The Beautiful Thread by Penelope Wilcock

It’s not a thing to go into lightly. Still, it is a blessed thing, and I for one will have a heart overflowing with joy when you tie the knot.”
    Gervase looked at him curiously. Something of his mother there, thought the abbot, unerringly detecting the slightly false note in the fulsome reassurances of angels singing and a joyous heart, but forbearing from comment. John hoped they would find contentment in taking their way together. It didn’t seem entirely likely, somehow. But they believed in their love. Who was he to blight it any further than it already had been? Let them take their chances. Especially seeing as they already had two children.
    â€œIn a community like ours,” he said, “we have all kinds of men from many different family backgrounds. They come with a variety of assumptions about life, all quickly overturned. Our rule of thumb is to remember that each one is doing his best, each one has his struggles. To give one another the benefit of the doubt. To cultivate a sense of humour. To think twice before making any sort of rebuke. And to be kind. Vocation is noble, but the charcoal beds of everyday life are what filter and refine it from its original condition into something pure and useable.
    â€œA marriage is a community as well – the two of you, your children, the lads and lasses who work together with you in your house and on your fields. Community begins with two, I suppose.”
    They heard him with courtesy; they had little to ask, and no comment to make. Like most who came to see him, they regarded him with a certain degree of awe, and tremendous respect. John found this almost unbelievable, but accepted the reality of it. And he supposed he relied on it to make his life manageable. If everyone who came into the abbot’s house felt free to expand in his company and chat away freely, not much would get done. If they were shy in his presence, at least it kept the conversation shorter than it might have been, and left more time for the next in line.
    After they had gone, he sat for a while in silence and stillness, thinking about the young couple and the picture they had sketched for him. He felt uneasy about their future. He imagined the difference it could have made if Gervase’s mother and father had taken delight in their love. He thought of Gervase saying his father wouldn’t “be unkind”, meaning nothing more than that he would not be entirely estranged. He wondered if Gervase had ever really known what kindness looked like, before he knew Hannah.
    â€œOh God, Father of us all,” he whispered into the silence, “breathe your kindness like a fragrance into our lives. Raise us up to be sons of God. Lift us out of the dust of half-measures and ingrained meanness. Raise us up. Breathe your kindness through our lives.”
    He sat a moment longer, then on the impulse of sudden resolve left his atelier and went along the cloister and up the day stairs to the novitiate, in search of Father Theodore. He hesitated at the door – which stood ajar – hearing familiar voices inside. He realized that occupying his morning with the wedding couple had left the bishop at a loose end. Evidently he’d thought he might as well get on with his Visitation.
    â€œAnd what do you think, Brother Robert” – this was the bishop – “of Peter Lombard’s Libri Quatuor Sententiarum? I think I want to ask you in particular what you think of William of Ockham’s commentary thereon.”
    John could easily picture Father Theodore physically ceasing to breathe as this question was put. To take a novice as essentially clueless as Brother Robert into the treacherous territory of borderline heresy seemed hardly fair. Sure enough, it was Theo’s voice, not Robert’s, next heard in reply – low, respectful.
    â€œAh, your Lordship! Ockham’s commentary runs into ten volumes, as you know. We have touched upon them, but not