We were made by a Maker to be makers. Bruce Herman joins Evan Rosa to diagnose the quiet illness of a passive consumer culture that trains us to sit in front of screens and scroll and take, rather than make. “When we’re not making something, we’re not whole. We’re not healthy.“ His cure is stubbornly ordinary: go make a loaf of bread, grab a stick and start carving, make a good meal or a good cocktail for the person visiting you—anything is resistance to this hypnotic, passive culture. From episode 216 of the podcast, in this segment, Herman traces what it means to receive art not as a consumer but through submission—not master and slave, but subject to subject, that vulnerable openness that lets a poem or a painting change your life. He reflects on making as human wholeness, the difference between art and info-tainment, why suffering can rip us open to beauty (from Walker Percy’s writing to Christian Wiman’s poetry), Rilke’s charge that “you must change your life,“ hospitality as the ultimate act of art, and Herman’s closing counsel to make out of love, not fear. Episode Highlights - We are in relationship, and we were made by a Maker to be makers. If we let that go somehow and we become mere consumers, I think we begin to enter into some kind of illness of one sort or another. - When we’re not making something, we’re not whole. We’re not healthy. And I don’t want to make an idol out of health either, but I do think our culture is unhealthy right now. - We think of it as, we’re discerning buyers. But the fact is we’re being turned into very passive creatures. - One of the best things you can do is go make a loaf of bread. Go out and grab a stick and start carving it. Anything is resistance to this sort of hypnotic passive culture. - If you want to really receive what a poem is communicating, you have to submit to it. You have to let yourself go and enter into what might feel like a bad risk of being changed. - Not submit in a sense that I’m a master and you’re my slave. It’s more like you’re a subject and I’m a subject. Mutual submission. - We’re so guarded so much of the time that it takes something catastrophic to open us up again. - Do away with the nonsense that you’re not an artist. You can’t help it. You were made by a Maker to be a maker. End of story. - The ultimate act of art is hospitality, where you’re welcoming someone in, to make something beautiful for them. - Challenge the bad news with a recognition that daily kindnesses are being poured out everywhere, on every street. Don’t give in to fear, because it’s not a basis for anything good. About Bruce Herman Bruce Herman is a painter, writer, and educator whose work has been shown in more than 150 exhibitions across the United States and internationally, and held in collections including the Vatican Museums in Rome, the Cincinnati Museum of Fine Arts, and the Grunewald Print Collection of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. He taught at Gordon College for nearly four decades, where he founded the art department and held the Lothlórien Distinguished Chair in Fine Arts. His books include “Through Your Eyes“ and “Ordinary Saints,“ and he was a collaborator on the touring “QU4RTETS“ project with Makoto Fujimura, Christopher Theofanidis, and Jeremy Begbie. His most recent book, “Makers by Nature: Letters from a Master Painter on Faith, Hope, and Art,“ was published by IVP Academic in 2025. Helpful Links and Resources - Makers by Nature, Bruce Herman’s 2025 book from IVP Academic: https://www.ivpress.com/makers-by-nature - Bruce Herman’s website and painting archive: https://www.bruceherman.com - Bruce Herman, artist bio and background: https://www.bruceherman.com/about - Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke (“You must change your life“), trans. Stephen Mitchell: https://poets.org/poem/archaic-torso-apollo - Real Presences by George Steiner, on courtesy and hospitality in art: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo3684420.html - Christian Wiman: https://poetryfoundation.org/poets/christian-wiman - QU4RTETS, the collaborative project on T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets: https://www.bruceherman.com/series Show Notes - Made to make - We are in relationship; identity begins there, not in isolation - Makers by nature—letting the maker-impulse go tips us toward illness, moral, mental, and emotional - Wholeness and health—the claim that not-making leaves us unwell, without idolizing health - Consumer culture—the commercial aim to sell, and to keep us passive in front of screens - Discerning buyers, or passive creatures? The illusion of control while being trained to take - Screens and scrolling - Political theater and infotainment—very little real journalism left, mostly consumer entertainment - Neil Postman and amusing ourselves to death as the frame for the diagnosis - Making as resistance—bake bread, carve a stick, do anything against the hypnotic pull - Reception as submission—a word out of fashion, reclaimed away from enslavement - Mutual submission—the erotic analogy, and desire’s corruption in the sexual sins - To receive a poem you must risk being changed - Rilke’s Grecian torso and the charge, you must change your life - Subject to subject, not master and slave - Walker Percy’s museum story—a painting that blazed into life, then went quiet - Bringing a friend to re-enter the original encounter vicariously - The workman through the skylight—catastrophe reopens what habit had closed - Guardedness—why it can take suffering to break us open - Christian Wiman—cancer, poetry, and being ripped open toward receptivity - You might be changed, and it might not be what you wanted; the risk of real encounter - Make from love, not fear - Do away with the nonsense that you’re not an artist - Everyday making—a loaf, a meal, a good cocktail, hospitality - Hospitality as the ultimate art; George Steiner’s Real Presences and courtesia - Beauty can be complex, not merely pretty - Fear-mongers left and right—and why not to listen - Daily kindnesses—the neighbor, the shoveled driveway, the half-decent casserole - Welcome to the festival; let the festival begin #BruceHerman #MakersByNature #ForTheLifeOfTheWorld #FaithAndArt #TheologyOfMaking #ArtAndFaith #Creativity #Hospitality #MakeNotConsume #YaleFaithAndCulture
We were made by a Maker to be makers. Bruce Herman joins Evan Rosa to diagnose the quiet illness of a passive consumer culture that trains us to sit in front of screens and scroll and take, rather than make. “When we’re not making something, we’re not whole. We’re not healthy.“ His cure is stubbornly ordinary: go make a loaf of bread, grab a stick and start carving, make a good meal or a good cocktail for the person visiting you—anything is resistance to this hypnotic, passive culture.
