If he had wanted to, George Washington could easily have become king of the United States. Only his determination to support the newly devised democratic form of government saved the new nation from monarchy.

What an irony that would have been for the colonies to have thrown off Britain’s monarchical rule only to adopt the same structure themselves!

Even the then king of England, George III, admired what Washington did. When this other George heard that Washington was about to stand down from public life, he supposedly said: “He will be the greatest man in the world,”

Independence Day, July 4th, means more to me than it used to. Part of this increased appreciation of our national holiday comes from a growing interest in history. It’s as if the elongation of my own life history disposes me to place greater value on the aging of the nation to which I belong.. This comparison may not strike you as logical but to me it makes perfect sense.

That’s why the book Revolutionary Characters, published last year by Brown University historian Gordon Wood, has won my attention. In its pages, Wood details the personal characteristics, both inborn and acquired, of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, and other founders.

Among these leaders, George Washington stands out, for the historian and for me, as the greatest. Earlier in my life, he seemed to me a pale figure, both literally and figuratively. All those pictures of him with ashen face, and the stories about his moral rectitude, left me cold. But more reflection, and the influence of fine historians like Wood, have brought me to a deeper appreciation of the man’s stature.

First, I have learned more about the uniqueness of the American Revolution. In giving to the people the right to choose its own leaders, and in balancing the powers of the federal government, the founders went against virtually all of previous history. And in separating church and state, they found a workable formula for averting the wars of religion.

But a large number of people in the colonies were left enslaved. Of Virginia’s population, an astounding forty percent were held in bondage. It is to the everlasting credit of Washington that, unlike Jefferson, he left in his will a provision for his own slaves to be freed.

This latter fact points to the character of America’s first president. Character, in fact, was the dominant concern of those who were most important in founding our nation. Gordon Wood, at least, makes it central in his book.

Long ago, my age were taught about the character of young George Washington, who refused to lie about cutting down the cherry tree. Though historians no longer accept it as factual truth, the story attests to the stature that he would attain as an adult.

Not only did the man grow to stand over six feet tall; he also towered over most other political figures in the personal disinterest he brought to his roles in public life. Others among the founders would fight bitterly to maintain their own prerogatives but Washington continued to put the good of the new nation before his own advantage.

When he turned down those who wanted him to accept a third term as president, he again showed what he was made of. Given his presidential track record and the still shaky condition of the new republic, it would probably have contributed to the nation’s welfare to have had him in office for four more years. However, his adamant refusal clearly set an example that was crucial in those early days of the republic.

Even to this latter-day admirer of the man, Washington still appears rather cold in personality. It’s hard to imagine becoming his close friend. But the historical record remains lamentably incomplete.

We know little about his emotional life because of the dearth of his private correspondence. Unfortunately, none of his letters to Martha Custis, his future wife, have survived. In them, presumably, he would have disclosed more tender feelings than we can find elsewhere.

But he never wanted to be a cult figure, at least of the kind we have imposed on us in the age of celebrity worship. He was deeply conscious of his own dignity as chosen leader of the new nation. As a Virginian aristocrat, he cultivated manners that forbade undue familiarity.

Gilbert Stuart, famous for the portraits he did of Washington, recalled having once suggested that Washington, while he posed, forget who he was so as to could be more at ease. Washington stiffly rejected his request on the grounds of his own dignity.

So this Fourth of July brings for me a new appreciation of the birth of our nation with a distinctiveness unprecedented in the world’s history. And a large part of this drama features George Washington to whose leadership all of us contemporary Americans owe much.

We can only hope to discover new leaders who will find inspiration in his character and his abiding moral stature.

Richard Griffin

On this particular evening I felt myself to be face to face with history. This feeling was inspired by the handsome white-haired woman who was a fellow guest in my friends’ home. The history through which she lived remains both tragic and heroic.

That memorable evening gave me the opportunity to talk with someone who witnessed a terrible time in 20th-century Europe. The climax came in January of 1945 when her husband was executed ─ or, rather, murdered ─ for his role in the anti-Nazi resistance.

Freya von Moltke and her husband deserve to be better known to the American public than they are. Dartmouth College gave her an honorary degree in 1999, but most people in this country have never heard of her and her family.

Longtime resident in Vermont, she celebrated her 96th birthday last March. She enjoys remarkably good health and displays the vigor of mind and body of a person much younger.

