Right at the end of the shacharit service, one encounters Maimonides' Principles of Faith, the first of which reads: 'I believe with complete faith that the Creator, Blessed is His Name, creates and guides all creatures and that He alone made, makes, and will make everything.' When praying or reading from the siddur, I try to extract the most from what I'm reading. I'm not going to promise that what follows will necessarily shed much light on Maimonides (a friend of mine gives classes on him, so if you'd like the professional lowdown, I'll give you my friend's number). However, my own experience in applying this principle could be of use.
The first thing to say is that any statement which begins with 'I believe with complete faith' does not accurately depict my conscious state on Tuesday morning, say. My mind often resembles a pack of disparate leashed dogs exercised by a dog walker in Haggerston park, inquisitive, playful, and occasionally entangled: a perplexity of different trains of thought, but benign and united. On a bad day, the dogs get loose, and then we are in trouble. A disassembled mind is hard to reassemble. You have probably seen posters up for lost puppies. Well, I am sometimes tempted to put up posters asking if anyone has seen certain errant parts of my mind. This First Principle of Faith is a useful homing whistle to the lost dogs. They will never be brought completely to heel, but the desire to work towards that belief is all that is required to actually move towards it. Listen out for whistle, and the homing process takes care of itself.
There is no point in commanding me to believe something: that does not work. My immediate response is to react, resist, reject, and reproach. Tell me I do not have to believe an idea and ask me instead to actually apply the idea, and we are in with a chance. When I apply a true idea, its truth reveals itself to be me in the application. I learned to swim in the water, not on the bank. So I apply this Principle, treating it as true, and seeing how it illuminates the subject I apply it to.
Truth is always the antidote, whatever the venom. The two truths contained in this Principle: the creative force, and the sole nature of that creative force, address a couple of mental pests that can ruin your whole day. My other half listens to Radio Four in the mornings in the kitchen. I enter the room only to refill my coffee every twenty minutes. Each time, the voices emanating from the satanic box are bemoaning some benighted state of affairs. One might conclude, firstly, that the guidance is on the fritz, and, secondly, that there is seriously dirty work afoot, that there is a competing creative force in the universe, and not a good one.
Although not all the data are in, the evidence so far suggests that not everyone is guided by the Creator at all times. Let's not name names. You know who I'm talking about. However, the truth is this: the guidance is always there, broadcasting on all frequencies like the USS Enterprise hailing signal. Whether or not I want to listen is up to me. The competing guidance (the animal soul, the yetzer hara, the ego), insistent and beguiling as it is, is not an equal and opposite force but a tiny, mad idea, a bad dream, a glitch in the programming. I am not that voice. I am not its content: the worldly grasping, carping, fussing, fretting, indignation, and bile. I am the picker, the exerciser of will: which voice am I going to listen to, the imperious Rumpelstiltskin of the bodily ego, or the Higher Voice guiding all creation? Surrender entirely to the Higher Guidance, and one awakens from the dream.
Which leads me to the final point: the 'evil' of the world did not create itself. It is not an originating force. It represents either non-completion or straying of the good. On this seventh day of Creation, anything incomplete, anything erring, requires completion and correction. And what is my role in all of this? Not to stand on the sidelines shooting out lightning bolts of judgement like a demented tinpot Thor. Not to steal a peak at the blueprint for the universe (which I'm told is heavily guarded). Not always to ask 'Why?' (which my Jesuit friend, Father Tom, says is not a helpful question). But instead to ask: 'What would the Creator have me do?' As I discharge my duty as agent, I entrust this lower realm to the Creator and Maker and Guider of all things. I trust in the existence of a Higher Realm. And I hear a voice emanating from that Realm, saying, 'Will you let go already? I've totally got this.'