From episode 216 of the podcast, in this segment, Herman traces what it means to receive art not as a consumer but through submission—not master and slave, but subject to subject, that vulnerable openness that lets a poem or a painting change your life. He reflects on making as human wholeness, the difference between art and info-tainment, why suffering can rip us open to beauty (from Walker Percy’s writing to Christian Wiman’s poetry), Rilke’s charge that “you must change your life,“ hospitality as the ultimate act of art, and Herman’s closing counsel to make out of love, not fear.
Episode Highlights
About Bruce Herman
Bruce Herman is a painter, writer, and educator whose work has been shown in more than 150 exhibitions across the United States and internationally, and held in collections including the Vatican Museums in Rome, the Cincinnati Museum of Fine Arts, and the Grunewald Print Collection of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. He taught at Gordon College for nearly four decades, where he founded the art department and held the Lothlórien Distinguished Chair in Fine Arts. His books include “Through Your Eyes“ and “Ordinary Saints,“ and he was a collaborator on the touring “QU4RTETS“ project with Makoto Fujimura, Christopher Theofanidis, and Jeremy Begbie. His most recent book, “Makers by Nature: Letters from a Master Painter on Faith, Hope, and Art,“ was published by IVP Academic in 2025.
Helpful Links and Resources
Show Notes
#BruceHerman #MakersByNature #ForTheLifeOfTheWorld #FaithAndArt #TheologyOfMaking #ArtAndFaith #Creativity #Hospitality #MakeNotConsume #YaleFaithAndCulture
Evan Rosa: From the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, this is For the Life of the World, a podcast about seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity.
Welcome, listeners. I'm Evan Rosa, and this is a bonus clip from episode 216 of For the Life of the World, an episode we called "Art and Sacred Resistance," with the painter, writer, and educator Bruce Herman. Bruce says we were made by a maker to be makers, and when we let that go, when we become mere consumers, Bruce says we begin to enter into some kind of illness.
When we're not making something, we're not whole. We're not healthy. He names the culture that is taking aim at our attention — the commercial pull to constantly buy something, to sit passively in front of our screens, scrolling and scrolling and never really giving, always taking, always being taken. He offers an interesting form of resistance: go make a loaf of bread, grab a stick, start carving it — any action from within that can push against this hypnotic, passive culture.
Bruce reaches for a word that's fallen out of fashion here: submission — not master–slave submission, but subject-to-subject mutuality, the I and the Thou. It's how we make love, he says. It's how we receive a poem, a painting, a piece of music. You let down your guard, you take the risk of being changed. He cites Rainer Maria Rilke, who notices the way art beckons to us: "You must change your life."
Here's Bruce Herman.
Bruce Herman: When I ask the question — what are we, what am I — my first response is: we are in relationship, and we were made by a maker to be makers. And so we are makers. If we let that go somehow, and we become mere consumers, I think we begin to enter into some kind of illness of one sort or another — maybe a moral illness, maybe actually a mental illness, an emotional illness, et cetera.
But I think when we're not making something, we're not whole, we're not healthy — and I don't want to make an idol out of health either. But I will say, I do think our culture is unhealthy right now. I think we are constantly being aimed at by the commercial culture to persuade us to buy products — and not just to buy products, but to sit passively in front of screens and scroll and scroll and always be taking. And we don't think of it that way. We think of ourselves as discerning buyers who can decide what we're going to do. But the fact is, we're being turned into very passive creatures.
And one of the best things you can do is go make a loaf of bread. Yeah — go grab a stick and start carving it. Anything is resistance to this sort of hypnotic, passive culture — what Neil Postman called entertaining ourselves to death, amusing ourselves to death.
I think our current political situation is mostly political theater. There's very little actually happening of any substance. It's entertainment, and our news services have turned into infotainment. There's very little real journalism. It's there, thankfully, but there's a whole lot of consumer entertainment.
Evan Rosa: I want to ask you to elaborate. If the mode of reception is not properly consumption, what more can we say about a more befitting and dignifying approach to engaging and orienting ourselves toward art?
