To take part in a meeting this fall, I went to the Executive Office of Elder Affairs in Boston. This agency is located in a state office building on Beacon Hill, a block or two from the State House.

On entering the building, I was confronted with a security apparatus that featured a moving conveyor belt and a passageway for screening weapons. Dutifully I placed my jacket on the belt along with my outer coat.

After I walked through the frame and set off beeping, armed guards equipped with handheld devices for detecting dangerous items in clothing surveyed my body seeking the reason. After emptying my pockets of loose change and keys, I was cleared to enter.

You know this routine by now. Maybe you even feel comfortable with it. I do not, nor do I wish ever to accept it as normal. To me, this procedure, however widespread, comes as an infringement of civil liberties, something I do not want to forget.

Though it may seem unrealistic on my part, I also question whether much of what is demanded by so-called security is actually necessary. The chances of a terrorist attack on a building like the one I visited are extremely low. But chances that we citizens will be discomfited by being frisked before entering a structure that ultimately belongs to us –  –  these chances approach 100 percent.

My main point here is the importance of recalling what we have lost. To young people, this way of living our lives in public will have come to seem normal. Having remembered nothing else, they will take as an expected part of civic life the presence of security devices and procedures all around us. One service my age peers and I can offer is to recall an America where this kind of militarization was regarded as neither necessary nor desirable.

At the risk of sounding paranoid, I confess feeling wary of government using security as a pretext for exercising control over citizens. Given the widespread use of surveillance techniques and other tools of repression directed toward us, it is appropriate to be skeptical of the appeals by federal officials for unquestioning trust.

This applies especially to parts of the Patriot Act, now before Congress for renewal. With precious little debate until recently, some of our legislators have stood prepared, not only to extend the current law, but to add provisions that would further erode civil liberties.

Among the requirements in force over the last four years, one gives the FBI authority to rifle through the records of private citizens without a judge’s approval. An especially outrageous part of this provision forbids the agency asked to hand over the records from even telling the person who owns the documents (though that person’s lawyer may be told.)

This so-called gag rule applies to libraries and doctors’ offices, for example. Is this the way we choose to live now, or is Congress pushing through legislation that trades away our liberties for a mess of pottage in the form of dubiously valuable information?

Again, people who have had long experience of our national community will remember when we lived removed from an atmosphere of fear and overreaction. Yes, the terrorists deserve blame, and, yes, they too possess new and subtle means of attack; but, too often, we allow them to defeat us by cutting back on our own freedoms.

Americans now growing up may also come to think it normal that the president seized power to tap messages of our own citizens without recourse to the courts. They may also judge it to be standard operating procedure to hold prisoners for years while denying them access to a trial. Of course, the president has the right to take such action, they may think, since these procedures have become so familiar.

My juniors may not be shocked by hearing the sitting vice-president fiercely defend an alleged right of the executive arm of government to approve the use of torture against suspected terrorists. Again, repetition may have made torture seem a normal practice for the United States to use. In this instance, fortunately, Congress finally rose up against the executive branch, forcing it to forbid its intelligence and military agencies from using this practice.

The older generations can perform an important service for our youth by alerting them to the ways in which this country has changed. Governmental actions, attitudes, and values looked upon as normal now were not always so regarded. I hope to see the day when our national government champions the freedoms that made America unique in world history.

Of course, I am not suggesting that all the old ways of doing things could or should be reinstituted. We will not again take our seats on airplanes without having to show identification, as I remember doing.

But we do well to remember when the norm in this country was jealously guarding our civil liberties and careful oversight of presidential prerogatives.

Richard Griffin

Last month, I had an unexpected experience that continues to send waves of awe through my spirit. I held in my hand the oldest known object that exists on earth.

That evening, I had been attending a lecture by a scientist who had brought the object as part of his presentation. He was speaking about the currently hotly debated ways of looking at the origins of the universe and wanted to display something that would dramatize the discussion.

What I held in my hand was part of a meteorite that fell in a field near the small town of Allende, Mexico in 1969. It was a small portion of a larger rock-like substance (perhaps weighing as much as several tons) made up of various iron and calcium aluminum strata. Had it fallen on the town itself instead of an outlying field, this out-of-the-heavens missile could have caused havoc for the people who lived nearby.