Her last name ranks as among the most famous in German history. Members of earlier generations would have associated the name with Helmuth von Moltke, the field marshal who led Prussia to victory both in its war against Austria in 1866 and in the Franco-Prussian war that ended in 1871. These triumphs helped to bring about the creation of modern Germany.

When World War I broke out, the field marshal’s nephew, another Helmuth von Moltke, was the general who commanded the German army.

Fortunately, as I was told by Freya’s son, also present that evening, members of the younger generations in today’s Germany are now much more likely to associate the name with Helmuth James Von Moltke, the martyr to peace who died in the spring of 1945. The identities of the military leaders have faded, while the reputation of the von Moltke who was a leader in the resistance to Hitler has bloomed.

In a brief memoir, Freya has written about her husband and the efforts he made to prepare his country for the time when Hitler’s regime would come to an end. Helmuth James himself was committed to non-violence because of his spiritual idealism and his belief in democratic institutions.

Though he longed for an end to the Nazi regime, he believed that the chances of a coup being successful were slim. Ultimately, for the nation’s long ordeal to end, Hitler had to destroy himself.

Helmuth James belonged to a group called the Kreisau Circle. Its name derived from the estate near the eastern border with Poland, bought by the field marshal with money given him for his wartime leadership. It was to that place that Helmuth brought his bride Freya in 1931.

Members of the Kreisau Circle had somewhat differing agenda. Helmuth, for his part, looked toward the day when peace would come; he wanted to work with the allies to create democratic institutions that would renew his country. Unfortunately, his arrest in late 1944 brought his efforts to an end.

After World War II, Kreisau reverted to Polish sovereignty. It has since become an international center for the promotion of peace among nations and their people. Freya and members of her family take great interest in this center, feeling pride in its accomplishments.

George Kennan, the most notable American diplomat of his era, called Helmuth von Moltke “the greatest person morally, and the largest and most enlightened in his concepts that he met on either side of the battle-lines in the Second World War.”

During the years of their marriage, Helmuth wrote frequent letters to his wife and some 1600 of them have survived. Those written during the war, many of them when he was in prison, have been published  

None of Freya’s letters to him have survived, however, a fact that she confirmed on the evening of our conversation. To make sure of that his letters did survive, she had hidden them in the beehives at their estate in Kreisau knowing that the house would probably be searched.

At this stage of her life, Freya von Moltke has outlived her husband by 62 years.. On March 11th of this year, along with the German chancellor, she attended a concert in Berlin in commemoration of Helmut’s birth, exactly 100 years before.

She quietly cherishes the memory of this man of great vision and personal courage, though in conversation she does not indulge in sentimentality.

As I conceive of it, her strength of character draws continuing sustenance from her spouse’s life and death. Hers is a legacy rich in personal and spiritual achievement. She also has the rare good fortune of ongoing contact with an institution that forms part of this legacy.

More than old photos and letters ever can, this peace center, in the place that is now called Krzyżowa, gives ongoing shape to some of the ideals for which she and her husband sacrificed so much.

Richard Griffin

For the last 30 years we have kept in our attic a wooden sculpture that my wife and I have never liked. Its artistic and monetary value is probably slight, but for three decades we have scrupled to throw it away.

Why? Because this art work was given to us by relatives on the occasion of our wedding. Even though the donors have never visited our home, and have indeed passed from this earth, we still fantasize about them coming by with the expectation of seeing the sculpture enshrined in a place of honor.

By way of disclosure, my wife disavows any responsibility for this particular column of mine. As a confirmed kin-keeper, she always takes pains not to give the least offense to relatives. In this instance she fears that word of her true feelings about the sculpture might get back to the artist, the son of the donors.

How many times have you received from friends gifts that you have never liked and would love to get rid of? Chances are that you still have at least some of those gifts because, like us with the sculpture, you would feel guilty about throwing them away.

Those gifts qualify as clutter. They do so by a double title in the definition used by Erica Salloux, a self-styled “personal and business organizer.”

Speaking at a half-day conference organized by the Theological Opportunities Program, she defined clutter as “Anything I am not using; anything I do not think is beautiful.”

For her, the commonly offered definition, “anything that is not useful,” does not fit. Many of the objects that you should get rid of are in fact useful for other people or, in different circumstances, might be for you.

Clutter has a surefire way of complicating life. For most Americans, at least, the amount of “stuff” in their possession rates as a nagging, persistent problem. And it’s not just the physical problem of freeing space in one’s home for comfortable living.

