The church as joy

Something I have noticed in my many years of church attendance, is that of people's attitudes.  Many, many churches use music and words to manipulate people's emotions.  Not all, but many.  Depending on the church, this creates an expectation of one particular attitude during worship.
Some people come into church with an expression of sobriety.  Others come like they're going to the circus.  Others, indifference.
And even odder still, is the variety of responses one will receive if asked what the attitude "should" be. Again, it depends on the church. I will, hopefully, communicate the Orthodox understanding.
When you think about what it is that we are doing, about who God is and what he has done for us, the response can only be joy.  Even in the knowledge of our often sinful state, we still should be overwhelmingly joyful. I'm not taking grinning giddiness, or happy-clappy "Jesus is my buddy" kind of nonsense. I'm talking about deep down joy at the prospect of continually developing a relationship with the God who loves us. A joy that knows that no matter what, God loves us and is moving us toward holiness.  A joy that knows we no longer live under an iron fist of law, but instead an indwelling of his Holy Spirit, moving us and helping us love God and love neighbor.
Coming into a worship service should be awe-inspiring but at the same time, fulfilling, refreshing and encouraging.  Every time we worship, we are living the life that the people of God in the old covenant, only looked forward to, but could not attain.
We come into the presence of an all God who loves us. It doesn't get any better than that.

Words, in English

I came to a rather disconcerting and disappointing realization this evening.  We were driving home and my nine year old son asked my wife why she cut her hair.  She replied that she didn't, but instead had the lady at the parlor cut it.
She misunderstood his question. 
It then occurred to me.  One sentence can be spoken, with an emphasis put upon different words, and the question contained therein can have multiple different meanings. 
One can say,  "Why did you cut your hair?" with an emphasis upon "you", asking why YOU did it. Or with an emphasis upon "cut", asking why you "cut" it. Or with an emphasis upon "did", asking for the motivation behind cutting it.
This realization really bothers me, for it reveals a serious inadequacy in the English language.  Our vocabulary and grammar are far too flexible in allowing this sort of ambiguity.  We cannot simply rely on words to communicate.  We must rely on inflection and tone to sufficiently pass our meaning.
Either that or we must genuinely master our vocabulary and grammar, perfectly choosing just the right words.
Unfortunately, our culture is going in exactly the wrong direction.  We are moving away from literary articulation, actually reverting back to an image based culture, like Egypt and hieroglyphs. If you disagree, stop and look at your computer desktop.  It contains a high majority of little pictures, called icons. Unfortunately not the religious kind.
I've been working toward verbal articulation, for years now.  And just now I've figured out a justification for doing so.