Nat slouched in his chair, chin nearly resting on his chest and his left hand wrapped around a glass of ginger ale. He was staring at the Turner. The waitress brought the cremeschnitte, set it on the table and left unacknowledged. Patrons eclipsed the painting as they headed for the door and Nat never saw them pass. After a time he became aware of a bystander. He was a little embarrassed by his preoccupation and sat up as he was told to do in the first grade.

Nat: I'm sorry, Ester; I was far away.

Nat stood up, grabbed a chair from a nearby table and pulled it close to his own. She sat down.

Ester: Thank you.

Nat: What can I get you?

Ester: That looks good to me.

Nat caught the waitress's eye and waggled his index and little finger at her and she nodded.

Ester: You are unhappy today.

Nat: A bit morose, perhaps.

Ester: About?

Nat: Empires. Small, stinky, unimaginative empires.

Ester: Do they matter?

Nat: Only if you don't want your children to grow up in them, in which case they haunt me.

Ester: What can you do to fix the problem?

The waitress brought a ginger ale and another plate of cremeschnitte.

Nat: I don't suppose anything can be done, but even if something could be done, I can't do it. So, I suppose it's not a problem, really; in a technical sense. I just prefer to feel bad about that rather than the price of bad government.

Ester: Who could fix the problem?

Nat: No one but God, I think.

Ester: God?! This coming from one who scorns religion?

Nat: Well, these days have not been kind to religion and religion has not been kind to God. What thoughtful person would take his grief to a cleric these days?

Ester: And all clerics are bad?

Nat: Oh, no! There will always be a few diamonds, but it seems diamonds lose some of their attraction in an age of rhinestones. The people who most need a religious man tend to be the ones who can't tell the difference between the real and the fake.

Both of them tucked into their desserts.

Nat: We have one major herd of religionists which prides itself on preserving the gloried past even as it sits around and giggles at unholy things and sings profane chanties. The very virtues it touts are the virtues it actually repudiated. These people love their tired novelties and they think of themselves as "conservatives".

Herd #2 set out to repair the damage caused by a stampeding herd #1 and committed itself to preserving a minimal orthodoxy and exercising a trite orthopraxy. It has done neither. And spectacularly well: you could almost keep a publishing company afloat with the frequent confessions and feigned lamentations.

And most comically, group #3, a few bleating stragglers who don't even pretend orthodoxy or orthopraxy exist; it is a random collection of pathetic Guitar Hero Reformers who can't even underwrite a conversation.

That's pretty much the answer religion offers these days. All of them treat God as a means, morals as irrelevant and the imagination as trivial.

Ester:  Certainly truth speaks to every generation.

Nat: Apparently not. Only those generations which are thoughtful enough to value truth, it seems. Most just dither over what is true today, proving they don't yet grasp the concept.

I suspect it's not first a question of truth; first will come a love for the beautiful. I don't see that happening now, but I suspect it would be a beginning.

Ester: How do you help someone love something?