This morning, while preparing for waiting worship, I started to read another sermon from Frederick Buechner’s Secrets in the Dark (see also here and here). This one is called “Adolescence and the Stewardship of Pain” (205-20).

Buechner begins by decribing the etymology of the word “adolescent”: from the Latin verb adolescere = ad “toward” + alescere “to grow.”

The word designates human beings who are in the process of growing up. It is as simple as that.