Simply to say prayers is not to pray

I am devoting a significant portion of my allotted reading this year to CS Lewis. You may have noticed an inordinate number of references and quotes by Lewis, from me, over the last 12 months and that is why. Though not a theologian, he was a brilliant thinker and a genius at taking profound truths and (literally) making them accessible to children. Like us, he too lived in a world of war, urbanization, increasing secularization and unbelief (popular and academic) in regards to the truthfulness of Christianity. Though imperfect, and oddly eccentric, we still have much to learn from him. Most recently I completed reading The World's Last Night and Other Essays, one of which was on the Efficacy of Prayer. Here's a sample:

“Simply to say prayers is not to pray; otherwise a team of properly trained parrots would serve as well as men....The very question “Does prayer work?” puts us in the wrong frame of mind from the outset. “Work”: as if it were magic, or a machine - something that functions automatically. Prayer is either a sheer illusion or a personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly concrete Person. Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine.”