In the interest of getting back into a weekly Sunday schedule, and in the spirit of one of our mottos here at Home + the World, “perfect is the enemy of good,”1 I offer you this imperfect—one might even say incomplete—letter.
Today I wrote earnestly for several hours in the morning, and then I lost steam and took a bath, where I intended to read a book (currently White Teeth by Zadie Smith—witty as hell), but instead I scrolled and posted, scrolled and posted. I went to the grocery store.
I’m feeling it: the weight of it all. Trying to balance the unfolding catastrophe in my phone with the beauty of the everyday, helpless grief with the heart-opening connection and expansive learning that is happening to me. Nothing makes sense, especially not days and time.
It’s been snowing in Philadelphia, first lightly and then, a couple of times, extravagantly. I love the snow, and the disruption of it all—especially the disruption—how people throw up their hands and look up from whatever task they are trying to accomplish, shrug and give in to the snow day of it all.
Coming home from work one day, I rode the bus instead of the subway, so I could get closer to my house and do a little less walking over ice. There was a woman heaped in the back seat, covered with grocery bags and boxes of diapers, sleeping. Halfway into the ride, she woke up abruptly with a snort like a cartoon lumberjack, flailing arms akimbo, bags flying, and promptly began to make herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
I’ve been fasting on Thursdays for Gaza. I’ve been thinking about devotion, and what it means to dedicate yourself to something. The devotion I feel for Duncan, the devotion I see in him for me, and our son. The adoration mixed with warmth and fondness mixed with doing-uncomfortable-things-for-love. Maybe call it zealotry, but is zealotry so bad? When I was in high school, my favorite book was Franny and Zooey. I understood Franny’s desire to pray without ceasing. I understand zeal. I had a friend in college who’s grandparents in India had never in their lives tasted tea, out of multi-generational resistance to British colonization. I had never before heard of such devotion. But I think now I’m getting closer to understanding it.
It feels like the world is breaking.
And something new is being born.
As I move into this second year of this newsletter, I’m thinking about how and what I want it to be moving forward. As someone who cut my chops on Blogger in the mid-aughts, the newsletter medium is really comfortable and freeing for me, and making writing a big part of my life again has been so generative, and so energizing. I want to keep doing this. And y’all keep telling me you’re connecting with it, which is just such an immense gift. There was a time that I felt that I couldn’t be a writer again until I got another book deal. And so I didn’t write. And then there was grief, and grad school. But it turns out that all you need to do to be a writer is to write.
One thing I would like to do more of in 2024 is long-form essays, which I can’t produce in a day. So you might notice that the pace of this newsletter changes, and weekly turns to every other week. I’m going to keep my same writing schedule, but give myself grace to flex my publishing schedule, especially as I take on more community organizing and art and culture work around Palestine.
I also want to take a minute to thank those of you who have opted to become paid subscribers. I’d like to tell you what I’ve been doing with the (not insignificant) income you have helped me to generate:
I’ve subscribed to a lot of newsletters. lol. While this is silly, it’s also awesome, because there are so many incredible writers, historians, scientists, artists, on and off this platform, that it brings me such great pleasure to support them, as I know it has helped them be more independent and therefore grow creatively. So thank you for giving me the means to do that!
I’ve paid for all the overhead (hosting, etc) for my website www.jodirhoden.com, which will soon be revamped again when I get my LCSW this summer!
I plan to cover other professional costs, like continuing education, and my upcoming clinical social work licensure exam.
I’ve donated/purchased to use artists work in this newsletter,
and I’m saving up for a writing retreat.
To be honest, I did not really expect very many people to opt in to paid subscriptions, and the fact that so many of y’all have is a tremendous statement of support and I don’t take it lightly. Thank you. I would like to ask that if you are not a paid subscriber, but you enjoy reading my work regularly, that you consider becoming one. It’s $5 per month. If you would rather support my work with a one-time contribution, feel free to Venmo me at (at)Jodi-Rhoden. Sharing the newsletter with a link or a forward is also amazing, and really helps expand my readership, which allows me to spend more time writing. Of course, there is no pressure or expectation. I am genuinely just glad and grateful that you are here.
Home
Some things I’ve really enjoyed reading this week:
writing about Other people’s disappointment was such a beautiful and powerful essay, and I related to so much of it:“Part of me knew, part of me did not know. Part of me insisted on rebellion and survival and was therefore bad, part of me repressed my authentic feelings and drives and submitted, and was therefore good. These parts continue to exist within me, and I can still find myself operating under their logic.”
Also:
on why you should hire a bookkeeper, and writing so beautifully on Israel at the IJC, and more (so much more).AND
writing about grief.AND Love and Soup by
! Gahhh! So many amazing essays. A literal golden age!I also watched the devastating and illuminating Philly Streets documentary by Andrew Callaghan and yep, can confirm, it’s that bad. And worse.
