Small Wonders: Recent Episodes
Laurel Moffatt
The clarity the desert brings. Hurricanes and hard relationships. Finding reason in the middle of a ruin. Small Wonders are quiet but profound observations about life from Dr. Laurel Moffatt. In each fifteen-minute episode, Laurel uncovers lessons learned from broken and beautiful things that are polished to perfection and set in rich audio landscapes for your consideration.
The Grand Canyon. Mount Kilimanjaro. The Fjords of Norway. The endless dunes of the Sahara.
Our planet is filled with places that invoke a sense of awe; areas that are beautiful, majestic, and terrifying all at once.
Humanity has felt awe since time began - however, awe has only recently been acknowledged by our contemporary world as an emotion.
It's not just any emotion either - awe has been shown to enhance our well-being. Awe is good for us.
Awe adjusts our perspective, and helps us get "outside" of ourselves. It puts us in our place, in relation to something bigger, something more wonderful.
Awe can be anywhere. Awe can be anything. And the Christain scriptures tell us we can get close up and personal with the ultimate source of awe - the God of all creation - on a daily basis.
What are we waiting for?
"You care for the land and water it;
you enrich it abundantly.
The streams of God are filled with water
to provide the people with grain,
for so you have ordained it.
You drench its furrows and level its ridges;
you soften it with showers and bless its crops.
You crown the year with your bounty,
and your carts overflow with abundance.
The grasslands of the wilderness overflow;
the hills are clothed with gladness.
The meadows are covered with flocks
And the valleys are mantled with grain;
they shout for joy and sing."
Psalm 65: 9-13
It’s the challenging times of growth in the leaner months that create a tree's fingerprint, making it possible to find out the name of a shipwreck, reveal the identity, or uncover the truth of the history of a tree.
When we look at the city what do we see?
Do we see busyness, progress, and exciting opportunities? Or do we look deeper, and think about the land underneath the glass, concrete, and metal forests we've built?
Cities are transient - people ebb and flow into them like the tide.
They also pose the question: what is it we're building with our own lives? Are they things lasting, or sandcastles that will topple with the next wave?
And as we build our cities, how close are we to the life-giving water that nourishes us?
"Give thanks to the Lord for he is good. His love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of gods. His love endures forever. Give thanks to the Lord of Lords: His love endures forever." Psalm 136: 1-3
For the final episode of season one, Laurel Moffatt drinks in the wonders of water in Zion National Park.
The relentless river that flows through the park's centre has carved out a canyon of incredible beauty. But water can have sustaining as well as destructive effects.
Laurel investigates the living water that makes an oasis flourish in the midst of heat that bakes the life from the surrounding landscape.
Then she asks, what would it be like to have water like that inside of us, as we confront the sort of hard times that threaten to shrivel us to a husk?
LINKS
Christina Rossetti's A Better Resurrection
I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb'd too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm'd with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.
My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.
My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perish'd thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.
Liu, Rui, et al. Investigating microclimate effects in an oasis-desert interaction zone, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 290 (2020): 107992
Living Water from the Zogoria province in Albania.
Laurel Moffatt asks you to focus on what you find easiest to ignore.
There are three layers of attention according to former Google strategist, James Williams:
Spotlight - that which engages with immediate actions, like finding your socks
Starlight - the layer of attention we give to longer-term goals, like getting a degree
Daylight - the attention that enables a person to know why we have our long-term goals in the first place
Laurel talks about what happens when we lose our 'daylight', that which helps us see all of our surroundings, ourselves, and our place in the world.
LINKS
Here's a link to T.S. Eliot's The Four Quartets, and lots more information about the author.
If you'd like to read more on our diminished ability to pay attention, try Johann Hari's Stolen Focus.
The next time you're in Santa Fe, check out the Georgia O’Keefe Museum.
And here's a verse in the Bible to Jesus as daylight.
