"One of the most common comments we hear about alt.worship is 'I just don't feel like I am worshipping.' I can certainly relate to this. The 'experience' of alt.worship is very different from that of a hour-hour sing-a-long with a band. There isn't necessarily the emotional high, gained ripping through loud praise songs into gentle 'intimate' worship numbers. My problem is that when questioned about what they classify as 'a good time of worship', people usually respond with comments about what they got out of it: hearing from God, a sense of peace etc.. But it seems to me that this is rather like judging someone's birthday party by the quality of present the guests received. Worship is about giving something to God: presenting the best that we can as an offering. It is not about what I can get out of it. Coming to a service with an attitude of 'what can I give to God' profoundly changes the whole experience. I am free to enjoy the other things that people have created for the service and be thankful that they have taken the time to prepare something, rather than worrying that I am not in rapture. And anything I do 'get back' is just an added bonus - a real moment of grace. Often at Vaux we do not know until it happens in the service exactly what someone else has prepared. And this is an amazingly humbling time: here is someone who has taken time to create something that really means something to them as a person, that they have gegenuinely invested themselves in. This is not a song that someone else has written and that I have sung every week for the past year as it is on the worship leaders 'hits' rota. This is someone bringing a sacrifice and leaving it as an offering to God. It is often an awesome moment. 'It is more blessed to give than receive' - but we forget that all too easily in our consumer-orientated culture. We demand returns on our payment of time... Have we forgotten completely how to give gifts? How to give with no expectation of return? It is often out of a busy, time-conscious, economy driven, ungenerous heart that the inability to worship by giving comes. Can't worship? A word of advice: try giving. " 10301152daniel millerSaturday, March 02, 2002publish<a href="http://www.vaux.net/gsindex.htm"> Vaux will always be an unfinished project. </a>What we are doing is constantly evolving, so it is important that thoughts on our exploration, and things we have written along the way can be archived and shared with others. Different spiritualities have always evolved out of different cultures: they are front-ends that gives expression to the same hardware of faith. At Vaux we are interested in discovering an urban spirituality: some way of doing faith that takes the context of the city seriously. Much of the main-stream church has labelled what we do 'alternative.' But we have no interest in being viewed as main-stream by an organisation that is itself so marginal. We are concerned with presenting our faith in a way that our culture would see as mainstream. We believe that this is in continuity with the way of Christ. As a movement considered marginal by the mainstream church, we are open to being trivialised. Many see the 'alternative worship' movement as the last stopping point before total loss of faith for the disaffected and back-slidden. Although dis-interested in how the church sees us, we do believe that in order to stop the terminal haemorrhage of people from faith, the church needs to take what we do seriously, and hence we need to underpin the movement with good theology in praxis: reflections on the nature of God, born out of the things we have experienced. So we want Greyspace to be a place where these reflections can be archived and shared. We want this this to be a resource for people looking into the movement, where they can find liturgies alongside essays, comments and reflections. In short, an alt.worship on-line journal. That's why we want to hear from you: your thoughts, opinions and resources. We look forward to you joining us. 10301100daniel millerpublishYou steal pens and stickynotes from work. She steals your car. You steal music off the internet. She steals a 500-count box of the new Britney Spears album off the back of the supply truck sitting out back of Sam Goody. Kenneth Lay paid off the president and defrauded thousands of normal, struggling people out of large chunks of their life savings. Micha cannot hold a candle to that. 10300163daniel millerpublish<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/jenkins0302.asp">Blog This......Bloggers are turning the hunting and gathering, sampling and critiquing the rest of us do online into an extreme sport. We surf the Web; these guys snowboard it. Bloggers are the minutemen of the digital revolution.</a> 10300054daniel millerpublish<a href="http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48874-2,00.html">Big Stink Over a Simple Link</a> 10272497daniel millerFriday, March 01, 2002publishYou see, Micha's life is not that much different than anyone else's. An accountant, a film maker, an orthopedic surgeon, a peace corps volunteer. We all live in the same world, we all live under the same rules. It�s just how we live by them that makes the difference. You speed and get a 150 dollar ticket, and for what? I get caught and I get tops two years in jail. But I�m not in jail. And I make five grand a week. So you see, Micha�s life is no different that yours, except you work all day and she works from two �til four in the afternoon. 10264770daniel millerpublish<a href="http://www.codexseries.com/">CODEX SERIES | THREE</a> 10263279daniel millerpublish<a href="http://www.designgraphik.com/">dg_______�_Brohken_</a> 10263266daniel millerpublishThis job she pulled today, for example, is what Micha calls the "soccer mom." After her morning routine--CNN, a pot of coffee, masturbation, and an hour in front of the mirror with Cover Girl--she decides what to do with her day. Today it was cars, so she called up her first car guy. We'll call him Vinnie. She has a system, you see. She has a list of about 20 names--just for cars--and she cycles through that list. One phone call is it and she's on to the next one. If Vinnie hadn't been home today, it would have been on to the next guy. We'll call him Joe. Micha never works with women. Women criminals are all bitches. It would inevitably lead to a fight. Fisticuffs. Why when bitches fight it�s called a catfight she�ll never know. Names are constantly on and off the list. So-and-so goes to jail. Vinnie knows of so-and-so who�s reliable. Micha has a set of questions for any new contact. She can sniff out a rat or a pig in two minutes flat. It�s like when <a href="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0440508363.