On a post below I referred to the Valyermo Chroncile, published by St. Andrew's Abbey. Another fine article in the current issue is "Why Sing Psalms?" by Dr. Paul Ford who teaches theology and liturgy at St. John's Seminary, Camarillo. If I am not mistaken, Paul occasionally comments here at dotCommonweal.The article makes clear the Church's indebtedness to Israel's prayers: the Psalms. But Paul also includes a quote from Ann and Barry Ulanov that particularly struck me:

Prayer is the place where we sort out our desires and where we ourselves are sorted out by the desires we choose to follow ...Prayer enlarges our desire until it receives God's desire for us. In prayer, we grow big enough to house God's desire in us which is the Holy Spirit.

And the following from C.S. Lewis:

We must lay before God what is in us, not what ought to be in us ... It may well be that the desire can be laid before God only as a sin to be repented; but one of the best ways of learning this is to lay it before God.