Laurel Moffatt has been to the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde four times. I first ‘saw’ them when I was 16 years old. But not with my eyes. I saw them through reading Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House. An ancient civilization, preserved in stone. The evidence of ordinary, human lives of an ancient culture and the continuity with the past, layers of history held in stone.
There have been times in Laurel's life, and maybe yours as well, when life has felt particularly hard. And in those moments, when the only options are difficult ones, the phrase that seems to suit best is being ‘between a rock and a hard place’.
The usual response to difficulty and hardship seems to vacillate between two responses: either avoid it or muddle through in order to overcome it and hopefully get to the other side of it.
This is why Laurel says, she's always been a bit perplexed by the habit of some Christians sending scripture verses describing God as a rock, as a message of encouragement. Who needs another rock when life is hard enough already?
LINKS
If you enjoyed this episode and you’d like to learn more, I hope these notes will be of help.
You may enjoy Willa Cather’s novel, The Professor’s House, and the description of the land found in the second part of the book ‘Tom Outland’s Story’. Although it’s not as well-known as My Antonia, it is a gem of a book.
Head over to the US National Park Service website to learn more about the history and landscape of Mesa Verde, as well as how to visit and stay nearby if it interests you.
For links to the bible verses that I referred to in the episode:
- Psalm 18
- Psalm 143
While I was thinking about and writing this episode, I found this album of music: Beautiful Beyond: Christian Songs in Native Languages.
Laurel Moffatt begins her quest for the benefits of doubt at the bottom of the Weddell Sea in Antarctica. There she discovers a search for a lost ship that demonstrates just how necessary uncertainty is to the inquiring mind.
The exploration director stated that the Endurance was ‘the most unreachable wreck ever’. And yet, presumably, he had enough doubt about his certainty to be willing to venture out on an expedition that would take him to the ends of the earth.
This is a bit like a questioning, curious faith in God. There are uncertainties in life, including the Christian life, and times of doubts and questioning, that can be used by the Creator to enrich faith in him, rather than counter it.
LINKS
If you’d like to read a bit further about the discovery of the Endurance you might enjoy this piece from the New York Times.
Or perhaps you’d like to learn more about Ernest Shackleton and his original voyage. If so, this piece by the American Museum of Natural History may prove helpful.
The Scientific American published a piece on the relationship between doubt and knowledge: “Why Doubt is Essential to Science”.
While the shipwreck of the Endurance is protected as a historic site, questions remain regarding what happens now to the wreck and are addressed in this article in The Conversation.
Laurel Moffatt considers the universal nature of grief. Many are grieving these days: Illness. Loss of friends, lovers, and family members. The loss of time. The rumbles of war. The question is never whether grief will ever arrive in our life, the question is what to do with it when it does.
Mary Delaney, who was born in 1700 to an upper-class family, was married unwillingly to an unkind man. Her life was emotionally fraught while her husband lived and financially strained once he died. Joy did follow, but even these latter blessings were tainted by still more suffering.
Yet Mary learned that the best way to deal with grief is not to ignore it or push it away, but let it stay, give it room, let it speak for itself. And in so doing, she not only invented a whole new art form but discovered how God's grace can colour even the darkest times.
LINKS
More about Mary Delany
An online collection of the Mary Delany’s flowers
Molly Peacock, The Paper Garden: Mrs Delany [Begins her Life’s Work at 72]
In the hinterland of Australia's largest island, Laurel Moffatt discovers engineers are hard at work planning a place to story the memory of all our environmental mistakes.
The thinking is that our climate is no longer just changing, but headed for disaster. And if our planet's going to crash, survivors will need to know what happened and why, and hold any responsible parties to account.
But what if this 'Black Box' recorder isn't big enough. After all, there are many more sins to account for than just greenhouse gases.
The Black Box holds a tension between the acknowledgment of wrong-doing (repentance) with a desire to be made right (justice). But if justice and the judgment it carries is the only thing we have, would any of us survive?
LINKS
Australian Government, Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, Final report: Mount Lyell Remediation Research and Demonstration Program.
