THE RESEMBLANCE OF ALL THINGS: Michael Bartholomew-Biggs grapples with Bernard J Lurie’s ambitiously conceived long poem which speculates on the fundamentals of creation
The Resemblance of All Things
Bernard J Lurie
Resource Publications
ISBN 9781666796926
60 pp $25
.
The Resemblance of All Things is a long poem (50+pages) dealing with the nature and purposes of God. It is divided into four major parts, in each of which God addresses a Biblical character – Job, Elijah, Ezekiel and Zechariah. Lurie’s text amplifies (and usually goes beyond) the divine visions and instructions reported in the Old Testament.
A spiritually-focussed work of this nature obviously presents challenges to a reviewer writing for a secular publication. One could approach it mainly in terms of the merits of the poem – much as one might write about Paradise Lost as a literary epic without taking a position on Milton’s theology. On the other hand, one feels that, by producing such a poem in this not-very-religious age, Bernard Lurie is hoping to encourage his readers towards greater spiritual awareness and understanding; and hence this reviewer feels obliged to give at least some account of his theological arguments.
We begin with the poem itself. It is written throughout in iambic hexameters (occasionally rhymed) which are, on the whole, well-crafted so that the reader is drawn along quite comfortably with the flow of the argument. As already mentioned, the poem is divided into four main parts which differ significantly from one another in tone and content (although there is a consistency of thought running through the whole work). Each part is also subdivided into smaller sections and the reasons for this are less apparent; perhaps the poet is simply giving us a chance to pause every so often and reflect on what we have just read.
For the most part the poem is didactic and explanatory with limited use of metaphor or strong imagery. This is hardly surprising, given the vast scope of its subject matter, since what could serve as a metaphor for Creation itself? Lurie’s poetic skills are most evident when he exploits the interplay of words and sounds so that his propositions fall pleasingly on the ear: ‘For this potential is itself reality, /And it is nothing less and nothing else than that’ or ‘I am the Maker who makes by not making/…/all things altogether seamlessly arise’. He is also accomplished in the Psalm-like use of parallelism and inversion
For no more shall the winter and its stillness come –
Where spaces without time might fill each frozen room;
But times without a space in harvest warmth must rise,
Unfortunately however there are occasions when the complexity of Lurie’s ideas leads him into offering a rather indigestible helping of prepositions
That those potentials that from through that nothing rose
Might, in remembrance, through that nothing, now beyond,
Yet rise again …
One gets here a sense that the manuscript might have benefited from a firmer editorial hand. But at this point it is necessary to mention that The Resemblance of All Things is a posthumous publication of a work, largely written in the decade around the turn of this century, whose existence was only discovered after its author’s death. It appears from the book’s Foreword that it has been published as it was found and so it is unsurprising that there remain some awkward phrasings and indeed some over-elaborations or repetitions. Nevertheless the work does deserve attention and from here on I want to give some account of its theological and philosophical viewpoint – although still giving a flavour of its poetry.
The poem’s first section is addressed to Job, who appears in a quite widely known Old Testament story exploring questions of why evil exists and whether it only harms those who have themselves done something wrong. Job is a righteous man who – at the instigation of the Adversary (aka Satan) – suffers multiple misfortunes to test the contention that even a righteous man will curse God if subjected to enough provocation. In Lurie’s poem, God gives a much fuller explanation of His purposes than the rather more enigmatic response appearing in the authorised version of the Bible. The first stanza begins ‘My love is the desire that all things should exist’; and this therefore implies that creation must include
Both all that is too wonderful for your belief,
And that is horrible beyond imagining
Because ‘all that might be must occur’ it follows that all potentialities must be actualised and hence Lurie seems open to a kind of parallel universe theory where each human choice is simultaneously mirrored by the opposite choice being made somewhere else. Such a multiplication of alternatives will result in ‘sets whose permutations never know an end’. Later, within a complex picturing of the nature of time as a hive of corridors and rooms, Lurie’s God gives Job the (not necessarily comforting!) assurance that halls exist ‘Where you have never lost your children nor your flocks, / Or where you know yet greater miseries than these.’
