I
wonder what it's like, sometimes, inside "other worlds". I was going to write "other religions", but really I mean any worldview that powerfully informs one's day-to-day life and thought. "Thick" practices that give structure and meaning to our actions. I'm very familiar with the internal practices of being Catholic, for example, but even beyond these distinctive actions, there is a unifiying "spirit" behind all of them that I would have struggled greatly to understand as the secular man I once was. While I'm no theologian, I've grasped something of the form that Catholic theology takes, and that forms influences my thought constantly.
So I ask myself, what does it feel like to be a devout Muslim, for example? Or a classical Greek? Or a Japanese practicant of Shinto? I looked around a bit recently at how Muslims speak with one another and about their Faith, and I haven't exactly figured out what the "deal" is yet. Essentially, it feels like a rather denuded version of Christianity, with a couple of things like permission for polygamy, and proscriptions against pork and alcohol thrown in. The five-daily prayers, and Ramadan are also there, but I suspect there is a deeper "vibe" to be understood and lived, and I wonder what it is. For Catholics, it has to do with the wild and mysterious work of God in re-constructing the social order of the Cosmos, of the mixing of the divine and material, of forgiveness and repentance, of the overcoming of death by a new kind of generation, of law and spirit, and covenant. What is the fabric of thought and spirituality for the followers of Muhammed?