Why This Smattering?

Good morning…

I woke with a weird word on my mind. Smattering. When is the last time you heard smattering used in a sentence?

Dictionary.com defines the noun smattering in two different ways.

1. a slight, superficial, or introductory knowledge of something. For example, “She knows a smattering of Latin.”
2. a small amount or number. Used in a sentence we might read: “He has written a smattering of poetry.”

Synonyms include smidge or smidgen, bit or tad, basics or elements. “In other words, each of us has a smattering of brain cells dedicated to modeling another mind inside our own heads,” explains an article from Singularity Hub about the way empathy for others works in our brains.

For me, a visual comes to mind. You know those awesome “Happy New Year” wishes that come into our phone as a text, with fireworks and confetti exploding, exploding, exploding before fizzling out of sight? This fun form of encouragement offers a smattering of colors and various sizes of powerful bursts which take turn lighting up the dark sky. I love these active, moving, attention-getting images.

Why might this word, smattering, and this image greet me in this early morning, LORD?

I prayerfully ponder the question and wait for any inkling of Divine spark.

I actually I think I wake most mornings experiencing a smattering of thoughts and emotions. Little bursts of worries and wonderings, hopes and regrets, mysterious musings and unresolved stuff. Small explosions of feelings, thoughts, questions flare up before fading. These internal fireworks go off in my brain as I shift from fully asleep to entirely awake. I observe the various shades of emotion, the spurts of possible thought, the muddled memories. Each smidgen grabs my attention before fizzling out. I don’t fight the process and I don’t cling to the tidbits. I accept and acknowledge their presence as they move through.

Interestingly, I think this is a very creative, unconscious-to-conscious form of prayer. Might we call the experience smattering prayer? From the darkness of sleep, bite-sized beacons of awareness burst. I ponder each possibility before, one by one, they fade away, falling freely into the hands of God. Might this be a God-given gift of passing prayer? Smattering prayer.

Am I the only one this happens to most mornings? Maybe. Am I kinda crazy? Maybe.

I am also am really grateful that my brain wakes up with these colorful explosions of internal experience. Might these fireworks be tiny remnants of the concerns my mind has been trying to digest all night? They offer a spiritual snippet of what I might need to process further with God during my wide awake hours. I love lying in bed until the grand finale naturally goes still and silent, blank and at rest. Somehow I sense God understands fully the deepest stirring of my innermost self. As I rest in bed during the first moments of the morning, I enjoy the quiet gift of smattering prayer.

For every day is filled with pain and every job has its own problems, and there are nights when the mind doesn’t stop and rest. And once again, this is fleeting (Ecclesiastes 2:23, VOICE).

Smatterings of prayer truly are fleeting, like the fun firework texts filling our phone before finally, naturally fizzling away.

…Sue…