Makers & Mystics

Why do we need stories? And what if the purpose of art is not simply self-expression, but a way of helping us understand what it means to be human?

In this episode of Makers & Mystics, Stephen Roach sits down with acclaimed author Daniel Nayeri to explore the relationship between storytelling, meaning-making, and identity. From the stories we tell to make sense of our lives to the narratives that connect us to one another, Daniel reflects on why storytelling is essential to the human experience and why isolation leaves us without someone to share our stories with.

Daniel discusses his imaginative new novel, This Is a Door, a visually inventive hero’s journey about a boy searching for his identity and his purpose. Along the way, we explore the relationship between imagination and faith, the creative practices that help artists cultivate their work, and the often-overlooked purpose of beauty. For Daniel, art is more than personal expression or professional achievement. It is a form of service: an offering of beauty, meaning, and truth that can sustain another person when they need it most.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why storytelling is essential to human connection and our search for meaning.
• How imagination and faith intersect, and why so much of the spiritual life is left to the imagination.
• The search for identity, purpose, and belonging at the heart of Daniel’s novel This Is a Door.
• How creative discipline, deep focus, and everyday practices help artists cultivate their imagination.

About Daniel Nayeri

Daniel Nayeri is an acclaimed author whose work spans fiction, memoir, and books for young readers. His writing explores storytelling, identity, faith, and the ways we make meaning of our lives. His novel This Is a Door is an imaginative exploration of the hero’s journey and the search for identity and purpose.

Makers & Mystics is a podcast for art-driven seekers of truth and lovers of life, exploring the intersection of art, faith, and the mysteries of human existence.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

CONNECT WITH US

Website: http://www.makersandmystics.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/makersandmystics
Join our creative collective: patreon.com/makersandmystics                                                  Sign Sign Up for Our Newsletter! http://eepurl.com/g49Ks1

**This episode contains sensitive subject matter**

Can horror become a means of redemption? What might the stories that frighten us reveal about ourselves, our faith, and the world we inhabit?

Can people of faith engage horror as a legitimate artistic practice? In a culture that often encourages us to avoid discomfort, the darker dimensions of art can challenge us to confront realities we might otherwise prefer to ignore. But when we sanitize our faith, we risk losing our ability to speak honestly about suffering, evil, fear, and the complexities of being human. What if the stories that disturb us most have something important to teach us?

In this episode of Makers & Mystics, Stephen Roach sits down with Dr. Kutter Callaway, psychologist, theologian, and Chair of Worship Theology and the Arts at Fuller Theological Seminary, to explore horror, the monsters we create, and the spiritual possibilities of confronting our deepest fears. Drawing from his book Be Afraid, Callaway considers how horror can expose the darkness within ourselves and our culture, challenge the ways we understand good and evil, and create space for spiritual maturity. Together, they explore what artists of faith might discover when they stop looking away from the darkness and allow their work to engage the full complexity of the human experience.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why a sanitized faith struggles to speak meaningfully to the darker realities of the human experience.
• How horror can help us confront our fears and recognize the monsters within ourselves and our culture.
• What disturbing stories in Scripture and popular culture reveal about suffering, evil, and the human condition.
• How horror can become a space for creative honesty, spiritual reflection, and the possibility of redemption.
• What artists of faith might learn by engaging the uncomfortable and unsettling dimensions of human experience.

About Dr. Kutter Calloway

Dr. Kutter Callaway is a psychologist, theologian, cultural critic, and Chair of Worship Theology and the Arts at Fuller Theological Seminary. His work explores the intersections of theology, psychology, popular culture, and the arts. In his book Be Afraid, Callaway examines the spiritual and psychological dimensions of horror and considers how confronting our fears might contribute to spiritual maturity.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

CONNECT WITH US

Website: http://www.makersandmystics.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/makersandmystics
Join our creative collective: patreon.com/makersandmystics                                                  Sign Sign Up for Our Newsletter! http://eepurl.com/g49Ks1

Contemplation is the inhale, and creativity is the exhale. Author and spiritual director Kayla Craig shares how we can make space for both.

