Purple: a parable

by Alexis Rotella
pictures by Diane Katz

“Purple touches the heart of everyone I read it to, and it has become a part of my lectures.
Purple speaks the essential message to all of us because we are all children
dealing with authority figures.”

Bernie Siegel, MD
[portfolio_slideshow width=690 height=450]Included in church sermons, educational texts, Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield and
Bernie Siegel, MD’s Love, Magic & Mudpies — this story has lasting emotional impact.

A Parable of Creative Redeption

Alexis Rotella is an ordained minister, acupuncturist, and the author of more than forty books. She wrote
the poem “Purple,” about a moment early in her childhood.

One teacher’s thoughtless comment haunted her for years, crushing her creative self. Another teacher’s moment of insight released Alexis from the spell.

Thirty Years of Healing

Alexis felt the importance of the parable and released it to the world, in 1983, as a postcard “chain-letter” that traveled around the world. It has been embraced by educational and religious organizations as a teaching and healing tool.

This powerful parable touches each person’s creative truth, which can survive even in the face of childhood cruelty.

Now, for the first time, Purple is available as a book, illustrated as if by the hand of the child.

Each person’s creative truth can survive even in the face of childhood cruelty.
Page-by-page, Diane Katz’s illustrations take the reader ever deeper into the inner child’s
profound experience.

  • ”In first grade” On wide-lined paper the reader sees a child’s dyslexic efforts to write her ABC’s.
    When Mrs Lohr assigned a teepee drawing, the child responds with a joyous vision of horses,
    merry flowers, a grinning sun and purple-patterned teepee.
  • Mrs Lohr rejected the drawing saying “purple was a color for people who died.” We watch the joyous vision die with the child’s efforts to do as she was told.
  • ”In second grade” What remains of creativity is expressed in the child’s formless gray doodles
    which creep about the edges of school writing paper. Until…
  • ”Mr Barta said draw anything, he didn’t care what. I left my paper blank.” With zen awareness,
    the second-grade teacher’s comment “how clean and white and beautiful” frees the child to become herself once more.
Purple: a parable — Deluxe Edition — 6x9 in. hand-bound hardcover — $23.95
Handmade Thai mulberry binding, Italian Murillo & Echizen Washi cover, Thai mulberry flyleaves with die-cut circle reveal, heavyweight recycled text, archival, 2008.		 [wp_cart:Purple a parable, Deluxe Edition:price:23.95:end]
Purple: a parable — Fine Edition — 6x9 in. hand-bound softcover — $17.95
English Somerset cover, archival, 2008.		 [wp_cart:Purple a parable, Fine Edition:price:17.95:end]

About the Author

Alexis Rotella was the 2007 grand prize winner of the Kusmakura Haiku Competition in Kumamoto, Japan. Her Elvis In Black Leather was nominated for The Pushcart Prize in 2009.

Rotella’s longer work and Japanese related poems have appeared in hundreds of journals and magazines including The New York Times (Metropolitan Diary), Christian Science Monitor, Family Circle, Glamour, New Letters, Chiron Review, and Bottle Rockets.

Other Rotella tiles available at Rosenberry Books edition include A Sprinkle of Glitter and Ask! again, Rotella’s collection of witty aphorisms and zen drawings.

Rotella served as President of the Haiku Society of America in 1984 and edited Frogpond, Brussels Sprout, The Persimmon Tree, Modern Haiga and Prune Juice. Her haiku, senryu and tanka have won many awards and recognition and appear in numerous anthologies including Global Haiku (Twenty-five Poets World-wide), Beneath a Single Moon (Buddhism in Contemporary American Poetry), and Cor van den Heuvel’s The Haiku Anthology 3rd edition.

Alexis Rotella lives in Arnold, Maryland where she is a licensed acupuncturist and an ordained minister.

Also of Interest

A Sprinkle of Glitter

by Alexis Rotella
Ask! again

rotellagrams
by Alexis Rotella
Words & Swords

by Bernie Siegel, MD
The Tao of Elvis
David H. Rosen, MD
art by Diane Katz
Time, Love and Licorice: a healing coloring storybook
David H. Rosen, MD

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