Bred of Heaven by Jasper Rees

me,’ he says. ‘It’s a way of life. It’s natural. I can’t imagine the point of living without it. I’m not particularly interested in theology. I know much more about folklore and art. But I do believe in the Resurrection.’ And with that he disappears down some stairs and re-emerges brandishing a thin volume bound in dark-green leather.
    I flick eagerly through the pages to 1927 and there, on 20 September, it records the wedding of Edward Bertram Rees, twenty-six years, bachelor and dental surgeon, to Dorothy Owen, twenty-five years, spinster. The document tells several life stories. Bert was the son of Thomas Rees (deceased), Dorothy the daughter of D. G. Owen. ‘Rank or Profession of Father’ is listed in Bert’s case as farmer, in Dorothy’s as bank manager. Dorothy’s only sister was her witness. Bert’s was Percy Rees, one of his seven brothers.
    The farming Reeses conformed. The banking Owens did not. They were Congregationalists or Independents (or Annibynwyr). So it was a mixed wedding in Lammas Street. The register says it was presided over by the minister John Dyfnallt Owen in the presence of B. Davies, vicar of St David’s. Church was keeping an eye on chapel.
    As Towyn and I stand in the room where this momentousprequel to my own existence took place, I am struck by a question about religious procedure. I want to know why in his chapel I was allowed to take communion, when the Church in Wales in Conwy refused. ‘We welcome anybody no matter who he may be to take part in this communion,’ Towyn says, ‘because this table is not ours: it belongs to Christ, so we are offering it in his name.’ He looks at me, bow-tied and dapper, owlish specs glinting. ‘I wouldn’t dream of refusing communion to anybody.’
    â€˜Absolutely no talking,’ whispers my uncle in the cloister as we line up for lunch. We’ve come straight from sext, a short dash through a few more psalms at 12.15, preceded by terce at 8.50. Teilo and I fill the gap by packing shortbread. The abbey sells the stuff as fast as it can bake, box and ferry it to its shop in Tenby. Shortbread packing is one of his monastic duties, along with sending the daily rainfall measurements off to the Met Office and working in the archives. They have wisely kept him from the kitchen. Brother Benedict, a wry, worldly monk from Middlesbrough who is the abbey’s chef, wheels in a tall trolley of newly baked biscuits, still warm from the oven. There are sugared trays of them galore. Teilo points me to an immensely complex set of instructions he’s produced in minuscule handwriting for anyone having to do the job in his stead. I take one look at it.
    â€˜Just tell me what to do, Teilo.’
    I stack. He packs. Our through-put is impressive. In forty minutes we’ve bagged and cellophaned thirty boxes, each containing a dozen biscuits. A new monastic record, I fancy. And meanwhile we talk – copiously.
    A silent order strikes me as an odd choice for a man of many words. Teilo is very Welsh in that sense. When as a young man he first thought of walling himself up in here, he recalls that hismother took to her bed for a fortnight and he thought better of it. In fact the Cistercians gave up on the life of unadulterated contemplation a while back. When Teilo first came here in 1954, no one uttered a word. The second Vatican Council in 1965 concentrated on updating the general life of the Catholic Church. ‘Religious orders were encouraged to consider their way of life and rules and practices,’ he tells me as he grapples with a gizmo which fastens the shortbread into its cellophane wrapping, ‘and go back to the spirit of the founders and remove accretions. Silence,’ he explains, ‘was a very positive value, but strict silence using sign language was deemed to be unnecessary.’ The order considered a revision of its constitution across its 170