As Rosh Hashanah approaches, many of us will spend more time in synagogue than at any other point in the year. Some will leave inspired. Others will spend much of the service wondering when it will end. Some will even leave early. At one time or another, I have been all three.

Prayer has taken me to the highest highs. More often, if I am honest, it has left me struggling to concentrate, counting pages rather than moments of inspiration. Yet perhaps that should not surprise us. Daily prayer struggles against the age in which we live. We have become accustomed to instant messages, endless notifications, short videos and constant stimulation. We expect everything to be immediate, personalised and engaging. The machzor and siddur ask something very different of us. They ask us to slow down, to listen to words written centuries ago and to believe that they still have something new to teach us. For many of us, perhaps it has never been harder to pray with genuine concentration.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks expressed the idea that prayer changes the world because it changes us. When I first encountered those words, I admired them. It has taken me many years to understand them personally. My journey through prayer has taught me that the words of the siddur have remained remarkably constant throughout my lifetime. It has been a journey that has accompanied me from childhood to retirement. What has changed is the person praying them.

The first step on that journey came when I was about eleven years old. A Sunday school teacher changed my understanding of prayer with one simple observation. During Shema Koleinu, he explained, there is a moment when we........

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