The ARCHITECTURE of BELIEF

A busy half term week started with collecting my daughter from the West Midlands and ended with putting up an exhibition of my Dad's artwork in Cambridge.

We arrived at St Michael's Church, Trinity St, Cambridge, on Thursday 31 October at 4.15 pm. To reach the Chancel, we passed through the very nice Michaelhouse Café.

The Chancel side walls are lined with curtains hanging from pelmets and this is where the exhibition had to be hung from.  The pelmets are about 9 feet from the floor of the seating and access with a ladder is complicated by the proximity of the pews:

However, we managed to position the ladder at an angle - even though it felt almost vertical when standing near the top! By about 7 pm all but one of the paintings was hanging. This was due to the curtains on the left wall being longer then those on the right wall, since the last arch on the right was only half an arch to accommodate a through-way to another area of the building. This meant we had to move some of the paintings along and place another in an area with no pelmet:

(You can see the painting on the right in the area it has to be hung).

The next afternoon, we arrived at 4.30 pm to put up the last painting and adjust the spacing between everything. An extra spar of wood had to be used to bridge the gap, since there was no other way to secure the wire fixings:

This is the main synopsis for the exhibition:

"Everyone believes in something, however practical or abstract. At the centre must be "The Architecture of Belief" we have in SELF. Imparted in family; embedded in community; developed by groups and associations; sharpened and made more inwardly and deeply personal by individual thought, experience, reading and reflection. This belief can lead to striving beyond limitations; extending physically and imaginatively our lives and way of life or the opposite, withdrawing and defending what we believe and how we live.

Across this broad spectrum we can witness and have placed before us instances and images of human activity across our planet. This kind of broad view, however partial, can help us recognise that there, somewhere, but for the chance of being where we are, we could have been conscripted, regimented, deprived, abandoned, to any of the other conditions of life we are shown that are not ours. Any overview, however simplistic and 'detached', should induce feelings of compassion, wonder, sadness but also hope; even as we are not placed in dire positions to defend our belief but want peace of some sort for those who have to defend theirs.

Each of the twelve images evoke aspects of humans conducting their affairs and the hope that belief in the diversity and range of human life can release its spirit rather than kill it." - Keith Gentle 2013

The exhibition will be visible to the public from now until the end of November 2013:

St Michael's Church, Trinity St, Cambridge CB2 1SU

Phone: +44 1223 309147

Hours: Closed on Sunday

The Michaelhouse Café

Felt Up The Wrong Way!

Last Sunday, the weather produced a small gale where I live - the result being that on Monday morning, I noticed the felt from my shed roof folded in a neat heap on the ground next to it. A year previous, the wind had lifted one length of the felt and left it dangling down the length of the long side of the shed. As the felt was mostly intact, I managed to flip it back over the roof and make a reasonable repair with some more felt nails and a couple of wooden strips. However, after inspecting the latest damage I discovered about a quarter of the felt now missing and it was obvious from other tears and gaps that the only solution, to save the contents of the shed from rain damage, would be to re-felt the lot!

I managed to find a place to buy felt in Wakefield, together with more felt nails and some bitumen-type sealer for the felt overlap areas. Despite having had rain showers on and off for most of the morning, a gap in the weather allowed me to complete the re-fit in just over an hour in warm sunshine. After completing the felting, I realised that only one of my original edging fascia boards was free of rot. The two ends were well past being reusable.





In the past, I have always bought my wood locally at the Timbernest in Clayton West. Sadly, the last time I went it was closed for a week, and a couple of weeks after that, it looked like this!

In the end, I remembered Ernshaw's Timber (even more local to me) and they had the wood I needed for about £3. I added two new ends and a further strip along the back:

As soon as I'd finished, it started to rain. The only thing left to do, was paint the ends to match the rest of the shed colour.

Work complete (between rain showers), it should last the winter now - and hopefully, several more years. 

The garden area has continued to flourish and it's now a nice place to sit out.

Garden Plants and Classic Cars

August is one of the busiest months for me - mainly due to it being the school summer holiday for my daughter... which in turn means complying with numerous requests for various activities... not to mention her birthday in the same month!

Anyway, I managed to complete the patio seating area and a local gardener helped by supplying several plants at little cost.

(With bubbles)

We attended both Woolley Horse Show and Emley Show - taking numerous photos we will probably never do much with... Here are a couple:

No one that I know, but the goat was delighted (Emley)

Some of you may be mistaken in thinking that the focus of my attention and the main event here (at Woolley) is the horse and rider...

...but actually, the horse was in the way on that previous shot:

I've always liked that commentary box - it would make a great motorhome / travelling workshop. For much of the year it is parked not far from where I live and I often drive past it.

