My stay at Mepkin Abbey wound up about this time last year. Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” was playing on the iPod as I drove away from the monastery. If you don’t count monk chants, this was the first music I heard in five days. It’s not that I dislike monk chants, it’s just that I prefer a little more variety in my musical diet. I really didn’t mind the tiny room, the hard bed, the simple food, the 3 a.m. prayers and the “Grand Silence.”

I didn’t miss the blackout on news coverage of the election, political dishonesty and celebrity misbehavior. In fact, these “hardships” were really refreshing in a spiritual way. But after a few days of a steady diet of monk chants, a music addict starts seeing the first signs of withdrawal; CDs crawling on the walls and banjo-shaped ice cubes floating in his water glass.

But I was a better man for the hospitality of the brothers, and I was happy to be on the highway with Johnny Cash in the speakers. Now this may sound like a non sequitur, but “I Walk the Line” tied right in with a lot of the thinking I’d done at the abbey.

You probably already know the story, so bear with me as I hit the highlights. Cash was a singer/songwriter that really hit it big in the music world. He couldn’t handle it. He slid into a squalid life of drugs and dishonesty. But for the love and loyalty of his wife June Carter and her family, he probably would have languished there and died. Johnny’s hard-fought recovery is a testament to faith, patience and benevolent hard-headedness. That’s what the song is about. Johnny Cash was able to walk the line because of his devotion to the ones he loved — to the ones who believed in him. The operative word here is “devotion.”

The brothers at Mepkin Abbey live a life of devotion. Their unwavering daily routine of prayer, hymns, work, study, meditation and rest is evidence of their devotion to something that enables them to “walk the line.”

For my purposes, the intellectual merit to their belief system is a side issue. Whatever their creed, they offer free hospitality to strangers, they honor their guests by leaving them alone, they live lives of gentleness and simplicity. Devotion.

Judging by some of the venomous exchanges I’ve seen in the media lately, there are some who believe that religion — any and all religion — is an unqualified evil. Some people actually advocate the abolition of all religion. On the other hand, there are those calling themselves “religious” who advance an agenda of prejudice, close-mindedness and even bloodshed. There’s so much distorted emotion seething in either extreme that you can’t reason with their disciples.

People of goodwill, whatever they believe, are able to walk the line because they are devoted to something. And here’s a corollary. You can tell something about what people are devoted to by watching the line they walk.

This being true, in a strict sense, all thinking people are religious people. The word “religion,” in its pure origin, means “bound again.” Hey, whatever line you walk, that’s what you’re bound to. For good or bad, that’s your religion.

You can make a religion of anything. Consider this: The brothers at Mepkin Abbey used to support themselves, in part, by selling eggs to their neighbors and others. In 2007, some members of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) came to the monastery requesting permission to use the facilities for a retreat. The brothers cheerfully agreed. Once they were welcomed, PETA surreptitiously videotaped the abbey’s egg gathering operation. They augmented their video with film of dead chickens actually taken at another location. Even though their operation met all industry standards regarding the humane treatment of laying hens, the unwelcome publicity has forced the brothers to phase out their egg business. Chalk this up as a victory for PETA’s religion — whatever that really is.

Well anyway, it was Sept. 12, 2008, when me and Johnny rolled away from the monastery. By coincidence, that was the fifth anniversary of Johnny’s death. He outlived his sweetheart by just under three months. Sept. 10 is the 44th anniversary of the death of a man who called himself “Father Divine.” By some estimates, he had a following of almost two million. His ministry was plagued with sexual scandal, financial shenanigans and litigation. Prior to his death, he claimed that he was God himself. A lot of people believed it. Whatever.

I’m Hink and I’ll see ya.