“What does it feel like to be burdened by stuff?”

Many Americans could answer this question readily. “Uncomfortable, depressing, and humiliating” might be the response of those who have acquired too many possessions.

That is how Marilyn Paul would have replied before she found a way out of the web that entangled her. She once had 25 Gentle Giant boxes stacked in her bedroom because her other rooms were filled.

And this happened after she had received a Ph.D. in managing change from Yale. “It never occurred to me to apply the tools of my trade to myself,” she ruefully admits.

Dr. Paul spoke in a series sponsored by the Theological Opportunities Program. Calling itself “a learning community of feminist women and men seeking clarity around issues of daily life and religion,” this group has been running conferences for 34 years.

Under the leadership of Elizabeth Dodson Gray, TOP meets at Harvard Divinity School for weekly presentations on a theme chosen by its steering committee. This year’s choice is “Making Sense of Our ‘Stuff’ & Its Profound Meaning in Our Lives.”

What merits attention, as I see it, is the way TOP deals with everyday realities from the perspective of the spiritual life. The members of TOP’s advisory committee (34 women and one man, all from the Greater Boston area) feel that exploring the issues of women’s lives is “a sacred work.”

Marilyn Paul’s approach to the problem of stuff expresses this same approach. She sees it as a spiritual challenge to become free from the paralyzing effects of having more things in your life than you can manage.

When she was entangled by her stuff, her life gradually became intolerable. “I was afraid of my mail,” she acknowledges. She would not pick it up from her mailbox until she got a note from the deliverer. Then she packed it in a bag and put the bag in a closet. The stuff included credit card bills and bounced checks.

Her social life suffered badly. It made dating impossible. She couldn’t have anyone over because of the chaos that reigned in her house.

Her kitchen was a mess thanks to her belief (inherited from her mother) that doing household tasks was anti-feminist. Plates, glasses, and silverware piled up until she discovered that “aging the dishes” makes them much more difficult to wash.

Gradually, however, she made the break with this kind of chaotic living. In her book, “It’s Hard to Make a Difference When You Can’t Find Your Keys: The Seven Step Path to Becoming Truly Organized,” she presents what she learned from her experience.

The seven steps toward good order include three questions and four imperatives: 1) What’s your reason for changing?; 2) How would you like it to be?; 3) What is it like now?; 4) Get support; 5) Learn organizing tactics; 6) Become familiar with strategies for change; 7) Go deeper toward liberation.

For her approach, Paul draws upon her own Jewish spiritual tradition. Exodus tells how the people of Israel escaped from Egypt, the latter name expressed in Hebrew by a word meaning “a tight place.” When God gives manna to the people, they do not need pots and pans and other things.

She interprets Passover as a time for “cleaning out and developing humility.” As such, it rates as a perfect time to explore one’s stuff. It is time to realize what it feels like to be free.

Her personal exodus has brought her much more freedom. “I love doing the dishes,” she now says. It gives her time for quiet and produces a result.

Our materialistic society affects everyone, she believes, no matter how spiritual we are. “We are embedded in a society that tells us part of our worth is our stuff.”

But Marilyn Paul has come to appreciate the contrary view: “Our worth is our soul, our spirit, our being, our body, our love, our care, our friendship. All of that is our unique contribution and the world would not be the world that we’re in without you being here just as you are.”

Speaking for myself, I’m not there yet. I plead guilty to having too much. But I’m working on it.

Fortunately, my house is small so it places limits on accumulation. And I throw out a lot of stuff, mostly paper, each week.

My own spiritual tradition helps too. It has taught me to be wary of amassing things. It also strongly suggests the advantages of detachment from the things that I do have.

Late life does not always produce detachment, however. Though an abundance of years can promote a sense of proportion, it may also make you anxious to keep things around you as a form of self-preservation.

I’m grateful to TOP for choosing to explore the subject of our relationship to stuff. My hope is to draw from the conference further inspiration toward establishing a soul-nourishing relationship to my unruly possessions.

Richard Griffin