Is that Me baby, or just a Brilliant Disguise?

I had just finished paying for two bottles of Safer spray and twenty pounds of soil when the rain started. The people in the checkout line scratched and pecked like yard chickens when the wind picked up and the clouds moved in. I think it's going to rain. Do you think it might? I hope I can get to the car in time. Where are the Venus Flytraps? Can someone bring them to me? I don't want to get out of line! The Holy Spirit and I shared a joke at their expense: do you remember that time we..? Yes. I remember. Are you going to make it rain? I might. Bring it. Bring it like you did back then. And the sky, ripped apart by His laughter in lightning, opened up and the rain fell down on the asphalt and the cars and the people who covered their heads inadequately. Sinners in the hands of a mirthful God. In the liturgy for Whitsunday, Jesus says ...and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. It's a strange and intoxicating thing to have the only Son of God be manifest. If it's something we're able to share with others, I haven't been able to. If it happens in community, I haven't seen it. I believe there's a margin between what human fellowship can offer and what a body needs to hold itself together. No matter how we idolize our human communities and try and make them stretch across that black expanse, they always snap back into their prefabricated shapes and forms. They can't span the distance and cover a lonely human soul. And that, I believe, is evidence of a merciful God. Because it's in the gaps and the margins that Jesus chooses to manifest himself to those who love him and are loved by the Father. No church, no community, no sermon, no communion, no sacrament is as sacred to me as the jokes we tell each other when the Holy Spirit and I are alone together. It's Jesus manifesting himself because I love him. And he loves me.