For Salloux and clutter consultants like her, the problem goes deeper. They see it as both a psychological and spiritual issue. For them, getting free of clutter involves putting your internal life in order. As Salloux says: “It’s not sufficient to come in and start throwing out stuff without doing the work of reflecting on one’s life.”

She asks people what has made it possible for them to let go of something before having a replacement. Her answer is trust. In this instance trust means that “what you are letting go of is not essential to who you are.”

But it helps to recognize the various types of stuff that make our lives less free than they might otherwise be. For some of us, paper that has accumulated without a goal looms large. So does electronic clutter in the form of emails and other material saved for no clear purpose.

Many among us have clothes hanging in closets that we have not worn in the last decade. Erica Salloux urges a rule of thumb that makes sense: “With a very few exceptions, if you haven’t used something in the past year, you’re never going to use it.”     She recommends giving yourself a deadline. And, shifting to the esthetic, she advises: “don’t wear things you don’t love to wear.”

My attic also shelters the relics of students who, over many years, have left us books, notes, and other materials with the assurance they would come to pick up the stuff later. That later has not yet arrived. This kind of leavings should qualify as prime candidates for throwing out.

The consultant quoted here believes it important to have the proper tools. Trash bags and boxes are vital for sorting among things that need to be thrown out or perhaps saved.

If you have things that are broken you probably need to decide whether to get them repaired or to discard them. For the first option, it helps to put a date on the thing by which time you will have it fixed.

Similar advice holds for other things that you are undecided about. These can be put in a box, dated, and placed in another room. This allows you to test whether or not you are going to miss the thing.

In writing about “stuff” I remain mindful that people in Dafur and too many other places in the world have no such problems. Would that they did!

Nor do those Americans among us who frequent soup kitchens and food pantries. Most of them, at least, do not have the luxury of suffering from clutter the way their more privileged contemporaries do.

About that wooden sculpture in the attic: One of these days I may pull off a stealthy raid by night, seize it, and put it out on the curb for the trash collectors. Maybe some neighbor will walk down the street and add it to his or her clutter.

Richard Griffin

Did you ever expect to find doctors acknowledging errors? Surely, when you were young, you never thought that the people who wear long white coats would confess themselves to be fallible.

Atul Gawande is one of the new breed who does. Along with Jerome Groopman, Lisa Sanders, and others, Dr. Gawande has gone public with recognition of the mistakes that he himself has made and those made by his colleagues.

A surgeon by training and practice, Gawande also writes well. Like Groopman, he publishes in leading journals and writes books. He must be well organized indeed to combine the roles of active physician and prolific author.

In Gawande’s case, it must help this year to have received one of those generous MacArthur awards that most other high achievers can only dream of. With all this success, he seems a fine person: in one brief conversation in a book store I found him genuine and unassuming.

However, despite the new frankness, I suspect that many people do not welcome the chance to read about physician errors. They would rather take their chances than learn, in sometimes gory detail, what can go wrong in the operating room or the doctor’s office. Though it may be liberating for physician-authors to recognize their own errors, it’s not always comforting for patients to discover what might happen to them.

Writing in The New Yorker for April 30th, Dr. Gawande focuses on old age, the pervasive physical decline that it brings, and what physicians trained in geriatrics can do for their patients.

I quarrel with the way Gawande portrays old age because he describes the march toward late life as relentless decline. First, he focuses on how your teeth, from age 60 on, will soften, making it difficult to eat well enough to stay healthy.

He then goes on to show how, by contrast, other parts of the body harden. The heart, for instance, must cope with stiffened blood vessels. He describes it with graphic realism: “When you reach inside an elderly patient during surgery, the aorta and other major vessels often feel crunchy under your fingers.”

A leading geriatrician whom I asked about Gawande’s article winced and called it “a treatise on decrepitude.”

However, later in the piece he makes a crucial discovery ─ he discovers geriatrics.  In doing so, he acknowledges a major error of judgment of his own. Speaking of geriatrics, he admits: “Until I visited my hospital’s geriatric clinic, I did not fully grasp the nature of that expertise, or how important it could be for all of us.”

As he sits in on a colleague’s interview with a patient, he comes to see how the geriatrician focuses neither on that patient’s back pain nor on a possible threat of colon cancer. Instead, the doctor spends most of the visit examining the patient’s feet. That’s where he sees the greatest danger for her, the chance that she might fall and perhaps break a hip.

