Small Wonders

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.

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.