on prayer

"Prayer is primarily attentiveness to God's disclosure to us and the heart's response to that disclosure. In much prayer the attention we pay to God's disclosure is our response. If, for example, in prayer we are made aware that God loves us as we are, even in our mediocrity, our best response is to savor that, to allow it to sink in, rather than to start to make resolutions and promises to God, which might be a subtle way of changing the subject to what we can do. We are loving God, trusting God and uniting ourselves to God precisely by appreciating, savoring, absorbing, realizing and allowing ourselves to be impregnated with that disclosure of grace. Our contemplative awareness and taking in of God's touch and word is just the "answer" God is hoping for. This answer will gradually get spelled out, not so much by many words in the prayer time, but in the actions and growth that our acceptance of God's disclosure will make possible."
-- Martin L. Smith, The Word is Very Near You