Some notes from a 'Faith Matters' article by Barbara Brown Taylor, Christian Century, March 24-31, 1999, p. 356:

'[My granddaughter], her mother, her grandfather, and I joined hands around the dinner table and bowed our heads to pray. "Why is granddaddy talking with his eyes shut?" Madeline asked. "Just be quiet and listen," her mother said, which is not a bad introduction to prayer...

'There is more to prayer than the answer to prayer. There is also the pray-er, who is shaped by the praying. What the persistent widow knows is that the most important time to pray is when your prayers seem meaningless. If you do not go yell under the judge's window, what are you going to do? Take to your bed with a box of Kleenex? Forget what matters to you altogether? No. Every day of your life, you are going to get up, wash your face, and go ask for what you want. You are going to trust the process, regardless of what comes of it, because the process itself gives you life.

'One day, when Madeline asks me outright whether prayer really works, I am going to say, "Oh, sweetie, of course it does. It keeps our hearts chasing after God's heart. It's how we bother God, and how God bothers us back. There's nothing that works any better than that.'