More to my liking was the Gala and Classic Car event at Barnsley's Locke Park:

I've not been to the Locke Park event before and previously have had my classic 'fix' by going to the Thornes Park event in Wakefield.  However, this year they got the date wrong - changed it twice and I ended up missing it!

Here's a small sample of some of the Locke Park vehicles:

Sun, Seats and Sangria... well, almost

I've spent the last few days making a patio garden/seating area.  I recently discovered that the end of my house is a real sun-trap and after my friend Helen gave me a couple of chairs, I thought it really needed 'beautifying'.  Eventually, I bought a couple of rolls of fence material and then wondered where I could get some wood from.  In the end, I discovered the perfect solution. All the wood is reclaimed and was given to me by my farmer friend Rob and another friend, Lynette.  When I drove home after my wood collecting, the Jeep was crammed to the roof - I actually wondered if I'd ended up with too much!

After removing nails and sawing off rough edges, I had to buy some screws (since I couldn't remember where I'd put the ones I had from a few years back).  Once I had screws and tools sorted out, I started by making a few planters.  They had to be free-standing and durable enough to take the weight of soil and plants... and not get blown over on windy days.  A further complication was the multidirectional sloping of the paving. All the legs had to be cut to different lengths for everything to appear level.

I wanted to have different levels to add interest and an arrangement that would give a cosy, private and enclosed feel.  Another friend donated a little 'Turkey Oak' tree (shown left).

With the last of the wood, I decided to make a personal chair...

Notice the folding drinks table on the arm

The shaped back spars were originally used to keep clay drainage pipes apart when stacked. After doing a sketch to show my friend George, he said it reminded him of an Adirondack chair design.  (I'd never heard of them, but a web search brings up loads). Here's another view of the layout:

Amazingly, I ended up with exactly the right amount of wood for the whole project.  All I had left at the end was one small bin bag of sawn-off rough bits - which my neighbour said he would take for kindling to light a steam traction engine's boiler.

So... Time to think about the next phase...

I have a cunning plan...

The Art of Allowing

It's been an interesting few days - but they almost didn't happen!  

I finally gave up using Hotmail after 18 years after the version of Outlook provided ground to a stop and several times I couldn't access my account.  I'd put in a 'forward' to another of my accounts, expecting everything to come through.  However, when I went to check my Hotmail, the spam folder was unusually full and some items hadn't been forwarded.  Given that I had 465 items to go through, I wondered about simply emptying the whole lot.  However, I knew there were a few things I diverted there and occasionally viewed, so I started going through them.  On the third of four pages, I suddenly noticed a message from my author contact form:

Comment or enquiry: Would like to talk to you about your books. I am a radio talk show host on the Law of Attraction Radio Network.

Sometimes when I receive messages through my websites, it's people simply wanting to increase my search ratings or offer some service I don't require.  However, when I get something like the above, I go and check it out.  I arrived at Fulfilling Your Purpose and found the Law of Attraction Radio Network talk show page.  The first person I recognised was Jack Canfield (from "The Secret" film and author of "Chicken Soup for the Soul")  which certainly added credibility.  I then replied to the host, Constance Arnold, and apologised for my late reply - since her initial contact had been made a week previous and I usually reply to people on the same day as receiving messages.

We arranged an initial Skype video chat and got on really well.  Constance informed me that she "has millions of regular listeners" and people who contact her requesting to go on her show - but in my case, she had simply come across my author site through her own searching and she liked what she found on 'law of attraction' - a topic her listeners are most interested in.

We talked for about 45 minutes and arranged to do a proper interview for the show this weekend - which could go out live either Sunday 21 or 28 July at 7:00 EST (4:00 PST - 12:00 GMT).

Interestingly, what I forgot to mention to Constance, was how 'law of attraction' had brought us together from my perspective.  As mentioned in a previous blog, I had spent the last 30 years of my life practising invisibility - not wanting to draw attention to myself in any way.  However, since developing my writing full-time, being invisible hasn't helped people to find my books!  After almost a year's effort in self-promotion, followed by some thoughtful consideration, I decided that conventional methods to regain visibility were falling short of expectation and when I really thought about it, I'd need a very expansive and potentially costly, marketing campaign to get anywhere near started!  At this point, I decided to hand over the task to the universe, along the lines of: 

"I need to stop being invisible; I need people to know I exist.  Please help me to attract the right people who will be interested in my books and help me to become more noticed."

