Preacher Man: On the 13th, I led the service at the Unitarian Church in Lewisham. I’ve talked about this plan in earlier posts. When I got there, there was a notice on the sign out front, announcing “Visiting Preacher–Nick Lewis”. See below. I’ll never see that again. The service went OK. There were only six people there and, as Andy told me later, when that happens, you don’t have any energy coming back at you. That was the case for me. They all sat there quietly (excepts for the Rabbi/Pope story, which got a laugh). At least they seemed to be listening. I had to provide the music interludes and do the meditation, so it was a lot of organizing. My sermon was essentially about growing the Unitarian movement through a commitment to social action. Between the Lewisham service and may talk on Law and Justice at New Unity, people have asked me lately if I am interested in being a minister. The answer is emphatically not.

British Political Update: One has to wonder if Chancellor George Osborne can survive his latest mess. You may recall that back in the fall he had to back down from a plan to balance the budget but cutting tax credits for poor people, a concept so cruel that the House of Lords (of all people) felt compelled to block it. This time he decided to help balance his budget by cutting benefits to the disabled. (A pattern is becoming obvious here.) All hell broke loose, the Minister for Welfare and Benefits resigned the cabinet and the Tories had to send out the brand new minister to say that they were taking it back and had no further plans to cut welfare benefits. For Osborne, it is bad enough that he must be universally viewed as heartless (although that is not, in itself, a problem for most Conservatives). It is far worse that he must now be seen as incompetent, at least politically. Great days for Boris Johnson and his plans to succeed Cameron (perhaps as soon as this year), since Osborne has been seen as Cameron’s heir apparent.

Underlying all of this is the vicious infighting in the Conservative Party over Brexit. Every day features a new claim or dispute and they are all starting to merge together. And much of the news coverage is not about the actual impact of leaving the E.U., but the soap opera that the Tories have become. Indeed, the resignation of Ian Duncan-Smith from the cabinet, which I referred to above, was immediately seen through the lens of Brexit, since “IDS” as the tabloid headline refer to him, is one of the leading Eurosceptics and the head of the Brexit wing of the party. The Labour Party is, of course, delighted by the endless internecine mudslinging and take every opportunity to point it out. One wonders if this will have any real impact on the balance of support for the parties, but it may be that Corbyn has been pushed into a box where he will not be able to actually capitalize on this mess. The thing is that this is a huge decision point for the U.K. and the whole thing is obscured by politics.

Meanwhile, U.S. politics is just depressing. At least Obama’s visit to Havana is a positive thing.

Evolution of a Painting: In doing the art I have been doing here, I sometimes feel that the process of creation is at least as interesting as the final result. I’ve just finished a painting that went through quite an evolution. It started out with a photo of some houses in Kedainiai in Lithuania. So I started the painting and reached a point where I just wanted a change. Below is the photo and the initial painting:

I liked the composition of the painting, but I found the colors boring and didn’t feel like doing a painting in all grays and browns. So I started looking through my “art ideas” file and came upon a photo I had taken of a painting at the National Gallery (I think). It is by someone like Kandinsky. See Below. I decided to use that as an inspiration and ended with the final product, which you can see right under this paragraph. It was fun to paint and I think the result is striking.