Mount Lyell Remediation, Supervising Scientist Report.
Tish Harrison Warren, We're All Sinner, and Accepting That Is Actually a Good Thing, The New York Times.
Brad Plumer and Raymond Zhong, Climate Change Is Harming the Planet Faster Than We Can Adapt, U.N. Warns, The New York Times.
Romans 3:25, the 'mercy seat' reference.
Rustic. Refined. Cutesy. Elegant. Modern. Traditional. No matter your tastes, there’s a place to suit you in today's online rental market. What you probably don't go looking for, though, is a person who comes with dream destination.
Laurel Moffatt examines the boom in the short-term rental economy which has had a perverse effect on the life of the modern city. Even though we travel to more interesting locations, the sector has disrupted or further disintegrated social connections, particularly when a city has a high volume of listings.
The antidote to the problem of loneliness, though, is not medication, but human connection. Forget artfully arranged towels and bowls of fresh lemons on the bench. Connection with others and the gift of one another’s presence is the truly beautiful thing.
LINKS
More numbers about the worth of the sharing economy.
“The Airbnb Effect on Housing and Rent,” Forbes, Feb 21, 2020.
Vivek, Murthy, M.D. Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World.
But perhaps you’d rather visit Jerry’s Lakehouse than read these articles? If so, follow the link to the listing for his place on Airbnb.
How is it that significant moments in your childhood can sit so close to people and places you'd rather forget?
Laurel Moffatt says that people who say they don't believe in ghosts never met her grandmother. She is haunted by the memory of a woman who actively destroyed everything around her.
But the set of instructions she taught Laurel for washing her hands has taken on extreme significance in the face of an international pandemic, and her need to find a way to forgive.
Laurel Moffatt takes a trip down to the mighty Mississippi River. There, she discovers something that demands respect. What else do you owe a thing that can both divide a continent and bring you directly into its heart? That can both float a ship and sink it?
But it is also a place to contemplate our efforts to control the world around us. Here, we realise that something is lost when we bring the wilderness to heel, putting it behind barriers or up on a wall as a testimony to our own strength.
Rivers have a way of reminding us that not everything can be so easily subdued. And God has a way of reminding us that He is the one who does the subduing.
LINKS
Required reading:
- John McPhee’s piece, Atchafalaya, published in the February 23, 1987 of the New Yorker.
The following articles are also helpful for learning about how levees work, specifically the levees along the Mississippi River:
- The Atlantic: What We've Done to the Mississippi River: An Explainer, by Alexis C. Madrigal.
- National Public Radio: Levees Make Mississippi River Floods Worse, But We Keep Building Them, by Rebecca Hersher.
- Scientific American: The Problem With Levees, by Nicholas Pinter.
Here’s Amazon’s announcement about the opening of its robotic fulfilment centre in Baton Rouge, and check this out for how this relates to the demolition of the old mall.
And, for the reference to the hem of God’s robe filling the temple in Isaiah 6:1-2.
The Joshua Tree National Park in California is a good starting place for Laurel Moffatt's reflection on our struggles to see the light.
The park is full of interesting characters as well as a compelling number of stars - most of which are invisible to the outside world. Because of the amount of artificial light we use each night, more than a third of people can no longer see the Milky Way.
But the brightness of the light in deep darkness can show us how faint, how small, how very weak and narrow our own attempts at lighting our own way are.
LINKS
- Paul Bogard, The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light.
- Emily Dickinson, “I saw no Way – The Heavens were stitched –” , Fr633 (1863) J378
- Fabio Falchi, et al. “The new world atlas of artificial night sky brightness”, Science Advances, 10 Jun 2016, Vol 2, Issue 6
Laurel is a writer of essays with a background in English literature and a habit of researching the overlooked and undervalued, the big and the small things around us.
Follow her as she asks of it all, how would a trust in Jesus Christ - if we could find our way to that - affect what we see? How we see?