Job is called to be a witness to the simple fact of his own sufferings – ‘The pains of Job, which must exist if all things are’. Furthermore he needs to
… know that neither choice nor fate nor accident
Has caused your misery, nor brought you to these depths,
But free will and predestination both being true …
Lurie’s God argues that love would not be love if it ‘would deny a thing its being’ even if the thing were evil. This God would not construct a universe in which only good exists. Relationships within a universe containing good and evil are at the best summed up as
love decrees forgiveness and true brotherhood –
That each must overlook his sufferings and pains
By knowing that all such things must be if all things are
One can, however, approve the principle of forgiveness based on mutual understanding without relying on the assumption that we are all saddled with a world in which we have to allow that anything is possible. Patience and tolerance can be founded on an earlier assertion of Lurie’s that ‘each thing is joined to every other thing’. As the book’s title indicates, the idea of connectivity and resemblance between all aspects of creation is a central message in the poem. It is presented as if it is a consequence of the realising of all potentials; but in fact it could be an independent proposition (rather than a corollary) based on the assumption that all things – however outwardly distinct from one another – bear the stamp of the one Creator.
Midway through the conversation with Job, however, a new idea emerges. Lurie enlists his own version of the Adversary to suggest that God Himself must experience all things – both good and evil. This might be thought to be prefiguring the incarnation at the centre of the Christian gospel; but instead the poem portrays God undergoing (what seems to be) a change of mind and formulating a desire that ‘harm did not exist’. The poem then outlines a kind of spiral progression whereby the evil and harmful is / will be eliminated by iterative human choices leading eventually to the transformation or elimination of all that is evil. This is presented as a better outcome than one resulting from a creation in which evil was denied existence in the first place.
Having attempted to give a fair account the argument of the first section, I shall deal much more briefly with the rest. Part two is addressed to the prophet Elijah at a point in the Old Testament account when he is feeling isolated and vulnerable while fleeing from the rage of Queen Jezebel. Fittingly, this section deals with identity and selfhood
How strange the here where every thing that is exists –
That you should seem to be the only thing that is,
And all else merely the perceptions of your mind!
Lurie’s God goes on to commend anyone ‘who by a doubt, however small,/ Has stood apart from self to know how strange he was’ and issues a warning concerning our forebears that ‘by doubting strangeness, they from Eden fell’. Quite what this desirable strangeness consists of is less clear but seems to relate to simplicity, humility and perhaps a capacity and tolerance for doubt as against (misplaced) certainties.
Part three addresses the prophet Ezekiel and refers to the strange flying machine that descends to reveal God’s glory to Ezekiel among the exiles in Babylon. Once again Lurie’s God goes in for much more explanation than is present in the Biblical accounts where God is chiefly concerned with giving Ezekiel instructions. This section explores paradox – ‘My vessel is this one that goes yet does not move / Which travels through all pathways yet is never turned ‘– and notions of back-and-forth reciprocity are perhaps triggered by images of the living creatures which control the stop-start motion of the flying machine as it rides upon its wheels-within-wheels
Here all this world, though one, yet two-at-once must rise
In that same place where they the selfsame form each share -
Where every outward thing is but an inward born –
Which, mirrored by what it mirrors, its inward maker forms!
In the poem’s final section, God speaks to the minor prophet Zechariah in the context of his foretelling of a future time when nations previously hostile to Israel will come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. The Bible presents this reconciliation as a somewhat forced and grudging one; but Lurie holds out a more ecumenical vision of diverse peoples coming together, seeing
The ancients by Tiresias the sage being led,
The easterns by a Buddha so compassionate,
The westerns by a Christ now risen and alive -
That they with Israel, My fruit, four species, cry!