Following my own practice with 'law of attraction', I then removed myself from 'interfering' in the process or outcome, made a coffee and sat in the sun for a while.  Over the next days, I relaxed and let go of concerning myself with publicity and potential wealth generation, since I finally admitted the truth to myself:  

"Cold marketing is not something that comes naturally to you; you don't have to be good at everything; and you don't have to kill yourself with strenuous effort to "make" yourself good at something if it really doesn't interest you!"

Crystal Healing Wands

Yesterday, I bought some more leather for wand making:

The above wands are for sale here

I started making wands in the early 1980s and wrote a booklet about how to make and use them:

I began experimenting with healing in 1981 after combining breathing and 'Chi' energy techniques from my practice of Kung-Fu with information I had started to gather on healing and crystals.  Throughout the 80's, I attended talks and workshops relating to healing, including a weekend workshop with healer, Matthew Manning when he visited Newcastle.  (Matthew was in some ways the English Uri Geller - but devoting his abilities to healing).  The information Matthew shared on healing was very much inline with my own philosophy at the time and it was good to know that I was having parallel thoughts on how healing could be most effective.

In 2006, I published the book shown above.  By that time, I had already fine-tuned my own technique and received positive feedback from a number of friends and clients - many of whom commissioned their own wands.

Each wand takes me between 1 and 2 hours to make, depending on the time taken for preparation of materials and setting up of work space.  The wands are then programmed for general healing use, activated and tested.  (Individuals who buy or make their own wands are encouraged to program (or reprogram) them as described in the book).

The healing wands have some interesting properties.  In addition to speeding up the natural healing process, they are particularly good at:

• alleviating rheumatic pains 
• ending bone aches (my term to describe what feels like a persistent ache inside a bone)
• preventing raw blisters after receiving burns
• preventing the development and/or spread of infection - acting as an antiseptic
• quickly reducing many injury pains

The wands may appear to be rather plain-looking, but it is important in their design that they are kept simple.  Users are free to embellish their wands on the outside (if they really want to), but should leave an area untouched where they intend to hold or grip the wand.  The regular wand shaft is 12 inches in length with a diameter of approximately 1 inch.  Variations on this are available, but for most purposes, these are the preferred optimum dimensions.

You can read more at Richard Gentle and Hand of Light.



 

An evening of conversation with Yinka Shonibare MBE

Over the past couple of weeks, I've attended a number of talks.   Sunday 16 June - a talk on Tom Hudson (influential Art Teacher and Artist during the 60s and 70s) arranged by the National Arts Education Archive at the YSP; Sunday 23 June - a talk by artist Miro's grandson, Joan Punyet Miró  about Miro's life and most influential works.  Joan was an excellent speaker who brought new understanding and clarity to Miro's work; and then on Thursday 27 - a conversational talk with Yinka Shonibare MBE in the YSP's Visitor Centre restaurant.

Previously, (Friday 1 March 2013) My friend Helen and I attended the private View of Yinka's exhibition, Fabric-ation:

My friend Helen with Yinka in the background

As a 'Friend' of YSP, I get invitations to events and Private Views and Helen is often my 'plus 1'.

I had never come across Yinka before, but I liked his work, its incredible richness of multicolour and its quality of production.  My first impression, looking at the exhibition, was one of two messages: quizzical enjoyment and playfulness; and an underlying current of subversive darkness.  The work, much of it based around Middle Class Colonialism, was easy for me to identify with, coming as I do from a similar MC background - a background of pretension and lies wrapped in a veil of unquestioning social acceptability.

Here is a flavour of Yinka's work.  (One of the good things about Private Views, is the allowance of public photography in the gallery areas:

Yours truly standing next to 'Earth' - coincidentally, the Astrological sign of my father.

    
Clare Lilley (Curator of YSP) interviewed Yinka in front of a paying audience of about 100 or so people.  Peter Murray (Director of YSP) was also, and unusually, in the audience.  At previous events he has always introduced the speakers with an opening talk of his own.

Yinka's social background is not unlike my own and I think for this reason, I saw aspects of his life mirrored back at me through his conversational comments and amusing asides as he navigated the proceedings like a tightrope walker balancing between authentic rebel and respectable socialite.  Sometimes appearing quite materialistic and selfish, but underlying this, tremendous insight and wisdom, rarely witnessed in a public arena outside of a 'mind, body, spirit' convention.  I wondered how much of this glimpse into the understanding of human nature anyone else was appreciating.  The open audience Q&A session at the end qualified my thoughts: many seemed confused.  I wish I had written down what he said - not because it was new to me, but because it was one of the best descriptions of personal power versus victimhood that I had heard in a long time.  Essentially, it was a version of 'turning the other cheek'; calmness in the midst of conflict; mindfulness applied in daily life situations; reclaiming personal power in adversity.

So cheers, Yinka - here's to you!