Spurred by the community reading of Dani Shapiro's book Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity and Love, Exploring the Sacred leads a community conversation about spirituality and identity. What do these foundational ideas even mean, and how they can change across faiths in the modern era as we consider the interplay of social, biological and spiritual identity and how they shape who we are and how we respond to the world? The traditions that will be represented on the Exploring the Sacred panel are Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Catholic, Christian and A Course in Miracles.

Exploring the Sacred is a group of religious leaders of Steamboat Springs who have come together with the community to address critical issues related to finding meaning in the world in which we live. In 2004, Marchele & Tim McCarthy invited all of the religious leaders in Steamboat together for a discussion. They initiated the meeting because they were concerned about the divisiveness they saw in the world and in our communities. They chose religious leaders because these are the people in our community who we expect to act as our moral compass. This group became an experiment to see if it is possible to bring people together with very different view points and overcome divisiveness. The mission of this group is to come together with the community to address critical issues related to finding meaning in the world.