I hope it is clear by now that I see The Resemblance of All Things as a deeply serious book, painstakingly constructed as regards both form and content. It does, I think, invite the reader to consider it as an authoritative prophetic message; but whether it deserves that assessment is not something I feel qualified to judge. (We may note, however, that while the recognised prophets of the Old Testament do indeed make use of poetry their messages tend to be rather terse and avoid over-elaboration.) But if we set the bar somewhat lower I would say that for readers with spiritual curiosity this book is thought-provoking and readably laced with ideas that can slip in below the critical radar to encourage further reflection and questioning. This, I believe, makes it more valuable than one that attempts to spell out a precise vision of God which is sure to be incomplete even if not entirely wrong.
May 19 2025
The Resemblance of All Things
THE RESEMBLANCE OF ALL THINGS: Michael Bartholomew-Biggs grapples with Bernard J Lurie’s ambitiously conceived long poem which speculates on the fundamentals of creation
.
The Resemblance of All Things is a long poem (50+pages) dealing with the nature and purposes of God. It is divided into four major parts, in each of which God addresses a Biblical character – Job, Elijah, Ezekiel and Zechariah. Lurie’s text amplifies (and usually goes beyond) the divine visions and instructions reported in the Old Testament.
A spiritually-focussed work of this nature obviously presents challenges to a reviewer writing for a secular publication. One could approach it mainly in terms of the merits of the poem – much as one might write about Paradise Lost as a literary epic without taking a position on Milton’s theology. On the other hand, one feels that, by producing such a poem in this not-very-religious age, Bernard Lurie is hoping to encourage his readers towards greater spiritual awareness and understanding; and hence this reviewer feels obliged to give at least some account of his theological arguments.
We begin with the poem itself. It is written throughout in iambic hexameters (occasionally rhymed) which are, on the whole, well-crafted so that the reader is drawn along quite comfortably with the flow of the argument. As already mentioned, the poem is divided into four main parts which differ significantly from one another in tone and content (although there is a consistency of thought running through the whole work). Each part is also subdivided into smaller sections and the reasons for this are less apparent; perhaps the poet is simply giving us a chance to pause every so often and reflect on what we have just read.
For the most part the poem is didactic and explanatory with limited use of metaphor or strong imagery. This is hardly surprising, given the vast scope of its subject matter, since what could serve as a metaphor for Creation itself? Lurie’s poetic skills are most evident when he exploits the interplay of words and sounds so that his propositions fall pleasingly on the ear: ‘For this potential is itself reality, /And it is nothing less and nothing else than that’ or ‘I am the Maker who makes by not making/…/all things altogether seamlessly arise’. He is also accomplished in the Psalm-like use of parallelism and inversion
Unfortunately however there are occasions when the complexity of Lurie’s ideas leads him into offering a rather indigestible helping of prepositions
One gets here a sense that the manuscript might have benefited from a firmer editorial hand. But at this point it is necessary to mention that The Resemblance of All Things is a posthumous publication of a work, largely written in the decade around the turn of this century, whose existence was only discovered after its author’s death. It appears from the book’s Foreword that it has been published as it was found and so it is unsurprising that there remain some awkward phrasings and indeed some over-elaborations or repetitions. Nevertheless the work does deserve attention and from here on I want to give some account of its theological and philosophical viewpoint – although still giving a flavour of its poetry.
The poem’s first section is addressed to Job, who appears in a quite widely known Old Testament story exploring questions of why evil exists and whether it only harms those who have themselves done something wrong. Job is a righteous man who – at the instigation of the Adversary (aka Satan) – suffers multiple misfortunes to test the contention that even a righteous man will curse God if subjected to enough provocation. In Lurie’s poem, God gives a much fuller explanation of His purposes than the rather more enigmatic response appearing in the authorised version of the Bible. The first stanza begins ‘My love is the desire that all things should exist’; and this therefore implies that creation must include
Because ‘all that might be must occur’ it follows that all potentialities must be actualised and hence Lurie seems open to a kind of parallel universe theory where each human choice is simultaneously mirrored by the opposite choice being made somewhere else. Such a multiplication of alternatives will result in ‘sets whose permutations never know an end’. Later, within a complex picturing of the nature of time as a hive of corridors and rooms, Lurie’s God gives Job the (not necessarily comforting!) assurance that halls exist ‘Where you have never lost your children nor your flocks, / Or where you know yet greater miseries than these.’
