“How glorious they look, how beautiful they become when they tie the turban on their head," says Surinder Singh, youth and education coordinator of the Sikh Foundation of Virginia.

Iconographer Seraphim O'Keefe says icons play a role similar to fasting in the Orthodox tradition. Both are ways of finding order and beauty, and painting the icon, he says, "is a way of praying."

“Psalm 90 says ‘teach us to count our days that we might have a wise heart.’ I think that’s something the Sabbath helps us to do—to be mindful about the passage of time.”

“Pilgrimage becomes a metaphor for life,” says Rev. Kenneth Semon. “We’re following our Lord, who goes before us.”

“The ancient words take on the power they were supposed to take on all along,” says Rabbi Jamie Korngold, who leads a Passover seder in the Utah desert. “We’re trying to take this spiritually rich experience and ignite our Judaism.”

"Not only are we pointing to these different saints and celebrating all of the good things during their lives, but we're hopefully encouraging one another to become the saints of this age," says Fr James Cuddy, formerly of the Dominican House of Studies and now the chaplain of Providence College.

At Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia, Muslim children sit in tents, pray, throw stones, and make seven circuits around a replica of the Ka'ba as part of a mock hajj, the traditional pilgrimage to Mecca.

Rabbi James Michaels of the Hebrew Home of Greater Washington, DC says Sukkot reminds Jews of the experience of wandering in the desert, open to the elements, and of simply “being alive.”

It’s the 75th anniversary of the annual Hill Cumorah Pageant near Palmyra, New York, a lavish outdoor spectacle based on the Book of Mormon.

“When you are reciting the Quran you feel like you are talking to Allah,” says Quran reciter Sheikh Mohammad Alraee. During Ramadan he has been chanting the Quran from memory at the Islamic Center of Northern Virginia.