Prayer does not depend on your natural capacity. What does depend upon your natural capacity is the kind of prayer, because it will be your prayer. But prayer itself is as simple as conversation between friends. No one would dare write a book on how husband and wife are to talk to each other - what topics are appropriate, what tone should be used - because obviously every marriage is different and goes through different phases. One of the responsibilities of any close relationship is that each person has to take seriously his or her need to talk, share, discuss ad love. And this need will continually be changing. In prayer the relationship is between God and ourselves. God is always the same, but each of us is completely different.
The essential act of prayer is to stand unprotected before God. What will God do? He will take possession of is. That He should do this is the whole purpose of life. We know we belong to God; we know too, if we are honest, that almost despite ourselves, we keep a deathly hold on our own autonomy. We are willing, in fact very ready, to pay God lip service (just as we are ready to talk prayer rather than to pray), because waving God as banner keeps our conscience quiet. But really to belong to God is another matter. It means having nothing left for ourselves, always bound to the will of Another, no sense of interior success to comfort us, living in the painful acknowledgement of being 'unprofitable servants.'
(Sister Wendy Beckett, Sister Wendy on Prayer, NY: Harmony Books, 2006, p37-8)
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