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg">Dr. Drew and Adam</a> ask a bunch of stupid questions when new callers dial Loveline. Yeah, just like that. Dumbasses fall for it every time. So your baseball coach felt you up, huh? What position do you play? And this is only the cars list. She only does cars about once a week. Vinnie won�t get another call for five months. Hopefully he�s not in jail by then. He�s a pushover. Micha gave him a blowjob once two years ago and he�s been giving her 10% more than anybody else since, hoping for some more head. Truth was, Micha was just in the mood and Vinnie looked like he had a pretty small dick. Micha doesn�t own a car or a house. She lives in motels or rentals and borrows a different car every day. Today�s soccer mom was very standard fare. Take the bus to the poor part of town. Try not to look too out of place as the only white person around. Find an apartment building and find the nicest looking minivan in the parking lot. Pull that damn slim jim out from under the back of her blouse--she used to just carry it on the bus but she got sick of the looks. Pop the door--four seconds. Jumps in the van and throws the slim jim on the passenger seat. McDonalds trash on the floor. Slobs. Smells like black people--that combo of dry skin lotion and that shit they put in their hair to keep it from afroing. Micha is the only person in the world who grew up in an all-black neighborhood and became a racist. Scratch that. Micha hates everyone. Two more tools come out the pocket--her special screwdriver and a hammer. She puts the screwdriver over the ignition and slams it hard with the hammer. She has a special technique of holding the screwdriver through the steering wheel. That way, if she misses the end of the screwdriver, the handle of the hammer hits the steering wheel before the head slams into her thumb. Nine times out of ten, anyway. This time, however, she�s dead on the first time. Her screwdriver drives deep into the steering column. Now the hard part. She gives it a hard turn and only gets some cracking noise out of the steering column. That could be a good thing. She gives it another hard turn and the engine roars to life. She pumps the pedal a couple of times, knowing if the car stalls out she�s all done. Fuck that crossing wires shit. That�s for the movies. Some Brazilian music in the tape deck. That�s nice. Crank the AC. It�s hot. Real fucking hot. Gotta get out of this godforsaken state. Micha is greatly relieved as she pulls out of the parking lot. The hard part is over. Not that the chances of getting caught are any better--if anyone would call the cops from here, their response time is four times slower than for a call in the white neighborhood. But those poor people will come running out of their place screaming and kicking, sometimes shooting, and Micha hates that. Especially the screaming. White people stay where they belong. Inside on the phone. An eight block drive quite literally over the tracks to the gated community. Conveniently someone is pulling in. Micha comes in right behind--she just forgot her gate pass. One time this guy stopped right after going through the gate and the gate closed on Micha�s rental. Paranoid old bastard! Driving around, it�s slim pickings--all the men drove the good cars to work today. Surely there are some self-respecting women in this place that require a proper vehicle when they go to the hairdresser! There�s a BMW three-series. Who the fuck does that old lady think she is?! Gonna have to pick a winner soon. A Lexus. Has to be the top of the line model. Yes. Micha pulls into the empty driveway of the next-door neighbor. These places are all the same--the houses are two feet from each other and there are no windows on the sides of them so the neighbor can�t film you screwing your lover at two in the afternoon. Not that you know your neighbor anyway. Just keep talking on the phone. Micha walks across the perfectly manicured lawn to the Lexus next-door. Same routine and in one minute flat she�s pulling out of the driveway. 15 minutes later she�s at Vinnie�s. He�s got that horny glint in his eye. Dumbass. 10186177daniel millerWednesday, February 27, 2002publishPlease Objectify Me Ch: D-G-C-G-C-D Please objectify me Say you want me say I�m pretty Cuz God knows the�re plenty more fish in the sea Say it with your schtick, say it with your prick Just please objectify me V: D-G-C-G-D (slower prog) My story isn�t hard to understand I am simply in need of a man Someone to validate my existence Come riding in on his horse to be my prince I don�t want to create something new Excuse me while I run to the loo Time to puke up my last meal Gotta pull off my chemical peel 10154086daniel millerTuesday, February 26, 2002publishMicha is 47 years old. She's got a man's name, so she thinks. But it's just as well. She has a man's profession: she's a thief. Today she slipped into a gated community behind someone and traded in her Astro van for a nice new Lexus. No one looked twice. She's got a nice beehive, plenty of the gaudy gold that people her age seem to love so much. She looks like she has two boys in college. Oh, wait, she does have two boys in college. 10153744daniel millerpublishAmazingly, blogger seems to be up today. It's been a long time since I wrote in here so I'm going to warm up with some statistics: Current CD: I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but a Sting compilation that I made. Also in the changer: Cake, the Smithereens, the Waiting, U2 Pop Today: writing profiles, errons, Miriam's working, I'm waiting on a word about work, still trying to get paid for work I did last month, cleaning house a little bit, misc crap, dinner at in-laws, open mic at underground coffee Current theology: Psalm 1 meets Romans 7 and creates me Weather: just a shade too hot to say perfect Coffee: lots Outlook: optimistic Creativity: stable 10153672daniel millerpublish