Certainly sincerity, wonder, tolerance, patience and a certain absence and presence of self seem to be involved. All these things are very basic to the human mindset of worship, our DNA of religion perhaps.

I love this clip from The Hajj 2009 and I thank the film maker for sharing it. It has a modesty and simplicity and it gives us a sense of the experience from ground level rather than those aerial shots of The Hajj that we may be more accustomed to.

I find the ordinariness, modesty, excitement and tension shown here moving. The experience is raw, stripped bare and completely unpretentious. There’s an emotion here that I think we can all relate to and to some degree know, whatever our religious background.