Makers & Mystics

Philosopher, Simone Weil said that attentiveness is the heart of prayer. In this episode, we discuss postures of attentiveness as gateways to wonder.Guests: Dr. Mary McCampbell is an author, educator, and speaker whose publications span the worlds of literature, film, and popular music. She is the author of Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves: How Art Shapes Empathy.Dr. Joe Kickasola is a Professor of Film and Digital Media at Baylor University.  He is the author of The Films of Krzysztof Kieślowski: The Liminal Image, and has published in numerous academic venues and anthologies, including Film Quarterly, The Quarterly Review of Film and Video,  and The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film.  _____Topics: Attentiveness, cynicism, receptivity, humility, consumerism, experiencing wonder during times of upheaval, Art Forms: filmmaking, photography, literature. Name Drops: Douglas Copeland, G.K. Chesterton,  Jim Jarmusch, Terrence Malick, T.S.Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Andrei Tarkovsky, Andrey Rublev, Rothko, Stan Brakhage, Virginia Wolfe, David Foster Wallace, Movie References: Patterson, Tree of Life, Zabriskie Point Support The Podcast! We need your help to continue our work of advocating for the arts.Join our creative collectiveGive a one-time donationSend us a textSupport the show Get Tickets to The Breath and The Clay 2026 featuring Malcolm Guite, Jon Guerra, and Jonathan Pageau! March 20-22 in Winston-Salem, NC.

Cleo Rinkwest is a South-African actor who has worked with the likes of Samuel L Jackson, The Walking Dead's Callan McCauliff, and Game of Thrones, Charlotte Hope. Through her acting, she seeks to perform stories that go beyond entertainment and enlighten her audiences to values of human flourishing. Her current film projects follow themes of justice and mercy, capital punishment laws in Southern Africa, the supernatural realm, and the impact of AI on humanity. In our conversation, Cleo shares about the sacred service of the actor, the role of empathy in her art form and how she embodies the personas of the characters she portrays.  In keeping with our season theme Reclaiming Wonder, I asked Cleo what reclaiming wonder looks like in her life. Be sure to listen to the end for her answer. If you’re a patron of podcast, we reserved a special segment of our conversation exclusively for you. In that segment, Cleo shares about the aspect of collaboration and the challenges of being a working actor in South Africa. Help us continue our work! We can't do this without your support. If this podcast has been meaningful to you, show the love.You can give a one-time donation here or join our monthly creative collective here.Thank you, friends!Poema: An Online Course by Stephen RoachSend us a textSupport the show Get Tickets to The Breath and The Clay 2026 featuring Malcolm Guite, Jon Guerra, and Jonathan Pageau! March 20-22 in Winston-Salem, NC.

One of the more powerful aspects of visual art, is when a single image encapsulates an entire narrative, or when viewing a painting or illustration, the viewer’s imagination is invited to fill in the gaps and finish the tale.  I recently came across an artist whose work embodies this narrative quality. I found myself going back to his images and studying what story was being told through the characters and gestures in each frame.  I was moved to create in response. Which, for me is always a sure sign of a living work of art, when I am compelled to respond or when creativity is awakened and I am transported to an experience of wonder.  Today, I have the honor of introducing this artist to you. Cody F. Miller is a printmaker, illustrator, and mixed media artist whose illustrations often depict people on a journey, navigating the interplay between light and darkness, as they try to find their way home. Cody’s work has been included in numerous exhibitions and publications such as the “Arts Beacon of Light” at the Riffe Gallery in Columbus, Ohio, and the current front cover of Comment magazine. He received an Individual Excellence award in 2002 and 2018 from the Ohio Arts Council and is represented by the Sharon Weiss Gallery.In our conversation, Cody shares about his own incredible journey of searching to find home and how discipline and everyday experiences become unlikely doorways to wonder. If you have found yourself lacking wonder, I encourage you to spend some time with Cody’s work and also to listen to this episode in full for some practical wisdom on how to get unstuck. You can find images of Cody’s work on our Instagram and on his website. Help us continue our work! We can't do this without your support. If this podcast has been meaningful to you, show the love. You can give a one-time donation here or join our monthly creative collective here. Thank you, friends! Send us a textSupport the show Get Tickets to The Breath and The Clay 2026 featuring Malcolm Guite, Jon Guerra, and Jonathan Pageau! March 20-22 in Winston-Salem, NC.

Donna Matthews is a musician and creative artist. In the 1990’s she played lead guitar in Elastica and lo-fi, DIY band Klang, and in subsequent years devised and facilitated creative workshops for people in recovery from addiction. She is currently in her final year of a practice-based PhD in Music at the university of Glasgow. Interested in issues such as poetic intuition, inspiration, and gift, her work explores how the intuitive state might be conveyed through aesthetic form, whilst also exploring improvisation as a means of 'undoing form' to experience the inspired state.In this episode, Donna shares about her winding journey through music, addiction and fusing her deeply felt spiritual practice with her artistic discipline.  Donna discusses the role of improvisation, speaking in tongues and what Lewis Hyde terms as the Gifted State or that posture of heart which readies the creative artist to receive inspiration and experience wonder.Patrons of the podcast can enjoy a full, unedited version of this conversation at http://www.patreon.com./makersandmysticsHere is a link to the Lewis Hyde interview mentioned in this episode. Send us a textSupport the show Get Tickets to The Breath and The Clay 2026 featuring Malcolm Guite, Jon Guerra, and Jonathan Pageau! March 20-22 in Winston-Salem, NC.

