All Will Be Well

These wise words to live by come from "Radio Free Bubba":

All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. This is one of the mantras used in the Christian meditation tradition. Don’t think it comes from a dewy-eyed Pollyanna. The woman to whom it is credited, Dame Julian of Norwich, is the same one who, when her mule got stuck on a mountain road in a rainstorm, dismounted, shook her fist at the sky, and shouted, “God! If this is how you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you don’t have many!”

Lately, I have been experimenting with repeating, “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.” I try it out in different situations. Sometimes I feel stupid affirming that all will be well. What about things that aren’t well and don’t look like they’re ever going to be well? It’s hard to see the whole picture from where I stand at this moment in my life.

There is a story of a Chinese farmer who had a fine horse show up in his pasture one day. “How marvelous!” all the neighbors said. “Maybe,” said the farmer. His son tried to ride the horse and the horse threw him, breaking the son’s leg. “How awful,” said the neighbors. “Maybe,” replied the farmer. Then the Emperor’s army came through town to draft young men for war. The farmer’s son was spared because of his broken leg.

I can’t tell, in the grand scheme of life, whether things are turning out well or not. To affirm that “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well” is difficult for me. There are child abusers and tortures and AIDS and oil spills and a multitude or other horrors in this world.

Here is what I do know. I know that I have a choice between hope and despair when viewing the world and my future. Each choice has equal evidence in its favor. Each is affirmed and underscored by my life experience. How do I decide between them? I choose the one that brings the most joy, the most healing, the most compassion to my life and to the world. In despair I’m no good to anyone. I stop functioning well, I drag through the days, I deal with horrors that haven’t even happened yet. I don’t enjoy my children, food, sex, or any of the other dazzling pleasures of my life.

When my mother was dying of cancer, she said to me, “Meggie, everything that happens to me is good.” That was a statement of her faith. I was a cynical twenty-three-year-old seminary student. My mother’s faith sounded naive and silly. I was in despair over her suffering, but she was not in despair, and it was her suffering. Suddenly, it seemed presumptuous to despair over her suffering when she was choosing not to.

As I experiment with this mantra and risk feeling stupid, which is a feeling I despise, I ask myself, “Which is more stupid: to despair my whole life just in case things aren’t going to end well, or to live in joy and hope my whole life, whether or not things turn out well?” I’m going to keep singing this mantra to my fears. All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.

- Meg Barnhouse