Sitting and drinking things. Is it like going to church?

I like to sit and drink things. At least once a day I like to take some time to sit quietly, drink something and think about things. Is this activity at all related to something like going to church or some other form of religious practice? I think that it is in one important way.

It seems we all have at least a vague idea of the types of values that we ought to aspire to in order to live a happy, flourishing, healthy, rewarding life and it is the cause of great sorrow and feelings of guilt or inadequacy when we allow ourselves to be moved to act by transient desires that are contrary to this set of values. Religions espouse their respective concepts of the ideal self and they promote overarching values to guide behaviour so that adherents might live a more righteous, fulfilled life. One of the primary roles of religious practice is to make explicit and consistently bring to mind those most important values. Making those values explicit and making them an object of attention and contemplation on a routine basis better prepares us to avoid betraying our better selves in the pull of immediate desires, and in this way we might avoid feelings of shame associated with acting in a way antithetical to our higher values and to experience the sense of well being that comes with fidelity to those values.

What types of values and priorities ought to guide us, given what we know about ourselves as human beings and the world in which we live? What types of values, if affirmed and lived by by everyone, would make for better societies and therefore ought to be promoted and defended? What should we do when different values conflict in the context of society or in our lives? These questions and more ought to be considered and meaningful answers ought to be arrived at as a first step toward a more useful and accurate worldview. But this is not much good if the answers are not frequently given sufficient attention, scrutiny and, if needed, revision so as to guide action. Something like this could be done on your knees (although, in that case, not much revision would be allowed) or it could be done while drinking tea on the couch. I like to sit and drink.

Although sometimes when I sit and drink I like to just think about cats...