When we lack wonder, we settle for the evening news. When we lack spectacle, we settle for shock art. When we can’t see the burning bush, we set the dumpster on fire. By this point, the Olympics’ opening performance has been discussed ad nauseum.  Most of us have grown weary of the vitriol and moved on. Therefore, I hesitate to add another voice to the fire, but as one who leads a community of mostly faith-based artists, the performance has held a particular interest to me. I have felt a measure of responsibility to weigh in but more importantly, I have felt a responsibility to ensure my response is not reactionary or regurgitating secondhand information. This bonus episode highlights a few of my thoughts. Send us a textSupport the show Get Tickets to The Breath and The Clay 2026 featuring Malcolm Guite, Jon Guerra, and Jonathan Pageau! March 20-22 in Winston-Salem, NC.

Wonder is all around us. In every moment, in every mundane or grand occasion. The earth and all that is in within it, is an unfolding poem spoken from divine lips in search of an audience. In this introductory episode, Stephen Roach shares the groundwork for this season’s exploration of Reclaiming Wonder. He says, “It is the artist whose work bridges the realm of everyday life with the realm of mystery and deeper meaning. It is the artist who again re-enchants the world and helps us to reclaim our sense of wonder.” Join the creative collective! Send us a textSupport the show Get Tickets to The Breath and The Clay 2026 featuring Malcolm Guite, Jon Guerra, and Jonathan Pageau! March 20-22 in Winston-Salem, NC.

Around the turn of the century, German Sociologist, Max Weber coined the phrase ‘disenchantment’ as a way of describing society’s transition from a mythical or religious understanding of the world to a rationalistic, scientific view. Advancements in science and technology alongside a perceived decline of religious devotion rendered the world demystified or void of magic. Religious opponents celebrated this transition as a liberation from old superstitions and worn-out beliefs, to a world formed purely of empirical fact. But after a hundred years or more since this shift in the social conscience, the human heart continues to yearn for meaning beyond the material world. It is the artist whose work bridges the realm of everyday life with the realm of mystery and deeper meaning. It is the artist who again re-enchants the world and calls us to reclaim our sense of wonder.In this upcoming season of the podcast, we are going to explore what it means to reclaim wonder. We are going to talk with a number of guests from artists and theologians to Enneagram experts and actors. We want to invite you to take the journey alongside of us. If you’re looking to reconnect to a sense of deeper meaning both in your creative life and your spiritual life, this season is designed to help. Starting Tuesday, July 30th, and running every week following, the Makers and Mystics podcast begins our series to reclaim wonder.  Join us for deeper discussions on Patreon.Make a one-time donation to support our work. Send us a textSupport the show Get Tickets to The Breath and The Clay 2026 featuring Malcolm Guite, Jon Guerra, and Jonathan Pageau! March 20-22 in Winston-Salem, NC.

In this live talk, recorded at the Audiofeed Festival in Urbana, Illinois, Stephen Roach encourages listeners that the value of a dream is not contingent upon its coming to pass. The value of a dream, he says, is in the dreaming. For anyone, who has grappled with the death of a dream or the pain of letting go, this talk will encourage you that a dream can take many shapes and forms and that nothing is wasted. Join the Makers and Mystics Creative CollectiveTake Stephen's FREE course on Creativity & FearSupport the podcast with a one-time donation. Send us a textSupport the show Get Tickets to The Breath and The Clay 2026 featuring Malcolm Guite, Jon Guerra, and Jonathan Pageau! March 20-22 in Winston-Salem, NC.

In this Season Finale round table, founder of Ekstasis magazine, Conor Sweetman and essayist, Yi Ning Chiu discuss expressive individualism, various frameworks of community and why physical community remains essential in our modern, digitized culture. Alongside of Ekstasis, Conor serves as the director of innovation for Christianity today while Yi Ning writes Please Don’t Go, a newsletter about life in community—why it’s terrible, why it’s essential, and why we shouldn’t give up on cultivating it. Help us keep our show alive! Become a monthly patron. Send us a textSupport the show Get Tickets to The Breath and The Clay 2026 featuring Malcolm Guite, Jon Guerra, and Jonathan Pageau! March 20-22 in Winston-Salem, NC.

If you’re a regular listener to the podcast then you know that we haven’t produced our regular episodes for the past few weeks. And if you follow us on Instagram or get our email newsletters then you know the reason why. On May 27th, my studio laptop was stolen. In light of this event and feeling disoriented, I began to study the word 'orient.'I discovered that ‘orient’ means to arrange something as to face east. The implication is to look in the direction of the sunrise. To be disoriented then means a time of darkness. And to be reoriented means looking past the darkness to a rising sun. ⁣ ⁣This short update is an encouragement for anyone who has felt themselves disoriented or interrupted.You can contribute to the cause here.You can become a monthly patron here. Send us a textSupport the show Get Tickets to The Breath and The Clay 2026 featuring Malcolm Guite, Jon Guerra, and Jonathan Pageau! March 20-22 in Winston-Salem, NC.