Her devotional, Our Daily Breath, guides readers through contemplative prayer practices designed to renew creative energy in a loud, distracted world. 

Stephen Roach and Kayla explore why cynicism comes so easily, and how stillness opens the door to compassion, nuance, and hope. Kayla shares the research behind mindful breathing and why it matters for artists, musicians, and makers. 

KEY TOPICS COVERED

• Creativity begins with attention, and contemplative prayer trains you to notice what is already sacred in ordinary life.
• Why being nourished from the inside out gives you something to offer when the world's pain shows up.
• Creating from abundance, not scarcity, gives your work more weight, so caring for your soul becomes part of your craft.

ABOUT KAYLA CRAIG
 Kayla Craig is an author and spiritual director who writes prayers and devotions for people living full, noisy lives. She studied contemplative spiritual formation and spiritual direction at Columbia, where her instructor trained under Thomas Keating. Her new book, Our Daily Breath, gathers 365 prayers and practices and draws on more than 400 citations from contemplatives, poets, and artists. She is a mother of four who knows quiet is aspirational, which shapes how practical and accessible her approach to prayer is.

RESOURCES & LINKS
 Our Daily Breath Devotional: 365 Prayers and Practices That Whisper Peace in a Shouting World by Kayla Craig — the devotional discussed in this episode
 Thomas Merton — monk and poet quoted in Kayla's devotion on stillness
 Thomas Keating — contemplative teacher who shaped Kayla's spiritual formation
 Breath by James Nestor — journalist's exploration of breathing, including the rosary study
 Centering prayer, welcoming prayer, and breath prayer — contemplative practices Kayla recommends

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

CONNECT WITH US

Website: http://www.makersandmystics.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/makersandmystics
Join our creative collective: patreon.com/makersandmystics                                                  Sign Sign Up for Our Newsletter! http://eepurl.com/g49Ks1

What if memories were real entities that inhabit places, and what if music could give those places a voice?

In this episode of Makers & Mystics, Stephen Roach sits down with composer Michael Anderson to explore the strange and beautiful relationship between memory, time, place, music, and faith.

Michael's latest work, Hallov, is a 24-piece musical journey through birth, pain, joy, death, and what might come after. Described by Michael as “a movie score without the movie,” the album follows a protagonist through a series of imagined spaces while a mysterious “Spirit of Time” moves alongside him.

For Michael, those spaces are more than settings. They are repositories of memory. An old church, a car ride, a hallway, a family dinner- places can hold the people we loved, the moments we experienced, and even the versions of ourselves we have left behind.

Together, Stephen and Michael explore how music can give those memories a voice and how recurring melodies can function almost like memories themselves, returning throughout the album in different forms as the story unfolds.

The conversation moves from Michael's childhood fascination with spaces to the autobiographical memories woven throughout Hallov, including a Wednesday night dinner with his grandparents, leaving Florida for a new chapter of life, and the haunting experience of imagining one's own death.

Along the way, they explore the spiritual questions underneath the music: What happens to our memories when we enter eternity? Does the hope of new creation mean that our painful experiences are erased, or might they somehow be gathered into wholeness? And what might it mean to believe that even our tears and suffering have a place in the story God is making new?

At the heart of the conversation is a deeper question: What if memory is not simply something we carry from the past, but a place where we encounter the mystery of who we have been, who we are becoming, and who we might be in eternity?

For artists, Michael offers another important invitation: to resist the temptation to stop creating because someone else has created something greater. The joy of art isn't found in being the best. Sometimes the most important thing we can do is simply finish the work we've begun—and celebrate that it exists.

Michael Anderson is a composer who blends classical music with jazz, pop, electronics, and soundscapes. He is drawn to memorable melodies and heartfelt narratives, using music as a way to explore story, memory, and human experience. His latest project, Hallov, brings together his love of cinematic music and storytelling in an immersive 24-piece exploration of time, memory, faith, death, and hope.

Connect with Michael on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/musicbymichaelanderson/

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

CONNECT WITH US

Website: http://www.makersandmystics.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/makersandmystics
Join our creative collective: patreon.com/makersandmystics                                                  Sign Sign Up for Our Newsletter! http://eepurl.com/g49Ks1

What happens when the art form you once loved becomes a way of proving your worth?