Bruce Herman: Well, I think it's the same in some ways as it is person to person — and I'm going to use a word here that's not very popular these days, and there are good reasons why it's not popular: the word submission. We don't nowadays like that word very much, because it seems to point toward slavery, some kind of enslavement. But actually, when we make love, when we are in a deep erotic state, human beings submit to one another. They give themselves away.
Evan Rosa: Ah.
Bruce Herman: And that's where the problem of all the sexual sins — if you want to call it that, everything from incest to pornography to adultery, et cetera — comes in. Those are all corruptions of desire. And they're also a disease. What they do is they never yield the satisfaction, the joy, that comes from mutual submission.
Well, the same thing is true in art. If you want to really receive what a poem is communicating, you have to submit to it. You have to let yourself go and enter into what might feel like a bad risk of being changed.
There's a great poem by Rilke, a meditation on a Grecian torso, and he says at the end of the poem: "The torso says to you, you must change your life." I think what he's getting at is what a lot of us are trying to do in our art — to offer the person looking at our paintings, or reading our poem, or listening to the music, the opportunity to get outside themselves, to let down their guard, to submit. But not submit in the sense that I'm a master and you're my slave — more like you're a subject and I'm a subject. Mutual submission.
There's a great story — you may have heard this — Walker Percy, the novelist, said there was a painting he once encountered in a museum that just blazed into life for him and took up his entire emotional, psychological, and visual field. He was hypnotically engaged. Every time he went back to the museum after that, it was nothing like that, and he was sad. He wanted it to come to life again. But he did discover that whenever he brought a friend with him, he could vicariously re-enter that original blazing encounter.
Well, one day he brought a friend who was visiting from out of town, and they went into the museum. Just as they walked into the gallery, and he was waiting for his friend to see this amazing painting, a workman fell through the skylight above and shattered the glass in every direction. This guy — boom — hits the floor, and Percy happened to turn and look at the painting, and it blazed to life again, the same way it was the first time he saw it.
Well, I think that encounter is possible — some version of it is always possible, it seems to me, if you're willing to let down your guard. Apparently in war, or in Percy's case, and maybe in all of our cases, we are so guarded so much of the time that it takes something catastrophic to open us up again — some sort of suffering.
There's a great body of poetry by Christian Wiman, who has suffered greatly with this damn cancer. But it's been the occasion of great poetry, because it's opened him up — it's ripped him open, actually, is what it's done. And reading his poems does that to us too, if we're receptive.
And so it's like at the end of that Rilke poem: you must change your life. You might be changed by this thing — this film, this piece of music, this painting, this poem — and it might not be what you want to become. But that's the risk you have to take if you want to encounter a work of art. You have to be open. You have to let down your guard. And that's what I mean by submission.
Evan Rosa: I think something that would transcend art into public dialogue at the moment is this concept of yours: make out of love, not fear. I want to ask you what that might look like — for an artist, and for someone who doesn't think of themselves as an artist — to be creative out of love and not fear right now.
Bruce Herman: Well, number one, I would say do away with the nonsense that you're not an artist. People who say "I'm not an artist" — just forget it. Let go of that. You can't help it. You were made by a maker to be a maker, end of story. So I say, just start making something. It doesn't matter what you make. Like I said, I think making a loaf of bread is a great thing to do. Make a meal for somebody. Make a cocktail — a really good one. Make the best you can for the person visiting you.
Evan Rosa: Hmm.
Bruce Herman: Show hospitality. I really do think the ultimate act of art is hospitality. There's a great book, by the way, if you want to read it — Real Presences, by George Steiner — in which he talks, I'd say a full third of the book is about a kind of intellectual hospitality. He calls it something else, but it's the idea that all art comes to a place of hospitality, where you're welcoming someone in, making something beautiful for them. Beauty, again, can be complex — it's not just pretty stuff. Make from love. Make something for somebody with love.
Evan Rosa: What do we need to be on the lookout for — the temptation to make out of fear?
Bruce Herman: You have the fearmongers on the left and on the right. I say, don't listen to them. Remember that you have a neighbor right next door who probably invited you over for a Christmas party or something. Remember that the guy down the street shoveled you out yesterday because he knew your snowblower was broken, or when you were sick, they brought you a really half-decent casserole.
What I'm trying to say is: challenge the bad news with the recognition that daily kindnesses are being poured out everywhere, on every street, in every location. Don't give in to fear, because it's not a basis for anything good. The church has fallen down on the job so many times in this regard. But that's what we need more than anything else — welcome to the festival, let the festival begin.
Evan Rosa: Welcome to the party.
Bruce Herman: Yeah, exactly. You got it.
Evan Rosa: This episode featured Bruce Herman, with a very special thank you to Bill Cross for the introduction. Noah Senthil is our production assistant and editor for this episode. I'm Evan Rosa, and I produce the show.
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