The woman emerges from the wall, positioned high in the dome’s vault, over our heads, powerful. She is holding a child in her lap, as if she is holding a piece of fruit. But it is not the child that is important. Her mild face betrays no human affect except that which lies at the foundation of everything—a love that is absolutely unconditional. I know, she says, without moving her lips. I know everything, and nothing escapes my understanding. I have been here since the dawn of time, hidden in the smallest particle of matter, in the stone, in the shell, in the wing of an insect, in this leaf,
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