If I were someone else, I might say, "that's why they call it faith."

I think I have to believe in a higher power of some sort because of Mr. Beautiful, the cat. A world without fate or reason or karmic forces would not send Mr. Beautiful to my mother just as her father was dying and Ernest, for whom she was cat-sitting, was going home, leaving her alone. Mr. Beautiful, in his languid, powerful, long-haired and assertive sort of way, is my proof of a Something Else. I am not positive it is an infallible Something Else, but I am positive of it.

I am positive because of Mr. Beautiful and because of the deer running across the road as we left Grandfather�s for this last time. I am positive not because bad things do not happen to good people or because innocent babies don�t die or because All Is Right With The World. I am not positive because being positive necessitates a greater, infallible plan. I do not need my Something to be omniscient or omnipotent, though maybe omnipresent. I can be positive just because of Mr. Beautiful and because of deer and because it�s too scary not to be positive. I can be positive because I can be calculating and detached and still positive.

I fell in love once with a boy who hated religion so much it made him this angry person who he never showed to me otherwise. I understand that, I really do. I understand that somewhere deep, that anger at something which is asking you to believe in it just because it wants you to.

But I also held Mr. Beautiful in my arms after I saw deer leap gracefully across the road after I left my grandfather dying. Mr. Beautiful is how I know.

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