Stuff is all around us: we place things on shelves, we gift things to those we love, we get rid of things, we collect things, we make things. In this next Food for Thought series, “Sacred Stuff,” or "The Stuff We Live With: Objects and the Sacred in the Everyday,” we will explore our relationship to things, memory, and the sacred. We interact with so many objects in our lives, from explicitly holy objects to sentimental keepsakes, and to the ordinary items that fill our homes and shape our day-to-day activities. Interestingly, for most religious traditions, material things, mundane objects are core to practice and liturgy, the everyday is holy, and holy objects pull us towards the divine.

We’ll move back and forth between the sacred and mundane, exploring the tension between the importance of materiality to religious traditions but also the call to detachment in so many as well, along with taking a deep dive into holy objects themselves. To do so we’ll be joined by Prof. Donovan Shaefer and the Collegium team as we engage with thinkers like Marcel Proust, Dorothy Day, Maira Kalman, Pablo Neruda, and more.

Schedule: Wednesdays, 5:45pm–7:00pm

March 16 — Stuff: Things, Spaces, and What We Hold On To (Facilitated by Jessica Sweeney)

March 23 — The Sacred, the Mundane, and Holy Objects (Facilitated by Donovan Schaefer)

March 30 — Materiality and Detachment: Our Relationship to Things (Facilitated by Terence Sweeney)

Readings: You can access the digital copy of the reader here. Physical copies of the reader will be provided to all participants.

Location: Harrison College House, Seminar Room M20

RSVP: Food for Thought is open to all Penn undergraduate students. To sign up, please click the button below.