Too many doctors, the geriatrician explains to Gawande, treat only disease, and they judge the rest not to be a medical problem. But with older patients, that’s not enough. Geriatricians know how to inquire into details of the patient’s daily life so as to help them avoid becoming more infirm and perhaps unable to continue living at home.

“Most of us in medicine, however, don’t know how to think about decline,” Gawande writes. “We’re good at addressing specific, individual problems: colon cancer, high blood pressure, arthritic knees. But give us an elderly woman with colon cancer, high blood pressure, and various other ailments besides─an elderly woman at risk of losing the life she enjoys─and we are not sure what to do.”

Unfortunately, as Gawande regrets, not nearly enough doctors trained in geriatrics are available in the United States. In view of the explosive increase in people past middle age, it is nothing short of scandalous that so few such physicians can be found to treat us.  

From my own experience, I judge that this situation will not change anytime soon. When I have talked with college students headed for medical school, I have never heard even one of them express the intention to specialize in geriatrics. Commenting on this tendency, Gawande attributes it in part to geriatricians getting paid less; but he also claims that “most doctors don’t like taking care of the elderly.”

Of course, I too recognize the power of decline in later life, often so difficult to put up with. But in my later years, and those of many others whom I know, I continue to experience surprisingly rich changes of imagination and affect, among other things. And both the spiritual life and the intellectual life have retained or even increased their vibrancy.

I do not welcome decrepitude any more than other people do. But I take some comfort from the savvy of some doctors who know how to put physical decline into a larger framework of a person’s life.         

Richard Griffin

To introduce his newly published memoir, my friend cites the advice of a nineteenth century writer to those who might want to choose a last name. That author, Samuel Butler, recommends the name Aaron because “you will be pretty safe to head all alphabetical lists.”

Starting from his schoolboy days during World War I, Daniel Aaron has presumably headed hundreds of lists. Now in his 95th year, he has just published The Americanist; in it, he looks back over his life and work with quiet satisfaction about his accomplishments at home and with mixed feelings about his part in explaining American culture abroad.  

The title of his book comes from the role Aaron took on long ago, as a graduate student at Harvard. In 1943, he was the second person to complete a Ph.D. in the new field of American Studies. This academic specialization combined history, literature, sociology and other disciplines in order to reach a deeper understanding of American civilization.

Before receiving the Ph.D., Aaron had accepted a faculty position at Smith College where he taught from 1939 to 1969. He then returned to Harvard and taught there until his retirement in 1980.

Retirement, however, has never meant stopping work. In fact, Aaron walks from home to his office every day and spends his time reading, writing, and keeping up with his many friends. Until recent years, he rode his bike regularly: every Sunday he would pedal, with a couple of colleagues, from Harvard Square to Lexington.

He remains intellectually acute, as his memoir shows, and interested in the world of ideas and action. My friendship with him extends back only some ten years, during which time I have felt fortunate to talk with him frequently.

For anyone interested in literary America, Dan is a treasure house of memories. In the memoir, readers will recognize the names of many distinguished writers. Among the poets, he knew W.H. Auden, Robert Frost, and E. E. Cummings (as he was known before he dropped the capitals.)

Prose writers included Katherine Ann Porter, James T. Farrell, Truman Capote, Edmund Wilson, Richard Wright, and Sinclair Lewis. One of Dan’s great achievements was co-founding the Library of America series, which has published definitive editions of important American writers.

He also knew, or at least met, significant political figures like Adlai Stevenson, Socialist leader Norman Thomas, and Massachusetts governor Foster Furcolo. When he lived in Northampton, he often received visits from aspiring office seekers who wanted to stir up support in western Massachusetts.

Aaron’s own politics were consistently leftist, and his best known book, Writers on the Left, reflects his interest in those who shared that orientation. Looking back to 1954, he refers to “fellow travelers like me,” implying sympathy for the Communist Party, though he was never a member of it. However, he seems to regret that, long before, he had upbraided the “reactionary press” for criticizing the Soviets.

In the post World War II period Aaron spent much time in European countries and elsewhere as a guest lecturer or member of university faculties. He had not expected to do this, because he was not fluent in other languages. But opportunities arose that made him a kind of spokesman for American culture abroad.

Despite his obvious experience of the subject, the author does not say very much about old age, though I would have welcomed his reflections on its mysteries. Rather, Dan seems to take it as a matter of course. He does notice changes in his own thinking: “At post-ninety,” he writes wryly, “I have less to conceal than I did when I was twenty, and I look back over the years I’ve lived through, if not complacently, at least with relief that I’ve managed to escape hanging.”

