My favorite radio personality, Terry Gross of NPR, was interviewing Lambert Wilson, the French actor who has just completed a movie, “Of Gods and Men,” inspired by the true story of seven French monks working in Algeria who were kidnapped in 1996, during the Algerian Civil War, and later executed. (I know – what a fun plot.)

Before filming began, Wilson tells Terry, he read as much as he could about the 1996 incident. He also went on a retreat at a secluded monastery in the French Alps with the other actors who worked on the film.

"We spent a few days observing the monks, eating in silence with the other people who were going on the retreat, and then we started singing," he says. "And that was really the best preparation. We learned Gregorian chanting. We learned liturgical singing as a group. This is really what got this group of French actors together."

He tells Terry that the Gregorian chanting changed his life and you can guess the rest, it led him back to God. Right here I say gimme a break. Because what is it about meditative examination, beautiful music, and the peace and solitude of a retreat that is more than discovering your inner self? I achieve the same by meditating and playing the piano and at no point do I think about God. My spiritual nature is inborn and if there is a mystical connection, it isn't an astral clone of man in a misty white cloud with a beard and fingers raised in that convoluted sign you see in icons.

It reminds me of the story about a fellow who bought a neglected farm, worked his a.. off and made it a verdant and productive place. Along comes the preacher who says, “Look what God has done,” and the farmer says, “Well, you should have seen it before I got here.”

It’s us, please. We do or we do not do, and if God was meting out any justice for our choices, he’d be destroying the terrorists, and saving the Haitians.

xx, Teal