I also appreciate this quote, because it sets up a mature way of looking at things, categorising, and dealing with them.
However, I'm less of a fan of the opening words; it's not so much that this should be magically granted on to us with a wishing wand, it's something we need to consciously work on, from within. Somehow that slogging, gritty aspect is less represented.
That is not what praying is about. A healthy prayer is a form of meditation, like "meditate on how you want your future to look like". It is a reconnection with the higher self. It is already an attempt to access something from within. It is a technique to understand thing about oneself, to build up internal structure and organize inner spiritual work.
But if you base your conception of prayer on a sketch from Monty Python or maybe a mentally ill person on the street who uses some christian terms for progressing their own insanity, then in that conception maybe prayer is a way to "magically grant with a wishing wand". But this is not what healthy use of the term is about. I assume the original poster who used this word is not insane and looks at the implicit meaning of the quote, which if looked at in that light, makes a lot of sense.
Whether it's intentional or not, saying something like, "That is not what praying is about," is inviting an ecumenical squabble.
Prayer's about a lot of things to a lot of people. Regardless of whether you think a way that other people do it is correct or not, it still exists and is a thing. And offering strangers uninvited, prescriptive advice on how a religious practice should be done is a form of proselytization.
I think, in this case, it's more useful to recognize and observe the context. For example, I am inclined to agree that the "God grant me the..." at the start of that particular prayer is typically understood, at least in the community where I grew up, as more of an idiom than an actual request of God. Very much like how neutronicus put it in a sibling comment. Even atheists will use it that way without any sense of dissonance. But there are also plenty of Christians who understand God as being a lot more hands-on about things, and that would support a different understanding of the prayer's connotations, which is every bit as valid.
It was probably an ill-constructed phrase, yes. I was trying to convey something like "there exists, shared by a large number of people (although not all), a definition of the word "prayer", such that it is functional, objectively meaningful
, deep, well-understood and consensus-based, which is deeper than the previously suggested definition, and which makes more sense in the context in which it was used". I don't know how to put that into clean words without inviting a squabble.
A prayer is not a meditation. A prayer is a conversation. Meditation is either focusing on something or nothing. A conversation with your higher self is probably more like a prayer.
However, I'm less of a fan of the opening words; it's not so much that this should be magically granted on to us with a wishing wand, it's something we need to consciously work on, from within. Somehow that slogging, gritty aspect is less represented.