For oboist, educator, and author Merideth Estevez, classical music began as a source of joy and wonder. As a child, it was even a language through which she experienced God. But somewhere along the way, the pursuit of excellence became entangled with perfectionism, achievement, and the need to prove herself.

In her book Art Is How God Loves Us, Merideth invites us to reconsider what art actually is. Rather than seeing art as something reserved for the technically gifted, she describes it as “atoms responding to transcendence”—our participation in the creative abundance already at work in the world.

In this conversation, we talk about the difference between perfectionism and excellence, what an oboe reed can teach us about faith, why imperfection can be a sign of life, and how technical training can become a vocabulary rather than a prison. We explore the relationship between tradition and innovation, the ways art can become a spiritual gateway, and what it might mean to encounter God through a symphony, a painting, a river, or even the ordinary creative choices of everyday life.

Ultimately, Merideth offers an invitation to see ourselves differently: not as people who have to earn our worth through what we create, but as people made in the image of an Artist—and therefore already invited to create.

Merideth Estevez is an oboist, educator, author, and coach whose work explores the intersection of creativity, faith, and wellbeing. She is the author of Art Is How God Loves Us and The Artist's Joy.

In this episode:

• Redefining art as “atoms responding to transcendence”
• The difference between perfectionism and excellence
• Tradition, innovation, and learning the rules so we can break them
• Art as a spiritual gateway
• Finding God in unexpected works of art
• Why you don't have to consider yourself an artist to create

Learn more about Merideth Estevez and her work at artistsforjoy.org.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

CONNECT WITH US

Website: http://www.makersandmystics.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/makersandmystics
Join our creative collective: patreon.com/makersandmystics                                                  Sign Sign Up for Our Newsletter! http://eepurl.com/g49Ks1

We live in a world of fast content, instant communication, next-day shipping, and things designed to be quickly replaced. But what happens when an artist chooses to work against the grain of social norms? 

Jake Weidmann is one of only nine Master Penmen in the world, but his work extends far beyond calligraphy. A multidisciplinary artist working in drawing, oil painting, sculpture, wood carving, and bronze, Jake has devoted himself to the long process of mastering his craft.

In this conversation, Jake shares what he calls “The Art of Slow” and why the slow, contemplative devotion to excellence might be a way of resisting disposability and recovering a long, even eternal view of our calling as makers.

Jake shares about his new book, The Heart of The Maker, and the creative process from practice and inspiration to failure, perseverance, repentance, and finishing well. 

This is a conversation about craft, patience, tradition, creativity, and the things we choose to make that might outlast us.

Jake Weidmann is a multidisciplinary artist and one of the world's nine living Master Penmen. His work explores calligraphy, drawing, painting, sculpture, wood carving, and the relationship between creativity, faith, and tradition. 

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

CONNECT WITH US

Website: http://www.makersandmystics.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/makersandmystics
Join our creative collective: patreon.com/makersandmystics                                                  Sign Sign Up for Our Newsletter! http://eepurl.com/g49Ks1

How do the images we see shape the way we understand ourselves and one another?

In this episode of Makers & Mystics, Stephen Roach sits down with art historian and author Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt to explore her new book, Look Like a Lady: Five Visual Tropes of Womanhood and How to See Ourselves Differently.

Drawing from centuries of art history, Elissa identifies five recurring ways women have been depicted and understood: Venus, Vessel, Maiden, Mother, and Monster. These aren't simply artistic categories. They are stories that can quietly shape our expectations about beauty, femininity, motherhood, sexuality, agency, and even holiness.

Together, Stephen and Elissa explore how these visual tropes have influenced both popular culture and Christian imagination and consider the alternative stories that can help us see women as whole, particular, embodied people rather than objects, symbols, or stereotypes.

The conversation moves from ancient Greek sculpture and Renaissance paintings to Victorian photography, contemporary beauty culture, purity culture, and the ways women are represented within the church.

