Just routine?

From The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O’Connor

… a certain glibness on the altar is more than just a bare possibility.  For when we do anything, however important, over and over again, when by repetition we reach the point where we could do this thing without thinking, the danger is that we will do it without thinking.  The result is that sometimes we will pray to God, say, in the same automatic way that we will tie our shoelaces.  I mentioned prayer because it’s so peculiarly liable to this sort of thing.  We know our prayers so well and have said them so often that before we know it we’ve said them again—and again without a shred of thought or meaning.  I suspect it’s very hard for most of us to pray—to pray well, that is.  The mechanical act of falling upon one’s knees and saying The Lord’s Prayer every day is one thing and a simple thing, but to say even the first half-dozen words of that prayer with the attention they deserve is quite another and not at all so simple.  (p. 181)