As to its age, there is no scientific debate. The long established carbon-dating method has established this object as being some 4.3 billion years old. Simply to have been in the presence of such an object inspired in me feelings of wonder, almost reverence. Lifting up the object and fingering its surface stirred further questions about the time scale of physical reality.

Did handling the rock make me feel any younger? Yes, by providing a new standard of comparison with the length of human life, I suppose it did. A 77-year span of living seems a mere moment next to the amount of time that this meteorite has held on to its admittedly mute, but nonetheless deeply communicative existence.

In a recent article about science and American politics, journalist Jim Holt notes that “three-quarters of the public haven’t heard that the universe is expanding, and nearly half, according to a recent survey, seem to believe that God created man in his present form within the last 10,000 years.”

In fact, many Americans appear terribly threatened by scientific evidence of ages, distances, and sizes that differ from those they imagined as children. Their God seems not large enough to deal with the sheer immensity of the universe and its continuing expansion.

Though I often undergo surprise, and occasional shock, when science reveals new data about the earth, the origins of man, and the behavior of the galaxies that extend so far beyond our small planet, I can reconcile this new knowledge with the religious faith of my early life. A central tenet of this faith is the incomprehensibility of God. The God of my spiritual heritage was always proclaimed to be infinite, that is, without any limit.

The temptation for contemporary religious people, myself included, is to narrow the divine to our own proportions. And, of course, my particular tradition, Christianity, can seem to violate the immensity of God by its teaching of the Incarnation, God becoming man. In a sense, there is a reduction, by virtue of which the divine takes on the limitations of being human.

My tradition has made me comfortable with evolution. The idea that creation as we know it has developed through a variety of forms does not threaten my view of reality. In fact, I consider evolution to be among the most brilliant and most beautiful of the ideas that human beings have ever deduced from observing nature. I don’t know if Charles Darwin was worthy of being hailed as a saint, but I venerate him for the gifts of insight into the natural world that he bequeathed to us all.

I do not need a doctrine of “intelligent design” to safeguard my faith in a creative God. That God has chosen to bring the universe into being by stages and by development suits me just fine. Why must so many of us continue to fear the wondrous ways in which species of living beings have descended through huge portions of time?

Last week’s ruling by federal judge John Jones in Harrisburg correctly defined  intelligent design as a formula used by some religious people to affirm the work of God’s hands in the development of the world. Judge Jones, a Republican appointed by George Bush, stated that this teaching has no scientific standing and cannot be used as an alternative to the teaching of evolution in public education.

This judgment seems unlikely to quiet those many Americans who are afraid of  scientific teachings that leave out God. They can be counted on to press their agenda, even though the new district court ruling adds weight to a previous Supreme Court decision on the subject.

For me, however, the teachings of science serve as a corrective to easy faith. Science does not allow us religious people to domesticate God the way we so often do when left to ourselves. My encounter with an almost impossibly old extra-terrestrial object makes me thankful for touching hard evidence of a vastness that should not be seen as threatening God.  

Richard Griffin

Last week marked the 25th anniversary of the holiday party hosted each year by our next door neighbors, Emily and George. Our hosts have been surprised by how many such parties have occurred. They can hardly believe in the longevity of an event that, when it started, seemed a one-time happening.

They and we were fairly new to the neighborhood then, purchasers of property when real estate prices were as abnormally low as they have been abnormally high in the decades since. We formed a small wave of people attracted by urban living combined with suburban friendliness.

Our street was, and is, a fine place to bring up children, an area where they could walk to their daily destinations without needing to be chauffeured everywhere. For us adults, another strong attraction was having most of our basic services within walking distance or, at least, accessible by public transportation.

Yes, the houses were awfully close together but that could serve as an inducement to good relations with people living cheek by jowl with us. Those of us who lacked yard space – – and horticultural talent – – were happily confronted each summer with the riotously beautiful gardens of near neighbors. And each Halloween, even the smallest tigers and ghosts could easily navigate the short distance from one front door to another.

As time went on, we came to know residents whose families were established here long before us. They helped us to realize what a rich past can be contained in one city block. In turn, we were happy to welcome new neighbors and another generation of children

The annual party has welcomed neighbors old and new, plus alumni of the neighborhood. Those who know the routine expect to sing for their supper, under the skilled leadership of Emily, a professional singer and voice teacher. Gathered around her piano, we sing our favorite carols with a high point reached in the performance of three brave volunteers intoning “We three kings of orient are.”

