Are you there, God? It's me, Opus.

In the past year, as most of my medical conditions seem not to like caffeine, I switched my hot beverage of choice from coffee to herbal tea. It’s been tough going; occasionally I’d break down and get a decaf latte from Starbucks (still 13% caffeine, mind you, and I vibrate all the way home). But for a confirmed coffee snob who used to only purchase whole beans from local roasters, but only if the roast was fresh and the source known, this denial has been especially difficult. I pass the pot of coffee my husband makes for himself every morning and whimper. I stare longingly at the travel hot-cups of strangers, fantasizing about what they’re drinking. I keep my eyes straight ahead when I pass a Dunkin’ Donuts. So naturally I wouldn’t be satisfied with just any old garden-variety Lipton-In-The-Box tea. I drink the exotic kind with the Zen messages on the tags.

Some of these messages are befuddling, some downright ludicrous. Some, like the one I got the other day, “May you have faith in your worth and act with wisdom,” could catch me in a weak moment and make me cry.

When I opened this morning’s packet of Peach Detox, I’d just about had it.

“Your body is the temple of God.”

I felt like God and I needed to have a little chat.

“OK, God (if that is in fact your real name). About this temple business.

“You have no idea what it’s been like around here. Sure, you build all these temples, and then you walk away, because you’re too important to have anything to do with them after that. Big man. Big temple-building man. Hey, did you ever hear of a level, God? Even your son, that long-haired kid with the sandals, knew how to use a level, for Christ’s sake. I put down a marble, and in the time it takes to say “matzoh brei,” it rolls clear to the other side of the building. The whole place is crooked. OK, maybe the foundation isn’t bad – I had an inspector come in, you’ll be getting the bill – but you haven’t been around here in a while, you don’t know how expensive and difficult the upkeep on a nice temple has become, let alone one without a single right angle in the place. With the cracks in the walls and the floorboards buckling and the weatherstripping that keeps popping out?

“And I’m getting a little tired of being the only one doing the work around here. I do the dusting, the sweeping, the mopping. I vacuum the spider webs out from the stained-glass windows. Every single Sunday, I’m cleaning the prayer books, I’m polishing the Torah cabinet with the kosher Murphy’s oil soap, not to mention the pews, the door to the rabbi’s study. I iron his tallis, and you know what a mess he leaves that in at the end of a Sabbath, all puddled up on the floor. Not to mention collecting the yarmulkes left everywhere and the one I found in the ladies’ room, you don’t want to know about. And every week it’s the same thing. No matter what I do, no matter how nice I keep the place, I even stripped and refinished the floors, covered the seats in velvet, but nothing helps. “The next week? It all looks like hell again. I might as well invite some Romans in and have them burn the place to the ground. Look, you’re the one who built this temple, how about it? If there isn’t enough in the budget to jack the thing off the foundation and level it out, at least let me hire some college kid to come in and help with the heavy lifting so I can have a little rest once in a while, maybe a little Mai-Tai, a week in the Bahamas? And a nice, hard-working kid, not like that last one, that Titus kid, with the zip, zip, zip and where’s my check and out the door. I didn’t like the look in his eye. No. I want a craftsman. I want someone who cares.

“After all, it’s a temple, for God’s sake.”