Rita McConnon.

My phone rang while I was walking through Arlington National Cemetery last week. It was Rita McConnon, a Massachusetts riding stable owner who helps children of all ages connect with something larger than themselves.

I had profiled Rita for one of my early posts on Finding Faith. She is what many would call a woman of faith, someone who sees each person as a “child of God,” someone whose lexicon includes the mantra: “Fear not. Have hope.”

I have news, she said. “I’m opening up a homeless shelter ... and it’s all because of you.”

I was speechless. It really wasn't me, of course. It was people I'd interviewed, people she'd never met but heard and read about.

I had told Rita about the Rev. Deborah Little-Wyman, a mere slip of a woman who had the guts to go wade out into the vast homeless community of Boston, armed only with sandwiches and socks and a vague notion of wanting to live the gospels like Jesus did.

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OPALOCKA, Fla. — For many people, faith can be as immediate as mixing water with drops of herbal essence, lighting a candle, having a reading, or communing with spirits or divinities.

“We have something for everyone here,” says Jesus Suarez, picking up small plastic bottles off the shelves of Botanica La Caridad, a religious supply store in an industrial park outside Miami.

Visitors to this botanica are greeted by statues of various orishas, or minor Santeria deities. Large crucifixes hang on one wall. Ordinary objects -- coconuts, conch shells, railroad spikes, river rocks, and cow horns – compete for space on the floor. All hold spiritual significance for believers of one religion or another. Shelves contain statues of Jesus on the cross, African deities, and Native American spirit guides, as well as potions with tantalizing names such as “Jinx Removal” and “Death Away.”

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MIAMI -- Sometimes, says Cuban-born Ernesto Pichardo, it seems like he's been campaigning nonstop for 30 years. Twenty-one years ago Pichardo, a Santeria priest, took a fight for the right to practice his religion all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court -- and won.

Now he wages a different campaign. The priest is leading an effort to make his religion's sacred text, the Book of Diagnosis in Ifa Divination, widely available for scholars. Written in Spanish and Yoruba, the book combines Yoruba and Afro-Cuban history with culture, philosophy, metaphysics, religion, and spiritual knowledge, according to a press release last month. Initially published in Cuba in the 1940s, the book has been in the hands of priests and priestesses but out of the public eye for 50 years.

"The consensus among the priests: That's what this book is, from the oral," says Pichardo, thumbing through a copy of the text on his dining room table. The pages are thin and brittle. Acid from the paper eats away at the edges. A thick black type, the kind used on an old manual typewriter, marches across the pages.

Pichardo's serious demeanor drops away as he finds a list of items needed in one spell, all typewritten in Yuroba. "Now look, look at the fees."

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MIAMI —The first dead woman who came to her was the spirit of an African slave.

“She came to tell my family that I was born with that ability and throughout my life I was going to be dedicated to do readings, take care of people, and help out with the spiritual world,” said Puerto-Rican born Nydia Pichardo, 49, of Miami.

With her cheerful brightly painted fingernails, feminine dress and friendly manner, Pichardo seems more like a cool neighbor than someone who talks to the dead. That is, if you believe in the ability to speak with the spirits of the dead – and there are, evidently, plenty of people in the world who do.

Pichardo is a Santeria priestess and medium who believes she has an extra-sensory ability that allows the dead to possess her and convey messages from the beyond. She says she can communicate with spirits and, if necessary, help them move on.

Americans don’t often talk about spiritual possession in casual conversation, at least not outside Hollywood. Maybe that is why it’s such a curiosity. Or maybe people want so badly to believe in spirits, in the souls of their deceased loved ones and ancestors lingering on earth, that they talk to them. Or maybe certain people can communicate with departed souls. They may feel overcome by good or disturbed spirits, or feel spirits in places like old cities, slave plantations, concentration camps, the Roman Coliseum or in old houses.

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HOUSTON—The words “faith” and “politics” held vastly different meanings for several dozen Texas clergy and other voters attending an Obama campaign forum on faith at Texas Southern University earlier this week.

Faith, people said, was about “spirituality,” “community,” “perseverance,” “God,” “Christ,” “belief,” and “hope” for a largely African-American Christian audience.

Politics brought to mind words like “sneaky,” “underhanded,” “shifty,” “charismatic,” “expediency,” “secular,” “bureaucracy,” “propaganda,” “disconnection,” “loyalty,” “petty,” “bias,” “liars” and “partisan.”

The forum held two purposes: Asking religious voters what is important to them, and showing Obama as a man of faith, a man they and their congregation or fellow church-goers can trust and relate to.

Some argue that religion has nothing to do with politics. But politicians, reporters and ministers like the Rev. Runwararo Fana, who attended the faith forum and volunteers for the Obama campaign in his community, know differently.

Churches can turn out the vote. A politician may not be allowed to actively campaign from the pulpit, but plenty show up in churches with entourages of reporters and cameramen around election day.

“For us, politics is sacred because it controls and touches every part of our constituency’s life,” said Rev. Fana, a minister at the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church in Houston. “We have to be involved in politics and economics in order to create a different kind of community and different kind of environment where people can have the kind of life where we feel the creator put them on the planet to have.”

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