Binding Words

This week has found me in the midst of doing some bookbinding. I’ve been replenishing the inventory of a couple of my Wanton Gospeller Press books. I love doing this kind of work periodically, work that engages my hands but lets my brain go wandering instead of being its usual hyper-focused self.

It’s a happy bit of synchronicity that I’m binding books at this particular point in the year. This trinity of days from October 31 to November 2, encompassing Halloween, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day, tends to be a thin place in the landscape of my year. The ancient Celts believed that the veil between worlds became especially permeable at this time; perhaps like them, I’ve often found that these days offer an invitation to ponder the past. Not with a desire to return to it, or to second-guess it, but with a mindfulness of what has gone before, and perhaps, just occasionally, to have a brief visit from the ghosts of What Might Have Been.

It’s this kind of impulse that gave rise to the feasts of All Saints and All Souls. Recognizing the ancient impulse to look to the past at this time of year, the church created new ways to remember the dead with practices in which we can still hear the echoes of the ancient celebrations.

Binding these books in the midst of these sacred days, I’ve been thinking about those whose lives have been bound together with mine. I love Jane Hirshfield’s poem “For What Binds Us,” in which she writes about the tender and fierce connections that love draws us toward, how our loving marks us and creates a fabric that, as she writes, “nothing can tear or mend.”

It’s a good time of year to think about what and whom I’m bound to, and what I’m bound for. It’s an occasion to ponder where I’m giving my energy and to consider what threads of connection may be confining me and what threads are weaving a welcome path into the days ahead.

Where are you bound these days?

Happy Feast of All Souls to you.