You Must Change Your Life (From the Archive)
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureShow Notes
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
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