The World
Last week, I was honored to again march with hundreds of thousands of other human beings in Washington DC—and millions upon millions all over the world—against the horrific and inhuman atrocities that continue to be visited upon Palestine by the Zionist occupation, relentlessly, brutally, still at this moment as I write these words, for a hundred days, for 80 years, in our names, with our money.
Answering the call of Bread and Puppet Theater, a beloved farm, political puppet theater, and woodcut print studio in Glover, Vermont, for volunteers to join them to “carry a flock of white birds” at the March on Washington for Gaza, my friends—two mom-and-kiddo duos—and I took wing and glided for hours through the streets, horns and wind instruments intoning mournfully, for peace, for freedom, for art and beauty and love.
I was especially honored to get to walk alongside Peter Schumann, Bread and Puppet’s iconic founder, who, at almost 90, braved the cold, bringing loaves upon loaves of his homemade sourdough pumpernickel bread which paraded alongside the puppets on a wooden cart and was shared freely, with a pungent and delicious garlic herb aoli. Peter stage directed: see if you can ALL MOVE TOGETHER! he urged, in his thick German accent (Peter was, as a child, himself a displaced refugee of the German occupation of Silesia, now part of Poland).
We all moved together.
“Bread and Puppet is based on bread baking and the not-for-sale distribution of bread at moments created by art, and these moments are created in opposition to capitalist culture and habit. Therefore the puppet show is not only a puppet show, but an eating-bread-together event.” -Peter Schumann, co-founder and artistic director of Bread and Puppet Theater since 1963
Like so many things in my life right now, this encounter proved a beautiful full circle: in the summer of 1998, I followed my new boyfriend Duncan to Vermont to work at Farm and Wilderness Camps. On our day off, we traveled to the iconic Bread and Puppet Farm for the famous Domestic Resurrection Circus. I had never seen anything like it in my life. As it turns out, we were among the last ones to see it: after 30,000 people arrived on the farm that year, Bread and Puppet discontinued the Domestic Resurrection Circus in favor of smaller weekly performances, which continue to this day. Bread and Puppet has continued to be an aesthetic, spiritual, and political inspiration for me over the subsequent decades and realigning with them at this moment is one more reminder from the universe that I am exactly where I need to be.
A card.
Known as The Lord of Rest from Strife, the Four of Swords points to the need for restoration, healing, introspection, meditation, and peace. In Tarot, the number four signifies stability (as in the four corners of a house), and swords represent the element of air, the realm of the mind. Swords are thoughts, ideas, discernment, precision, boundaries; words as weapons pointed at “the enemy,” but just as likely: pointed at our own hearts.
Therefore, the Four of Swords carries the signature of peace through rest, mental groundedness, and clarity. After the devastation of heartbreak represented in the iconic Three of Swords (still reverberating in the image of the three swords hanging on the wall), the Lord of Rest from Strife points to a safe and protected space, an inner sanctum of cool quiet, where our warrior can lay down their weapons, go inward, and heal.
The Four of Swords asks us to tune the world out for a time, so that we can once again hear that still, small voice inside of us, guiding us from a place of integrity and love. Ultimately, our warrior will need to leave the sanctuary and continue their noble fight. But first, they must rest. First, they must heal. First, they must gather their strength. They must make contact with the sacred, the essential, the eternal: the soul, the purpose for all this strife in the first place, the reason for all this sacred fighting and thinking and writing and grappling with truth and power, the doing of all the things one does with a sword.
Wishing you peace, rest from strife, and renewed strength to defend what is sacred, what is essential, what is eternal.
May it be so. xo
Home + The World is a weekly newsletter by Jodi Rhoden featuring personal essay, recipes, links and recommendations exploring the ways we become exiled: through trauma, addiction, oppression, grief, loss, and family estrangement; and the ways we create belonging: through food and cooking, through community care and recovery and harm reduction, through therapy and witchcraft and making art and telling stories and taking pictures and houseplants and unconditional love and nervous system co-regulation and cake. All content is free; the paid subscriber option is a tip jar. Thank you for being here and thank you for being you.
⚔️❤️ Jodi
some others include: esse quam videri (to be rather than to seem) and sic transit gloria mundi (so goes the glory of the world)
Hi Jodi, I am new here, and just want to say that places like yours are the reason I am. I missed old school blogging, and I'm glad I found you. Much of what you've written here resonates, but especially this: "But it turns out that all you need to do to be a writer is to write." A hundred yesses. Looking forward to whatever you share next.
The World! The World! The World! Love all those beautiful images.