Ensouling the World Through Color
Spring 2022, Issue #107
CELEBRATING DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN CHILDHOOD: THE STORY OF ALL OF US CRAYONS
by Sabine Joseph
As the loving breath of the earth surrounds us each day, the opportunity to become aware of our beautiful, diverse world is presented to us - in all its gifts of nature, animals, and human beings.
With these gifts, we are presented with two paths. We can embrace and receive the abundance of joy that diversity offers, or we can choose to navigate a world void of these beautiful gifts.
In the early days of 2020, my daughter presented me with a sheet of paper and asked me to draw Grandma. As I looked down at the set of beeswax crayons we had on our living table, it was quite clear that none of those crayons reflected the beautiful brown shade that grandma was. I knew if I did not respond to this request, I would send a message that Grandma’s beautiful skin did not deserve a crayon to match it. Our skin color, our neighbors’ skin colors, did not deserve a crayon. My heart ached.
MISTLETOE THERAPY FOR CANCER TREATMENT: A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHORS OF MISTLETOE AND THE EMERGING FUTURE OF INTEGRATIVE ONCOLOGY
Mistletoe and the Emerging Future of Integrative Oncology is a new book co-authored by a team of seven dedicated and collaborative physicians who are actively working with mistletoe therapy. We asked two of the authors a few questions about their new book.
Let’s start at the beginning – most of us think of mistletoe as the plant we stand beneath during the holidays if we want to be kissed. How does a practitioner introduce mistletoe as a therapy to their patients?
MARK HANCOCK, MD: Personally, I will often start with the simple observation that mistletoe is a very odd and individual plant in its growth behavior. Mother nature says that plants should grow straight up to the sun, transform their leaves as they grow, and have roots in the soil, but Viscum album (the Latin word for European mistletoe) grows out in all directions. It keeps a characteristic germinal-shaped leaf and puts a haustrum full of chlorophyll into the tree on which it grows like a semi-parasite. When we extract mistletoe and inject it into a person, their own human organization meets these botanical rule-breaking forces.