Then we share in a rambunctious meal to which guests have contributed their most delicious specialties. The abundance and variety of food always brings me back to Christmas as I first experienced it, when my parents would show my siblings and me how splendid a feast day it could be.

Desserts of various kinds complete the party. For me, the hardest choices are forced by the several flavors of ice cream contributed by a maestro of the genre. How can anyone be forced without cruelty to choose between burnt caramel and mint chocolate chip?

Taste treats aside, conversation is another main course available at this gathering. I enjoy the opportunity to talk with friends and neighbors, when we are feeling relaxed and mellow. In the past, politics have occasionally enlivened the discussion, but this year I am resolved not to let my feelings about that man in the White House disturb my peace or anybody else’s.

It is always a special pleasure to see the children who live nearby and to talk with them as they dart in and out of the adult groups. Watching their growth and development provokes continual wonder in me, not unmixed with some wonder on my part if they, in turn, notice me and my age peers growing old.

We used to have a much older generation on our street; now, we suddenly realize that some of us are that generation. Of late, I have come to experience previously unknown disability and can see myself entering into a new stage of maturity. Of course, this is not the whole story of growing older but it does provide an important perspective.

In parts of this neighborhood conversation has already begun about ways of joining together to provide informal services to older people when they may need help. The bonds we already feel among older and younger may provide a foundation for such a plan.

Though it is never fashionable to do so, I also like to remember the beloved dead, people who came to the party year after year and have now passed on into our local history. People like Maud come into my consciousness at this season, a woman whose old age enlivened our neighborhood. Through the paintings that became her trademarks and by the creativity in the way she lived, we appreciated what our own lives in the later years could be.

So hurrah for George and Emily! To them, I lift high my glass and salute their initiative. They have gifted us with a legacy of celebration that has endured for a quarter century, no small achievement.

By sharing festivity with us they have revealed for us the pleasures of living among other people. By wining and dining us all, they have exposed some of the joy inherent in the tradition of Christmas and the other rites that make this season precious.

Richard Griffin

Mary Ellen Geist has returned home. She has surprised everyone—colleagues, neighbors, family members, and perhaps even her former self. At age 49, this woman, who seemed to have achieved everything she wanted in the workplace, has decided to put her career on hold and return to her parents’ home.

Her story, although not unique, is extraordinary enough to have rated a front-page lead in a recent New York Times. Ms. Geist was known to be an active and ambitious woman. She was earning an excellent salary, and her career was full of promise. She lived in a lively and interesting city. She has left all this in order to return to a small, quiet town and  help to care for her 78-year-old father, who has been stricken with Alzheimer’s disease.

Obviously, this step represents a break from an agreeable and affluent lifestyle. We might wonder if Ms. Geist’s decision was taken reluctantly, perhaps motivated by guilt. By her own account, this is not the case. “Nobody asked me to do this, and it wasn’t about guilt,” she has said. In contrast to her former career, this is a situation in which she can make a real difference. She adds, movingly, “And it’s expanded my heart and given me a chance to reclaim something I’d lost.”

As I read these words, my reactions are somewhat mixed. As a father, would I want my daughter to do this? I would be pleased and flattered, and would want to honor the impulse. But I would feel scruples about blocking her professional life, and maybe her personal relationships as well. At the same time, I would honor my daughter’s recognition that professional rewards and economic success are not everything. Such a decision would be a confirmation of her upbringing and of the values we have tried to pass on to her.

Finally, though, I am reminded that my own daughter is much younger than Mary Ellen Geist. A decision that is heartfelt and rewarding for a 49-year-old could be unbearably burdensome for a 25-year old. I believe that there are times in life for certain things. In his book Aging Well, Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant points out that life has its seasons, and that youth is the time to create something new, to see what you are capable of. To disrupt this rhythm is a violation.

Some cultures have certainly been guilty of this abuse. I have known Irish families, for example, in which the oldest unmarried daughter was expected to devote herself to the care of her aging parents, carrying heavy responsibilities without ever developing a life of her own. If her only role in life was to be a daughter, she was denied a certain autonomy to which we are all entitled.

In the case of Mary Ellen Geist, however, these reservations do not seem to apply. Her role was not imposed on her by others. She made her decision freely. She had proven herself in the professional world, and achieved independence. The word “daughter” is not sufficient to describe her.

