All Shall be Well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

"Lock up  your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind". So wrote the illustrious woman writer Virginia Woolf in her "A Room of One's Own', the landmark book of the twentieth century feminist thought. It explores the history of women writers in literature, especially of English Literature.  But I feel sad to note that Woolf never discovered Julian of Norwich , supposed to be the first ever woman writer in English language. 
 How come she missed out Julian of Norwich (ca. 1342-ca.1416)? The anchoress, enclosed within the confines of a a solitary cell, a room of her own, in which she was anchored , but not cut-off from the world! Yes, she had a Room (cell) of her own!! There she spent years meditating on the Revelations ("Showings") that she had during a near death experience, which she had when she was in her early thirties. She wrote about it in her 'short' and 'long texts'! And these texts reveal her spirituality , which is full of confidence and hope in God, "who loves and delights in us". Her optimism and positive outlook springs from her ability to see beyond her sufferings and pain. Even in the midst of excruciating pain she was able to fix her eyes on the Crucified Saviour. And that gave her the strength. This gazing on the Wounded Healer reassured her that despite pain and struggle, everything is going to be all right, "all shall be well."
     http://www.julianofnorwich.org/centre.shtml
The great poet T.S. Eliot, a contemporary and friend of Virginia Woolf,  could draw much from this most optimistic mystic of the Middle Ages. Thrice does Eliot quote from Julian of Norwich in his 'Little Gidding'. Like a refrain, the same quote is repeated. In the III rd section the refrain is repeated twice:

 History may be servitude,History may be freedom. 

See, now they vanish,

The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,

To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.
Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.

...............

We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us - a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.

Again, in the last section ,  he concludes the whole poem with this refrain:

Quick now, here, now, always-- 
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded 
Into the crowned knot of fire 
And the fire and the rose are one.

'Little Gidding' is Eliot's poem about fire - the fire of purification and purgation. We need to go through this fire - sufferings and sacrifices to attain Salvation. In Section IV , Eliot speaks of the Pentacostal fire:

The dove descending breaks the air 

With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one dischage from sin and error. 
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

Julian of Norwich has much to say about all that. So let me conclude this conversation here, and let me get immersed in Dame Julian's Revelations. Shall be back.

He said not: Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be afflicted; but He said: Thou shalt not be overcome. God willeth that we take heed to these words, and that we be ever strong in sure trust, in weal and woe. For He loveth and enjoyeth us, and so willeth He that we love and enjoy Him and mightily trust in Him; and all shall be well.

From the 16th Revelation of the  "Showings of Divine Love' by Lady Julian of Norwich - CHAPTER LXVIII. The whole book is available in pdf format in the link below:
http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/1343-1398,_Julian._of_Norwich,_Revelations_Of_Divine_Love,_EN.pdf