Job is called to be a witness to the simple fact of his own sufferings – ‘The pains of Job, which must exist if all things are’. Furthermore he needs to
Lurie’s God argues that love would not be love if it ‘would deny a thing its being’ even if the thing were evil. This God would not construct a universe in which only good exists. Relationships within a universe containing good and evil are at the best summed up as
One can, however, approve the principle of forgiveness based on mutual understanding without relying on the assumption that we are all saddled with a world in which we have to allow that anything is possible. Patience and tolerance can be founded on an earlier assertion of Lurie’s that ‘each thing is joined to every other thing’. As the book’s title indicates, the idea of connectivity and resemblance between all aspects of creation is a central message in the poem. It is presented as if it is a consequence of the realising of all potentials; but in fact it could be an independent proposition (rather than a corollary) based on the assumption that all things – however outwardly distinct from one another – bear the stamp of the one Creator.
Midway through the conversation with Job, however, a new idea emerges. Lurie enlists his own version of the Adversary to suggest that God Himself must experience all things – both good and evil. This might be thought to be prefiguring the incarnation at the centre of the Christian gospel; but instead the poem portrays God undergoing (what seems to be) a change of mind and formulating a desire that ‘harm did not exist’. The poem then outlines a kind of spiral progression whereby the evil and harmful is / will be eliminated by iterative human choices leading eventually to the transformation or elimination of all that is evil. This is presented as a better outcome than one resulting from a creation in which evil was denied existence in the first place.
Having attempted to give a fair account the argument of the first section, I shall deal much more briefly with the rest. Part two is addressed to the prophet Elijah at a point in the Old Testament account when he is feeling isolated and vulnerable while fleeing from the rage of Queen Jezebel. Fittingly, this section deals with identity and selfhood
Lurie’s God goes on to commend anyone ‘who by a doubt, however small,/ Has stood apart from self to know how strange he was’ and issues a warning concerning our forebears that ‘by doubting strangeness, they from Eden fell’. Quite what this desirable strangeness consists of is less clear but seems to relate to simplicity, humility and perhaps a capacity and tolerance for doubt as against (misplaced) certainties.
Part three addresses the prophet Ezekiel and refers to the strange flying machine that descends to reveal God’s glory to Ezekiel among the exiles in Babylon. Once again Lurie’s God goes in for much more explanation than is present in the Biblical accounts where God is chiefly concerned with giving Ezekiel instructions. This section explores paradox – ‘My vessel is this one that goes yet does not move / Which travels through all pathways yet is never turned ‘– and notions of back-and-forth reciprocity are perhaps triggered by images of the living creatures which control the stop-start motion of the flying machine as it rides upon its wheels-within-wheels
In the poem’s final section, God speaks to the minor prophet Zechariah in the context of his foretelling of a future time when nations previously hostile to Israel will come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. The Bible presents this reconciliation as a somewhat forced and grudging one; but Lurie holds out a more ecumenical vision of diverse peoples coming together, seeing
I hope it is clear by now that I see The Resemblance of All Things as a deeply serious book, painstakingly constructed as regards both form and content. It does, I think, invite the reader to consider it as an authoritative prophetic message; but whether it deserves that assessment is not something I feel qualified to judge. (We may note, however, that while the recognised prophets of the Old Testament do indeed make use of poetry their messages tend to be rather terse and avoid over-elaboration.) But if we set the bar somewhat lower I would say that for readers with spiritual curiosity this book is thought-provoking and readably laced with ideas that can slip in below the critical radar to encourage further reflection and questioning. This, I believe, makes it more valuable than one that attempts to spell out a precise vision of God which is sure to be incomplete even if not entirely wrong.