At the same time, the daughter’s role continues. Her mother has to restrain herself from commenting on her driving, or asking when she will come home in the evening. But both mother and daughter seem to be able to laugh at these impulses. And I cannot fail to be moved by Ms. Geist’s tender relationship with her father as he moves into the twilight of dementia.

To what extent does Mary Ellen Geist’s choice provide a model for our society? The New York Times article cites a number of cases in which daughters have returned home to care for their parents. One is tempted to detect a significant trend here.

But letters from some readers indicate that the situation of such caregivers is not always easy. Affluence helps. Ms. Geist, with her successful career, has a measure of economic security; and her mother is able to provide her with a modest salary that doubtless bears symbolic as well as monetary value. But what of the daughter who faces the loss of income, job security and health insurance, and the risk of a deprived old age? Her situation is not much better than that of the unmarried women whose caregiving responsibilities were imposed on them in youth.

So the decision made by one generous woman does not really show us a universal solution. It does, however, point out one path that is full of spiritual possibility. I reflect that the German word “Geist” means “spirit,” and think how revelatory this name is in this case. Mary Ellen Geist spoke of reclaiming what she had lost. It is heartening for us to realize that a responsibility that might be seen as burdensome is, rather, the means of retrieving something immeasurably precious.

Richard Griffin

What stance can a person take toward a system that does superbly well by him, but fails to serve the needs of huge numbers of his fellow citizens and residents of the United States?

That’s my situation with the American health care system. For many years, I have had the good fortune to be well served by medical professionals, and I much appreciate their efforts on my behalf. And now, thanks to Medicare, I share in a system that assures my age peers and me some financial support for our care.

At the same time, I feel acutely conscious of the millions who lack access to the current system or who fail to get first-rate care. And I am also aware of deficiencies in my own health care plan:  in the event of a long lasting chronic illness, I could face a crisis as well.

So I stand convinced of the need for radical change in the structure by which health care is delivered in this country. In fact, I find it hard to understand how we have tolerated a system that for decades has shown itself inadequate. To me it continues to be a scandal that we allow so many to go without, when our capacity for excellent health care has been long demonstrated.

My views were recently confirmed when I heard Marcia Angell outline the case for a national single-payer system to replace our current seriously flawed approach.

A physician whose many credits include editorship of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Angell is an authoritative and persuasive speaker.

We speak of our current arrangements as a system, but the term is inadequate. Rather, in Dr. Angell’s words, it’s a “hodge-podge of different business arrangements that exist more or less independently from one another.”

As she sees it, three major problems characterize the status quo in health care. First, it is “staggeringly expensive.” Furthermore, despite that expense, “we don’t get anywhere near our money’s worth.” Finally, among the world’s 30 richest nations, ours is the only one that relies on a market approach that bases eligibility on ability to pay, rather than making sure that everyone is included.

Some argue that letting the market work harmonizes with the American way of doing things; but they ignore crucial facts. The most important of these facts is that those least able to pay are usually the ones most in need of health care. In fact, cost shifting stands out as one of the salient features of the current system. As much as possible, insurers try to impose as many costs as they can on patients. This they do by deductibles, co-payments, and denial of some treatments.

Dr. Angell explains: “There’s a great mismatch between medical need and the ability to pay.” Why should the lack of money deprive people of such a basic human need as good health?

Polls suggest that as many as two-thirds of Americans favor changing the current system and putting in place the single-payer model. But two major vested interests continue to stave off any such change. The insurance and pharmaceutical industries, both titans in the political sphere with lots of money and influence, have thus far succeeded in blocking proposals for a new approach.

Dr. Angell holds that one way these huge corporations succeed is by fostering myths about health care. They claim that single-payer would cost more, quite the opposite of what studies show. They also want us to believe that long lines for treatment would result and that new technologies would be unavailable.

Another ploy is to call a national plan “socialized medicine,” with the suffocating bureaucracy that many people attach to this name. The opponents of single payer also rely on the cliché that government cannot do anything right. And, finally, they would have us believe that single-payer plans have no place in the real world.

Dr. Angell sees her proposed system as a way of reducing the gap in our society between the haves and the have-nots. That gap has been growing larger and thus creating fissures in our national community, divisions that damage the vital interests of  rich and poor alike.

