I am therefore not really deeply worried that prayer is at present a duty, and even an irksome one. This is humiliating. It is frustrating. It is terribly time wasting. The worse one is praying the longer one's prayers take, but we are still only at school.
C. S. Lewis1

Our abandonment of one thing is not sufficient to settle us in the habitual practice of the other, but there is need again of some fresh impulse, and of an effort not less than that made in our avoidance of evil dispositions, in order to our acquiring good ones.
John Chrysostom2

Many problems go away if you just leave them alone. Try to fix them and you only make them worse. Most stomach aches, rainstorms, and sour moods, for example, eventually disappear if you ignore them as best you can.

Other problems go away only if you deal with them thoughtfully, thoroughly, and persistently. They need attention. Left alone they slip into the nagging subconscious, but they never go away. The problem of developing a consistent prayer ...

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