As I mentioned elsewhere, I was away for several days, visiting Disney World.

Don’t laugh. This has become an annual ritual for me and my wife. We first went there in 1996, for a one-time vacation, to get it over with and celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. We didn’t expect to fall in love with the place, or feel so unashamedly giddy about it. (But this is what happens when you travel there without kids; you don’t have to spend your every waking moment worrying about things like cleaning sticky faces, enticing picky eaters to try the Mickey waffles, finding the nearest restroom every five minutes, or calming down a three-foot tall person who is bawling her eyes out because a seven-foot tall dog with big ears, a rubber nose and buck teeth has just tried to hug her.)

Anyway…we are grown-ups (mostly) who happen to love Disney World. We even did the cruise a few years back. A priest who reads my blog runs a blog of his own about Jesus at Disney World, and he wished me a happy vacation and wondered if I would see Jesus there.

Well, yes. As a matter of fact. I did.

He was there at the Winn-Dixie, where a middle aged gal in blue jeans and a torn tee shirt noticed that we were tourists (did our tee shirts give us away?) and cheerfully offered us her shopping membership number so that we could save a whopping 60 cents on our purchase of frozen pizza and bottled water.

He was there at our hotel, where a little boy who was about seven was walking back to his room with his parents and grandparents after an exciting night at the pool and he took his grandfather’s hand and said, very sincerely, “Grampa, thank you for taking us to the arcade.” And the grandfather answered, very sincerely, “You’re very welcome.”

He was there at the water park, where mothers and fathers and kids waded into lukewarm water and climbed into inner tubes and held hands and giggled as the tubes meandered around the “lazy river” while the music system cranked out the Beach Boys singing the Christmas perennial “Little Saint Nick.”

He was there at the end of a long and humid day when my wife and I climbed into a hammock at one of the resorts and looked at kids building sand castles and we wiggled our feet and wondered if there’s a corner of heaven just like this.

He was there in the sense of enchantment and wonder that pervades the nightly fireworks over Cinderella Castle, when Jiminy Cricket tells us to wish upon a star, and we can’t help but see millions of them exploding above us.

He was there in the IllumiNations show at Epcot — which, I told my wife, is really Disney’s version of the Easter Vigil. It begins with a bomb blast of fire and proceeds to tell the entire story of creation, from Day One until now, in all its joy and excitement and glittering hope. “We go on,” the show’s anthem insists. Yes. We do. And isn’t that a wonder? I’ve probably seen that fireworks show two dozen times and it never fails to bring me to tears.

He was there in the thousand acts of tiny generosity that the Disney staff display again and again and again. One morning, I went to the front desk of our hotel and asked if they knew, off-hand, the hours for one of their competitors, Sea World. Instead of looking shocked, the gal smiled and clicked her computer. She printed out not only the hours, but the show times and directions.

He was there in the sense of ongoing creation and re-creation (and recreation) that has made the Disney experience so unique and, yes, magical. Not for nothing do they call their workers “Imagineers.” Disney World is a product of free-ranging imagination. The attention to detail — those famous “Hidden Mickeys,” or the names on the windows above Main Street, or the water fountains that tell corny jokes when you bend over for a sip — is a wonder to behold, and a gift to be grateful for.

Oh: I know. It’s all about making money. Of course. What isn’t these days? And it’s gotten so expensive you might as well just turn over all the contents of your wallet when you pass through the turnstile.

But there is something unashamedly, unabashedly good about a place that exists, first and foremost, to give joy.

After all: Joy, it’s been said, is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.

So: Yes, I saw Jesus at Disney World. Again and again. I hope others caught sight of him, too. All they had to do was look. And listen. And smile.

(Readers who are really bored can see some of my other vacation pictures here.)