QUOTE : What does faith mean, finally, at this late date? I often feel that it means no more than, and no less than, faith in life- in the ongoingness of it, the indestructibility, some atom-by-atom intelligence that is and isn't us, some day-by-day and death-by-death persistence insisting on a more-than-human hope, some tender and terrible energy that is, for those with eyes to see it, love.... and I feel that to be faithful to her, faithful to this person that I loved as much as I have ever loved anyone, I must believe in the scope and momentum of her life, not the awful and anomalous instant if her death. In truth, it is not difficult at all. Nor is the other belief- or instinct, really- that occurs simultaneously: that her every tear was wiped away, that God looked her out of pain, that in the book of an eye the world opened its tenderest interiors, and let her in.