Along the way, Elissa introduces five counter-stories:

• Witnessing instead of objectifying
• Being instead of becoming an empty vessel for someone else's meaning
• Moving instead of remaining passive or contained
• Cultivating instead of being reduced to motherhood
• Partnering instead of viewing men and women as threats or opposites

At the heart of the conversation is a deeper question: What might it look like to recover a vision of womanhood rooted not in cultural expectations, but in the particularity, dignity, agency, and belovedness of each person created in the image of God?

For artists, this conversation offers an invitation to consider how the images we create participate in forming the imagination of the people who encounter them.

And for all of us, it raises an important possibility: perhaps freedom doesn't come from simply rejecting old stories, but from learning to recognize them—and telling truer ones.

Elissa Weichbrodt is an art historian, educator, and author. Her new book, Look Like a Lady: Five Visual Tropes of Womanhood and How to See Ourselves Differently, examines the ways visual culture has shaped our understanding of womanhood and offers a more expansive, hopeful vision.

Connect with Elissa on Instagram: http://instagram.com/elissabrodt
Get the book: https://bakerbookhouse.com/products/9781587436925_look-like-a-lady

Listen to our previous conversation with Elissa: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s11-e07-redeeming-vision-with-dr-elissa-yukiko-weichbrodt/id1090123738?i=1000605110237

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

CONNECT WITH US

Website: http://www.makersandmystics.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/makersandmystics
Join our creative collective: patreon.com/makersandmystics                                                  Sign Sign Up for Our Newsletter! http://eepurl.com/g49Ks1

What does it mean to glorify God through art?

For many artists, the desire to glorify God can become an expectation that their work should communicate an explicitly religious message. But what happens when that expectation begins to constrict the artist? What if our attempts to make art that clearly communicates faith actually prevent the art from becoming genuinely transformative?

In this solo meditation, Stephen Roach explores the relationship between Christian faith, artistic freedom, and the glory of God. Drawing on the work of Hans Rookmaaker and Flannery O'Connor, as well as the strange prophetic performances of Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, Stephen asks whether art needs to be explicitly religious in order to be spiritually meaningful.

Stephen revisits the story of Paolo Veronese and his controversial painting of The Last Supper, which brought him before the Catholic Inquisition in 1573. The story raises an important question for artists and faith communities alike: what happens when our desire to protect familiar expressions of faith leaves no room for artistic imagination?

Perhaps glorifying God through art doesn't always mean making art that is easily recognizable as Christian. Perhaps sometimes it means following our creative curiosity into places that are unfamiliar, challenging, ambiguous, or even strange.

In a world where familiar religious imagery can become wallpaper, what might happen if we made room for art that surprises us again?

In this episode:

• Rethinking what it means to "glorify God" through art
• Why treating art as a "tool" for evangelism can strip it of its power
• The shocking performance art of Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah
• Paolo Veronese's controversial Last Supper
• How religious conformity can restrict artistic creativity
• Why faith communities need to cultivate curiosity rather than judgment
• The danger of familiar truths becoming spiritually dull

ABOUT THE HOST

Stephen Roach is the host of Makers and Mystics, a podcast exploring the intersection of creativity, faith, and the human experience. He is an artist, curator, poet, and musician. He is currently writing How to See Invisible Things, a book exploring the future of art and faith. Stephen has spent over a decade advocating for creativity as a spiritual discipline and calling.

RESOURCES AND LINKS

Art Needs No Justification by Hans Rookmaaker — the book referenced for its argument that art has intrinsic value apart from evangelistic use
Five Creativity Killers and How to Avoid Them by Stephen Roach — Stephen's booklet where he first wrote about Paolo Veronese's trial

Disclaimer:
This episode is a case for unconventional art, but I want to be clear that it is not a disparagement of sacred art: work created specifically for devotional or liturgical environments and practices. My critique of “easy art” is not meant to diminish the beauty or value of sacred art.

—Stephen Roach

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

CONNECT WITH US

Website: http://www.makersandmystics.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/makersandmystics
Join our creative collective: patreon.com/makersandmystics                                                  Sign Sign Up for Our Newsletter! http://eepurl.com/g49Ks1

Every great artist from Caravaggio to Frida Kahlo has fought the same invisible war, and Stephen Roach makes the case that it is not a coincidence.

