Reading the TEAMS edition of Julian of Norwich's Shewings, I came across a passage on prayer, and I think it's a good meditation on prayer. Julian concisely expresses the origin, manner, and goal of prayer. The text was written in the fourteenth century and therefore is in a late form of Middle English, still understandable by today's English speakers. Nevertheless, I've also put a translation here by John Skinner, who takes some unfortunate liberties in regularizing the quizzical word-choices of the original. This is from Chapter 42:

Our Lord God wille we have trew understondyng, and namely in three things that longyn to our prayors. The first is be whom and how that our prayors springyth. Be whome, He shewith when He seith, I am ground; and how, be His goodness, for He seith, first, It is my wille. For the secund, in what manner and how we should usen our prayors, and that is that our wil be turnyd into the will of our Lord, enjoyand; and so menith He whan He seith, I mak the to willen it. For the thred, that we knowen the frute and the end of our prayors: that is, to be onyd and lyk to our Lord in al thyng.

Our Lord wishes that we understand well three things that belong to our praying. The first is by whom and how our prayer arises. By whom he shows when he says, "I am the ground"; and how is by his goodness alone, inasmuch as he tells us, "First it is my will." And second is the manner of our praying and its purpose; this is that our will be turned into the will of our Lord, with continual joy. This he means when he says, "I make you seek me." As for the third, that we know the fruit and end of our praying, this is none other than we be oned and like to our Lord in all things.

"I make you will it" is an outstanding phrase to me, a phrase that echoes the Thomistic principle of grace and free will by which our will is free because God makes it free. Where does the desire to pray come from? God makes you want to pray, Julian says. She shows that the will of God is foremost: "I make you seek me." Our acts are free because God wills them to be free. This is a principle that will become confused in the sixteenth century when the Molinists propose their view of predestination as post praevisa merita, negating the omniscince of God.

The other remarkable phrase is "I am the ground." Here, Julian shows that God is the source, not merely the object of our prayers. It's her expression of the gratuitousness of grace and the uniqueness of Christian prayer which, unlike the prayer possible in the other religions, doesn't arise from the natural religious aspirations of man, but is instead possible only by grace. This is the prayer that comes not from human yearning, but from the supernatural state of the baptized Christian, a state distinct even from that action of the Holy Spirit which can move those outside the Church to seek Christ. Here's the difference: This kind of Christian prayer is instigated by God and joins the will of the praying person to the will God. When a Christian prays this kind of prayer, he prays not on account of his own merits, but because of the gift of God's grace.