Our seventeen year old son just got his driver’s license and made his first substantial solo trip today—a twenty-five minute drive to meet up with friends. It occurred to me how much easier it is be a parent now, and how much harder, than when I first started driving (the day I turned sixteen, as was the norm in my era). Thanks to cell phones, we can check up at almost any time—say, after he’s driven about a quarter of a mile. But thanks to cell phones, we can never completely relax, because there’s always the option to give the kids a quick call.

Next weekend's New York Times Magazine has a fascinating cover story on emerging adulthood, a term coined by the psychology professor Jeffrey Arnett to describe the stage of life between adolescence and adulthood.  It's already posted here.  Jeff is a dear friend dating back many years to a time when we both were still emerging adults, each doing graduate work at the University of Virginia.  It's a wonderful term and a wonderful but frightening time of life.  Reaching emerging adults seems to me one of the most difficult challenges for the church in our time, since their cultural experience so often seems at odds with the values reflected in the church, in ways both good and bad.

In the same issue of the New York Times Magazine with the story about Jeff Arnett and emerging adulthood this Sunday, there was a remarkably offensive (for me at least) column by the “The Ethicist” Randy Cohen.  A reader had gotten an EKG done by a technician who’d said, among other things, “Only divine creation could have created such an organ” (the heart), and asked whether he or she should report this to the technician’s boss.

I’ve fallen into the bad habit of posting only when I get some cancer news. It’s a hard habit to break, as I’ve got little energy these days for writing, and am trying to spend it finishing a book. Still, I’d like to break it. Soon.