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.
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A trip to Western Australia brought Laurel to the famous Busselton Jetty - a 1.8 km timber-piled jetty stretching out into the Indian Ocean - the longest of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. Initially built for practicality, the jetty is now a tourist destination and even features on postcards. The way it reaches out with such purpose is similar to prayer - an extension towards the eternal. But the main difference, of course, is the fact that we didn’t build the jetty between us and God. He d...
In Romans 12, the Apostle Paul has a challenge for Christians: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is- His good, pleasing, and perfect will.” But where can we actually start with this renewal?
Along York Lane in the Sydney CBD are alcoves and recessed doorways set into the buildings. It was in one of these recessed doorways where a man named Karl used to live (or rather, sleep). Hundreds of people passed Karl every day - and sadly, in 2013, Karl died in his sleep, exposed on York Lane. However, in a remarkable postscript, his long-lost brother, who had been searching for Karl for decades, finally found him. And he brought him home. "My son," the father said, "you are always with me, a...
The gap between what an Ibis is made for and what it does in the city becomes very apparent once you see it in its natural habitat. The Ibis is made to roam marshlands and use their elegant bills to dig for crayfish and mussels - not for scraps of rubbish in bins. But like these birds, we also often lose sight of the type of world we are made for and how we are meant to be. We can’t find the answer to who we are meant to be by looking within ourselves, but we can find it in God. ‘Have mercy on m...
No matter how well things may seem, everyone faces times of testing where every day can feel like wading through thick sludge. But these challenges can also sometimes be, like molasses, unexpectedly sweet.
God is never far off - we can talk to him at any time. But sometimes, strange as it may seem, casting our anxieties on the creator of all things feels like the hardest thing in the world to do.
So much of our world is built on hierarchical relationships. If one is of more excellent status, importance, or class than another, that can dictate so much of their interactions. A meeting with the late Henry Kissinger two decades ago brought this reality into focus for our host - and reminded her how this is anathema to the Creator of all things. The One true God laid down his life for all, for the slave and the free.
A verse in Hebrews reminds us that when we help a passerby, there might be more going on than we expect. "Don't forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing, some have unwittingly entertained angels." However, what if angels have entertained us? What if we've encountered these celestial warriors and never realised?
More often than not, libraries collect and organise works of human creativity, intellect and industry. They are repositories of finished works. Books and recordings, films and magazines and many more - all discrete units of human creation. Archives, in contrast, provide us with the backdrop to the works, the settings, the background, and the working out of ideas from which a job may have come.
Welcome to a new season of Small Wonders! This is the first of a two-part series on the power of words. People read for different reasons. For some people, reading is work; for others, it's a hobby. Sometimes, reading can cause something within us to shift; we might go from wanting to read to needing to read. Our lives can suddenly - unexpectedly - become intertwined with the words on the page - and our experiences become things we might feel the need to share with authors we've never met....
Welcome to the final episode of season 3 of Small Wonders! A new year approaches - and for many, a new set of resolutions. Reading, going to the gym, travelling, lifestyle changes: all of us have a “possible self” that we strive towards. It turns out we’ve been making New Year resolutions for a very long time - at least 4,000 years in fact, according to ancient Babylonian records. Humans have always pursued personal growth. We’ve also spent millennia breaking New Year resolutions. However, it's ...
The Summerbell Window - a beautiful stained glass window - sits in the Holy Trinity Church in Millers Point, Sydney. It's not like the other windows: it shows a stormy sea, with Jesus calming the tempest. It commemorates the loss of the Yarra Yarra - a steamer captained by William Geoge Summerbell, the namesake of the window - which disappeared on the morning of the 15th of July 1877, after encountering a terrible storm off the coast of Newcastle. Witness to the tragedy was Williams's father, Th...
We will always work for food. The question is - which food are we working for? "Daily bread" has become a well-worn idiom; we all need it to get by, and without it, life wouldn't be possible. However, such a simple phrase fails to capture the complexity of actually finding daily bread. From the wheat harvesters to produce the bread, to the toil of workers to earn money to buy enough of it, much of what we do is in search of ways to provide daily bread. Throughout history, the price of bread has ...
Transfer of Learning: To take something from one context and apply it in another. For many teachers, this is the goal of their job; to impart specific knowledge to students that they can use in the wider world. However, the transfer of learning isn't about just getting things right - it's about being able to get things wrong too. Researchers have found getting it wrong can yield a greater transfer of learning. To focus on only being right is to limit ourselves - shut ourselves off from amazing p...
Do you believe in ghosts? You should. The chances are, you are one. According to a Yougov poll conducted in 2021, roughly 40% of people polled believe in the traditional sort of ghost - a spirit that shows up and haunts a person or place. And almost 20% of those polled believe that they’ve had an encounter with such a ghost. But Laurell Moffatt has her eyes trained on a different kind of ghost - a more current type, which is almost the complete opposite of the traditional phantom. Ghosts these d...
