The Land of Perpetual Clouds:  I know it is incredibly boring to write about the weather, but I do have to say that the absence of any real seasons, which isn’t so bad in the winter, is kind of depressing in what purports to be summer. It is hard to think of a day in which the temperatures have passed 70℉ and clouds and occasional rain dominate. Bill Bryson, upon moving back to the UK, was asked what he would miss about America and he answered “Weather”. Now I get it.

My Favorite Poster from the Brexit Campaign: This one was around the corner from our flat. I never saw it in any other places, although I understand it was not a one-off. Perhaps if there had been more, there would have been a different result. (Just kidding.)

Brexit Reactions: If you care about this issue, you can read about it endlessly in the NY Times (or the Guardian’s web site). There are a few things that are striking:

• There was a palpable feeling of shock, anger and grief in London on Friday and continuing through the weekend. The service at New Unity on Sunday had a funereal feel to it. The young members of the congregation were particularly upset.
• The results have also led to all kinds of ugly, racist incidents. One has to assume that the tone of the campaign and the gloating by the utterly repellant Nigel Farrage  (head of the far right UKIP Party) has energized and validated the lunatic fringe, who now seem to feel that it open season on Poles and anyone of color.
• As you may have heard, there is no one in charge of the government any more. Cameron has essentially resigned and is in caretaker mode until the Tories can pick a new Prime Minister. And that looks like it will be very divisive.
• At the same time, the Labour Party is imploding, as Corbyn has just lost a no confidence vote among the Parliamentary MPs by a spectacularly lopsided 172-40 vote. He probably has sufficient support with the rank and file members that he can and will fight this, further weakening Labour regardless of who wins. I can’t see any good way out of this mess for the Labour Party. The left wing of the party, vaguely led by Corbyn, is ready for a fight against the centrists in Parliament, who they think have sold out Labour’s principles. You should read the Facebook posts I’ve been getting from left-wing friends in the New Unity congregation. It would be nice if there were some alternative leader who inspired confidence, but no one on the left will challenge Corbyn and too many of the other candidates are either nobodies or MPs tainted by being Blairites. (There may even be a fight about whether Corbyn can even run, which will cause further bloodletting.) There is likely to be an election called in the next six to twelve months and it is not impossible to imagine the Labour Party being crushed so badly that its future existence is in doubt, which is weird since the Conservative Party is also in utter turmoil and is extremely unpopular.
• The fact that the Leave side, led by Johnson and Gove, have been exposed as having no real plan about what to do if they actually won just makes matters worse for the Conservatives. There seems to be a real disgust with Boris Johnson as the fact that he is backtracking on pretty much every argument he made in favor of Brexit just confirms that he was acting as the worst sort of political opportunist. There is an Anyone But Boris faction in the Tories, but if he becomes one of the two candidates for leadership (probably against Theresa May), you would have to bet on him winning. Of course, whoever wins faces an impossible task and then another election.
• It is just such an awful mess, with no grown ups in charge and no likelihood that Britain can extricate itself from the hurricane that the referendum has unleashed. It may all be going in slow motion, but is like a lava flow. It keeps moving day by day and cannot be stopped.

New Unity Service: On Sunday, I helped organize the service at the New Unity congregation. I had originally wanted to do a sort of art communion combining a celebration of the summer solstice with the end of a quarter in which the services were about healing and recovery. I went through the prior services and took out excerpts to create a 1015 minute reading that reviewed twelve services. The plan was to give each person a piece of colored paper (summer colors) on which they would be asked to write or draw something about the past quarter and the them of healing and recovery. We would then all bring our paper to front and create a collage on big piece of foam board. (The Art and Soul covenant group did something similar in Montclair, but didn’t include the writing by the congregants.) Then the Brexit vote happened and Andy and I agreed that this shock had to be acknowledged. Fortunately, the healing and recovery theme fit in all too well for the Brexit disaster and the service went quite well. I forgot to take a picture of the group collage, but I’ll do it eventually and send it out.

England Loses to Iceland: On Monday night, England played Iceland in the quarterfinals of the European Cup and were outplayed by a country  the size of a London suburb and lost 2-1. The British consider themselves to be a serious power in soccer (football here) and this loss came as a huge shock. But it probably shouldn’t have been. England has only won a handful of important international games over the last thirty or more years and has been repeatedly humiliated or at least knocked out of World Cups and similar competitions at early stages. They do have the richest Football League, but that doesn’t mean that the British players are the world’s best. They seemed to completely lose their composure when they fell behind Iceland, who were far more disciplined. Perhaps their history of failure was weighing on them. Of course, it seemed to me that England could not win a European Cup match just days after voting to leave Europe. Maybe this one can be blamed on bad national karma. In any event, losing to Iceland was another disorienting blow here.