We Like Sheep - Wandering Astray

A few weeks ago, caleb led liturgy for our CRC. I asked him for a copy of his opening meditation text and spirit question. They were awesome, reposting here as an archive and so you can get a flavor of what we do week in and week out:

1.2 FIVE MINUTES OF SILENCE

1.3 READINGS AND SPIRIT QUESTION

Excerpt from Anthony De Mello's The Way to Love

If you wish to attain lasting happiness you must be ready to hate father, mother, even your own life and to take leave of all your possessions. How? Not by renouncing them or giving them up because what you give up violently you are forever bound to. But rather by seeing them for the nightmare they are; and then, whether you keep them or not, they will have lost their grip over you, their power to hurt you, and you will be out of your dream at last, out of your darkness, your fear, your unhappiness.
So pend some time seeing each of the things you cling to for what it really is, a nightmare that causes you excitement and pleasure on the one hand but also worry, insecurity, tension, anxiety, fear, unhappiness on the other.
Father and mother: nightmare. Wife and children, brothers and sisters: nightmare. All your possessions: nightmare. Your life as it is now: nightmare. Every single thing you cling to and have convinced yourself you cannot be happy without: nightmare.

QUESTION: What is your biggest attachment/addiction whose absence would most change the way in which you live your life or identify yourself and causes worry, insecurity, tension, anxiety, fear, etc.?

Absolution Excerpt from Anthony De Mello's The Way to Love

In order to be genuinely happy there is one and only one thing you need to do: get deprogrammed, get rid of these attachments. All you need to do is open your eyes and see that you do not really need the object of your attachment at all; that you were programmed, brainwashed into thinking that you could not be happy or you could not live without this particular person or thing. An attachment isn't a fact. It is a belief, a fantasy in your head, acquired through social programming.

Blessing - Excerpt from Mary Oliver's Backwater Woods

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.