A small video caught the eye of Instagramers recently - one involving a whale and a kyak. A drone, hovering over the water at Bondi Beach, captured a person on a kyak paddling away, oblivious to the presence of a whale coasting along directly behind them. Laurel Moffatt reflects on the unique place the humpback whale occupies in Australian waters, and the way it treats the various oceans of the earth as rooms in a sprawling house. She also considers the place this particular humpback occupied in...
Take an ordinary piece of paper. Fold it. Fold it again. Then one more time. Then sit back and observe the beautiful creation you have made. Laurell Moffatt reflects on a life-long love of the Japanese paper art of origami. In it she finds connections to her childhood fascinations and the blueprints for fascinating machines, from the microscopic to the orbital. But with every fold a line of fracture is made. Damage. Stress. Fracture. Yet each exists for a purpose, for with each fold a flat piece...
Many people learn to play an instrument when they're young. Sadly, most will give it up over time - and many will come to regret it. To become proficient at an instrument means to practise: to keep playing the same rudiments or scales over and over again. Practice is sometimes boring. It's often just an unexciting part of the day. But practice isn't what makes perfect - it's what makes possible. Repetition is key to practice. If you want to know how to do something, you have to do it over and ov...
Many of us see the ocean as an immense blue desert; something to be crossed to see loved ones. It covers nearly 140 million square miles of our planet and can seem to many like an unfathomable, stormy tempest. A single drop seems completely insignificant. Perhaps it's for that reason - it's vastness - that we also cast our rubbish into the ocean. But seeing it only in terms of its size, as a place of stormy chaos, or just a dumping ground, is reductive. It dismisses the ocean rather than engages...
Laurel Moffatt returns with Season 3 of Small Wonders. You're invited to join her on an exploration of the unnoticed and the seemingly unimportant in search of life’s lessons, at the hands of the creator. In this episode, Laurel ponders the wonders of spiders are just that - spiders, through and through. They are what they're made to be, down to their very core. Might it be the same for us humans? That we too are reflections of something greater, and we can't be who we're meant to be without it?...
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 "outs...
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.
Walking feels good for us because it is good for us. It's not just a luxury, but a necessity for our well-being. This was never more apparent than during the lockdowns of 2020-2021. Walking is mundane but beneficial - both physically, but also for our connection to the world. No matter how momentary or trivial it may seem, bumping into someone on the street and talking to them does us a world of good. With societal loneliness at an all-time high, getting out for a walk is now more important than...
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 t...
We all want to be productive. To write to-do lists. To clear the inbox. To get things done. We see productivity as critical to growth; if we can harness our productive potential then surely we'll grow richer, stronger, and healthier. But what if our obsession with productivity becomes ... unproductive? Have we forgotten how to let the mind wander? Have we forgotten how to dream? Greater awareness of oneself. Consolidation of memories. Moral reasoning. Planning for the future. These all come from...
"There is not one little blade of grass, there is no colour in this world that is not intended to make men rejoice." John Calvin Grass is found on every continent on Earth. Over 11,000 species of different grass exist. It's ever-present, but it's easy not to see it at all. How do we see the grass? Is it just a patch out the front of our home? Is it something that we walk on to get somewhere more important? How can it possibly bring us joy? Perhaps we need to see our own lives like that of a blad...
This episode delves into the silent danger of PFAS "forever chemicals," highlighting their widespread presence and harmful effects, and questioning humanity's blind pursuit of comfort. It masterfully uses this environmental predicament as a metaphor for the pervasive and insidious nature of sin, illustrating how both bind us in "chains." The podcast then shifts to a message of hope, revealing scientific breakthroughs for PFAS destruction and emphasizing that acknowledging the problem, through confession and divine intervention, offers the ultimate remedy for the chains of sin.
Do we really know who we are? The human heart has two conditions: in and down, or out and up. In and down - seeking the self, or up and out - seeking God. Curves are everywhere - from trees to shells, clouds to hurricanes, and galaxies to black holes - curves are embedded in the universe. Even music follows the shape of a curve. Augustine talks about curves in his City of God. Martin Luther echoes his thoughts, describing the human condition as curved inward - toward the self. Inward curves are ...
"Bird watching isn't just about birds, it's also about those doing the watching ... in watching birds there seems to be a complete lack of idleness." Bird watching takes us to new places. Some watches might travel the world to see rare birds in faraway locations - "slow birders" might just look for birds in their own neighbourhood - but both will discover something new when observing these creatures. Even if we never see a bird in our watching, the act itself is calming, meditative, and a new wa...
Being able to discern the difference between light and dark is essential for reading. And, this sensitivity is also necessary for navigating our way through many things in daily life. In the first episode of Season 2, Laurel Moffatt explores the wonder of reading - a complex skill that we so commonly take for granted. Dwelling on Augustine - a man whose life was changed forever from reading one chapter of a book - she asks what would happen if we read outside in the light, and expose our ignoran...
