Nativity ~ Gertrude Kasebier (redux)
(c) 1901 Gertrude Kasebier ~ Newport, Rhode Island, 1901. "The Manger." The Visit A rush of white wings, disturbing and distant, Word whispered from the mouth of God, filling the feminine ear. Enfleshed then, the Ave Child, swells the belly of a brown-skinned girl, who tenderly dreams of loving a man, a fashioner of homely, wooden things— stalwart sacrificer of cypress, he builds a sturdy life for she who knows not man. A Palestinian refugee, she has no family name to expiate the shame of her new shape; a girl grown up in Nazareth, she knows the lot of those who transgress Law. Yet hearing in her heart the Holy Word, she feels the joy, of one who carries within her womb—tender mercy, incarnate love. She, least liberated, ponders the embryonic epiphany of an enslaved race. Invoking ancestral voices, she articulates the deep heart cries of a nomadic people, who journeyed far from occupied lands, and placed their hope in the historic promise of an invisible, yet me
