About the Author - Pictures of Palestine

I was born in 1950 in a place that, five years earlier, had been the WW2 American Generals' HQ in Britain. This was perhaps a sign of something. By the time I was twenty I was involving myself with matters of conflict and peace.

Raised in 1950s Cardiff, Wales, I was influenced by the community values of the Welsh. Then in my teenage years in 1960s Liverpool I was much affected by the cultural revolution taking place there - the Beatles and all that. But I always felt like a stranger in a strange land, a watcher of humanity.

In university at the London School of Economics, social-political revolution was on the agenda. A hippy on a deep search for truth, I questioned received wisdom and sought answers in politics, philosophy and spirituality.

After London I lived a simple life in the mountains of North Wales, going through a spiritual awakening. After a near-death experience in 1974, I moved to Sweden to be involved with Tibetan Lamas and the alternative community there, repairing myself after an intense and turbulent ten years.

Over the years I embraced meditation and inner growth, ecology, social change, psychotherapy, community-building and alternative lifestyles, maintaining a focus on 'deep politics' and transforming society.

In 1981 I returned to England, moving to Glastonbury to live and work as a counsellor, teacher, writer, book editor, webmaster and community activist until 2008. I founded a succession of three holistic-educational projects and ran Glastonbury's biggest website for ten years.


One thread passing through all this was conflict-resolution. I had involvements in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Kosovo until my commitment to Israel and Palestine intensified from 2001 on. In 2003 I helped found Jerusalem Peacemakers, a group of Israeli and Palestinian spiritual peacemakers. Through this I met Ibrahim Issa, director of the Hope Flowers School in Bethlehem. I found myself gravitating increasingly toward the Palestinians.

Why so? Well, as a healer, one may work only with people who request it. Most Palestinians I met knew they had a problem and sought help with it, while most Israelis I met didn't really feel they had a problem and often wondered out loud why I was there, as if an interfering foreigner.

Besides, the Hope Flowers School, founded on the belief that every act of violence begins with an unhealed wound, worked with the causes of conflict - the psychological trauma acquired by sensitive souls which, if left to fester, can become resentment and violence. Having worked with conflict-related issues all my adult life, this meant a lot to me. There's more about Hope Flowers here.