphasizing in women, gender, sexuality, and religion, from Harvard University, and a MA in English from the University of Connecticut.
In Which Adam Reveals Some of the Ways He Organizes His Life
I do a lot to organize the hazard of activity that is my life. I use four different apps (sometimes more), various notebooks, and a whiteboard. It’s a lot to manage and (let’s be honest) mismanage when it comes to juggling full-time work, full-time school, and personal research and writing projects.
On Christian Theology, a Continuous Reflection on Potential
Every morning I walk by a United Methodist Church on my way to the gym. The building is of the gothic variety, investing itself in awe and wonder and power and history. This Christmas past they set up a cut out of the nativity scene. As I walked by this morning, the scene was still set up, presenting the continuous message of peace the Child heralds. Not yet Christ, not quite God, just infant, the Child, like Christianity itself, holds wondrous potential.
Of Testimony, Revelation, and Story: The Empty Church and the First Vision
Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to read The Empty Church: Essays and Poetry on a Mormon Sabbatical by Mette Ivie Harrison. This book was beautiful, personal, and wonderful. It was enlightening to read someone going through a faith transition and hear her candid take on the Church, on her own faith, and on her own journey. This wasn’t a story distilled to myth that is shared over the pulpit; it was an individual’s personal interaction with deity written on the page, stark and glowing.
2019 Top Ten Books
I read almost 100 books this year, so it was rather difficult to pick my top ten reads. These aren’t necessarily my favorite books of the year, nor the ones I most enjoyed. Instead, they are books that each touched me in a different way.
Of Well-meaning Words: The Trial of Homosexuality
I recently read a well-meaning post that discussed the need to love LGBTQ+ people. In the post, the person, a believing and practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a church filled with many loving people, stated that although they didn’t understand why God gave the trial of homosexuality to people, God still wanted people to love them.
Essaying; or, Why I Blog
To Think
Writing is a spiritual experience. It is a movement toward greater understanding of myself and the world around me. It is a journey toward apotheosis as I come to know my humanity better through the words I write. I write because it allows me to ruminate on a subject, not coming to a definitive conclusion, but rather opening the door to understanding, even in just a little way, the simple complexity and complex simplicity of the universe that surrounds us.
To Share
Writing is a communal experience. It is meant to communicate thoughts across words in order to form other thoughts in other beings. Those thoughts do not come perfectly thought-for-thought, word-for-word, but in their imperfection, there is a connection, a community that is formed between you and me. A joining. A unity.
To Experience
Writing is an experience. Taking the time to consider something and then to write about it allows one to experience and re-experience an event, a moment, a text.