Laurel Moffatt returns with Small Wonders - her short, thoughtful reflections on how a trust in Jesus colours how we see things in the world around us. Ahead of a new season, she ponders how, if we don't take the time to pause, we can misunderstand why things are happening the way they are. Things aren't always as they seem - sometimes when we expect to find pain and anguish, we instead find love and care. Matthew 11:28-30 is just one of many scriptures that echos this theme....
Apr 11, 2023•6 min
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...
Jun 09, 2022•14 min•Ep. 10
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 wh...
Jun 02, 2022•13 min•Ep. 9
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...
May 26, 2022•17 min•Ep. 8
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 questionin...
May 19, 2022•15 min•Ep. 7
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 ...
May 12, 2022•14 min•Ep. 6
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 th...
May 05, 2022•15 min•Ep. 5
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 w...
Apr 28, 2022•12 min•Ep. 4
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.
Apr 21, 2022•15 min•Ep. 3
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. R...
Apr 14, 2022•12 min•Ep. 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...
Apr 07, 2022•15 min•Ep. 1
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?
Mar 22, 2022•5 min