Desperately needed as it is, I have no great hope that national health insurance will be enacted any time soon. However, I do believe that a promising sign is the difficulty that some large corporations are experiencing in paying to insure their current employees and those who have retired.

General Motors recently felt forced to ask its largest union to accept cuts in the health coverage offered to its retired workers. Significantly, the union accepted the company’s proposal without notable protest, recognizing that GM’s increasing costs do count as an insupportable burden.

Ideally, the time will come sooner rather than later, when the corporations will exert their power to press for scrapping the current system and instituting a single-payer plan. Until that time comes, we are going to see inexorable rises in costs without any corresponding inclusion of those left outside in the cold.

Richard Griffin

As a child, I remember walking down city streets with my father and feeling embarrassed when beggars reached out to him for money. My embarrassment came from being in a position of superiority over against the poor people who were begging. The situation stirred in me wonder about the way the world’s resources were distributed, a wonder that has never quite left me, so many decades later.

There seem to me two basic and sharply different attitudes toward the world. The first is to accept it as you find it, an awesome mixture of good and bad, of fortune and misfortune. Then life’s task becomes learning how to adapt to situations posed by this world and to come away with the best for yourself and those in your own circle of family, friends and associates.

The second approach is to be radically dissatisfied with things as they are, to recognize that the world needs fundamental change because some of its inhabitants have so much and others have so little. In this vision, life’s task becomes a sustained effort to transform the way the world is shaped, to try and bring about the erasing of its dividing lines, and to heal its wounds.

A common, but surely not universal, tendency among people in late life is to come to terms with the world, to accept its not being what we would like, and to leave to others the struggle for change. Many of us with who have been involved in changing things now feel tired out by the struggle and, in the name of a peaceful existence, are ready to retire from the field of combat.

I doubt Paul Farmer will ever feel that way. This physician, who travels to Haiti, Rwanda, Peru, Siberia and other places marked by destitution, provides health care to the poor with a zeal that seems never to flag. Given his dynamism in early middle age, it seems unlikely indeed that his later life will feature late sleeps and rocking chais.

Back in 1987, when he was a medical student, he led the way in founding “Partners in Health,” an agency dedicated to providing care to people who cannot get it otherwise. With extensive support from individual benefactors and foundations, Partners reaches out to far-flung places around the world.

This organization also undertakes research and advocacy on behalf of the poor in ill health. Dr. Farmer has challenged the view that good health care cannot be delivered in resource-poor settings.

Haiti, in particular, has provided what he calls a “crash course” about the world. That island country’s entire financial resources, he points out, amount to less than the annual budget of the city of Cambridge.

He believes in the radical reform of social structures rather than mere stopgap measures. Good as food pantries are, food security is much better, as Farmer is fond of reminding everyone. But that approach does not prevent him from attending to the needs of the individual patients whom he encounters.

Besides the distant sites, Dr. Farmer also works in Roxbury, Mattapan, and Dorchester, giving people in those communities access to decent health care. It bothers him to see our country reneging on services to its poor. “It feels to me as if we are backsliding,” he said recently. He was speaking to an audience gathered to celebrate the 40th anniversary of CEOC, my city’s anti-poverty agency.

When Hurricane Katrina struck, he happened to be in Rwanda watching the events in New Orleans with citizens of a country that had gone through a bloodbath of civil slaughter. Still, at that moment he felt ashamed of his own country. “The Rwandans were horrified at us letting poor people and people of color be afflicted,” he reported.

He regards it as urgent to fight for the social and economic rights of our people. As remedy for the current malaise, he calls for a widely-based movement to secure those rights. Realistically, however, he terms such a movement “both remote and utterly necessary.”

Farmer might well have taken inspiration from a statement made by Margaret Mead and posted behind the speaker’s rostrum when he spoke. “Never doubt,” she once wrote, “that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”

A thin, fragile looking man, Farmer has become a culture hero, a person who has committed himself radically to the cause of excellent health care for the poor. His story can be found in the 2003 book Mountains Beyond Mountains, written by Tracy Kidder, now available in paper.

Hearing about his work, I admire him but feel some concern about the impact that being so widely extended will eventually have on him. How can one individual, no matter how charismatic, endure the demands placed upon him by so many people in such widely separated parts of the world?

More practically, how can more people who are talented and committed be persuaded to share in a task whose importance cannot be doubted?

Richard Griffin