Over 'Pietized' Praying

You can always trust Eugene Peterson (author of The Message version of the bible) to bring through a thought with clarity and insight that leaves you pondering. Currently reading his book 'The Word Made Flesh' focused primarily on the spirituality of 'everyday' language and he broaches with typical brilliance the fact that we as believers can do to prayer what Christ never did Himself - my own word here 'over-pietize' it.
I do not understand why when people begin to pray they have a whole new language that disconnects them with any normal real, gritty way of speaking to the Father. I will never for a moment exhort us to pray causally without respect, but I deeply respect my father and yet speak very personally to him. Anyway here is Mr. Peterson, enjoy

"Prayer may well be the single aspect of our language most in danger of losing touch with the sheer grittiness of our humanity. We lost touch with our humanity when we deprive God of his humanity. Children pray in spontaneous honesty. Catastrophe and crisis very often take us to the bedrock of our humanity, where our language is purged of pretense and piety and we pray from the gut. But apart from childhood and crisis, while we are on the road through the secular Samaritan ordinary, [Peterson is reflecting on Christ's words in Luke 11: 1 - 13] our prayers have a way of being abstracted from the homely and distinctive details that are part and parcel of our ordinary and everyday life. Prayer more often than not is practiced in religiously defined and protected settings. More often than not it is formulated in pious cliches picked up hanging around churches or borrowed from prayer books."

Seek Him with all the adoration of a perfect Father, but remember He is your Father, and the Son He sent to us was more 'human than any of us will ever be!

Simon