In this solo reflection, Stephen traces a decade-long question that has haunted him: why does creative expression seem to attract so much internal and external opposition? Drawing on scripture, church history, and the lives of artists who battled addiction, trauma, and mental illness, he builds a case for why creativity and faith are so deeply intertwined, and why that connection makes artists a centerpiece in a spiritual battle.

He highlights an uncanny parallel between the King of Tyre in Ezekiel 28 and the artisans in Exodus, then lands in the present moment, asking what it means to keep making human art in an age of artificial intelligence. Listeners will walk away with a framework for understanding creative resistance and a renewed sense of why their work matters.

KEY TOPICS COVERED
• Why creativity is rooted in the image of God
• The historical pattern of struggle among great artists, from addiction to mental illness
• The church's complicated relationship with the arts
• What the rise of AI means for the future of human creativity
• Why art may be the last human frontier in an automated world

ABOUT THE HOST
Stephen Roach is the host of Makers and Mystics, a podcast exploring the intersection of creativity, faith, and the human experience. He is an artist, curator, poet, and musician. He is currently writing How to See Invisible Things, a book exploring the inner life of art and faith. Stephen has spent over a decade advocating for creativity as a spiritual discipline.

RESOURCES AND LINKS
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield - referenced for its concept of Resistance and creative struggle

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

CONNECT WITH US

Website: http://www.makersandmystics.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/makersandmystics
Join our creative collective: patreon.com/makersandmystics                                                  Sign Sign Up for Our Newsletter! http://eepurl.com/g49Ks1

Artist Profile Series 40

Who was Evelyn Underhill, and why does her work continue to shape the modern contemplative movement more than a century later?

In this Artist Profile episode of Makers & Mystics, Stephen Roach explores the life of Evelyn Underhill, writer, spiritual director, retreat leader, and one of the most influential voices on Christian mysticism in the twentieth century.

Although she is often remembered for her landmark book Mysticism, Underhill's own spiritual journey was anything but straightforward. From youthful encounters with transcendent beauty to explorations of the occult, philosophy, and Roman Catholicism, her search eventually led her into the Anglican tradition, where she discovered that mystical experience finds its deepest fulfillment not in extraordinary visions but in the ordinary rhythms of worship, sacrament, and life with Christ.

In an age captivated by spirituality yet often disconnected from historic faith, Evelyn Underhill's life reminds us that the deepest longing of the human heart is not simply for transcendent experiences, but for communion with the living God.

In This Episode

•  The surprising spiritual journey that shaped Evelyn Underhill's life 
•  How Mysticism became one of the defining books on Christian contemplation 
•  Why Underhill believed mystical experience should be part of ordinary Christian life 
•  Her friendship with Baron Friedrich von Hügel and its profound influence 
•  The relationship between artists, beauty, and the contemplative life 
•  Why her final book, Worship, marked the culmination of her life's work 
•  What her story offers Christians, artists, and seekers today 

Notable Quotes

Books Mentioned

• Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness — Evelyn Underhill 
• Practical Mysticism — Evelyn Underhill 
• Worship — Evelyn Underhill 
• Confessions — Augustine of Hippo 
• Dark Night of the Soul — St. John of the Cross 

People Mentioned

•  Baron Friedrich von Hügel 
•  T. S. Eliot 
•  Julian of Norwich 
•  St. John of the Cross 
•  William Blake 
•  Augustine of Hippo 

Connect with Makers & Mystics

If this episode encouraged you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who longs to recover beauty, wonder, and the contemplative life.

To support the ongoing work of Makers & Mystics and gain access to bonus content, join our Patreon community.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/makersandmystics

Website: https://www.makersandmystics.com

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

CONNECT WITH US

Website: http://www.makersandmystics.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/makersandmystics
Join our creative collective: patreon.com/makersandmystics                                                  Sign Sign Up for Our Newsletter! http://eepurl.com/g49Ks1