And All Shall Be Well

And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding

Eliot's poem, and the words of Dame Julian of Norwich which it draws on, are brought together with a striking image in this glass engraving in Salisbury Cathedral. It's one of a pair of memorial panels created by Laurence Whistler. His older brother, the artist Rex Whistler, was killed in action in Normandy in July 1944. In November 1944, Laurence's wife Jill died of a blood infection not long after the birth of their daughter. The panels are both a moving tribute to their memory and an affirmation that, even in the face of such tragedy, it is possible to believe that 'all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.'