His review of the past has been supported by the personal journals that he kept in earlier years. These private writings have now enabled him to recapture how he felt about events that happened long ago. Without this younger voice, it might have been far more difficult for him to reclaim the past.  

Of course, he remains aware that memory is fallible. Early on in the book he writes: “Some of the comments and judgments herein, many of them drawn from old journal entries, lack historical dignity and weight, and not all of the ‘facts’ cited here are certifiable.”

Were the memoir more deeply personal than he intended it to be, the author might say something about “the ills that flesh is heir to” in later life. In fact, he has had to deal with serious mobility problems in recent years.

It has been a special pleasure for me to find out more about the life of a friend, and learn things that do not always emerge in private conversation. The Americanist is published by the University of Michigan Press, and thanks are due to that publisher for bringing Daniel Aaron’s remarkable story to a wider public.

Richard Griffin

Everybody knows what the telephone number 911 leads to ─ help in life- threatening situations.

But almost no one yet knows about 211. Though familiar with human services, I had not heard of this number until a few weeks ago. But now I have discovered that these three digits are already making a crucial difference in the lives of many people and stand ready to help many more.

211 serves people confronted with all sorts of problems. However, those whose lives are in immediate jeopardy and others assisting them should continue to call 911.

On a recent rainy and windy April day, I visited 211 headquarters, housed at 95 Berkeley Street in Boston in the offices of the Medical Foundation, the agency that runs this program. There I met with Gary Lever, the director, who explained to me how 211 operates and listed several examples of needs that can be met by this new information and referral service.

Those who have lost power in their homes could call 211. Or people without heating oil. Others may need day care for their children or elder family members. Or be without food or money for rent. Perhaps a water heater has broken, or parents may need counsel for their teenage son. If a woman has run out of diapers for her baby, 211 can help.

Established in Massachusetts six months ago, 211 serves people throughout the  entire state. As of now, the number can be called from 8 to 8, Monday through Friday. However, the agency hopes, by the end of the year, to make the number active 24/7.

Massachusetts does not have a monopoly on 211: 41 states now use the same number, though only about half offer state-wide coverage. Presumably the whole country will be covered in the foreseeable future.

Funding for the Massachusetts program comes from the Council of Massachusetts United Ways and the Massachusetts Association of Information & Referral Specialists.

While visiting the office, I saw the call-receiving professionals at work. While talking with callers, they sit before computer screens that give them access to information about some 8,800 service agencies.

These information and referral specialists, most of them women, are highly trained and sympathetic to the callers. They do not ask the names or identity of callers but preserve their privacy.

Currently some six or seven hundred people call 211 each week. That may not seem like many but for an agency that has been only six months running, it suggests a lot of work. As of now, callers can expect to get connected quickly; the agency’s goal is to answer 80 percent of the calls within 90 seconds.

Most conversations last from five to seven minutes, but some can last 10 or 15. More calls come early in the morning and at the beginning of the week than at other times.

The woman I talked to, Robin Fox, is a social worker with wide experience who obviously loves her work. “What’s so great about this service is that there are many people out there who really need help,” she says. “I think it’s a great idea that people have one place where they can call.”

Having been with 211 from the beginning, she sees progress: “At this point, we’re able to go a little bit deeper, now that we understand the system a little bit better.”

The elder service network, with which I am most familiar─notably the Councils on Aging and the ASAPS (formerly known as home care agencies), have their own numbers for information and referral. And the Massachusetts Executive Office of Elder Affairs has the 1 800 AGE-INFO (243-4636) number that can be called free of charge from anywhere.

These resources do not conflict with 211. The people there are familiar with these and other networks and work hand in hand with them. 211 also receives calls from professionals at these and other agencies who may themselves need information about other human service resources.

Most of us have no better than foggy ideas about how to contact the appropriate agency when we need help. I would be the same way, had I not once worked for the Cambridge Council on Aging. While serving there, I received a crash course on the large array of human services agencies throughout the Commmonwealth. I came away from the experience with admiration for the wealth of such services available in this state.

But sometimes you can feel yourself in need of a Ph.D. to find your way toward help. Each agency has its own rules and procedures, sometimes making it hard for people without special knowledge to navigate the murky waters.

That’s why 211 seems important to me. To have a single number, and to find knowledgeable and sympathetic voices at the other end to help guide you on your way─ impresses me as worth a whole lot to a great many people.

Richard Griffin

“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