Palden standing in a Temple of Apollo in Kalymnos, Greece, holding forth on ancient cultures and archaeological sequences!
Palden Jenkins
I am by trade a webmaster, editor, author, speaker and counsellor.
By vocation and gift I am a historian, special advisor, humanitarian worker and large-group focaliser. For thirty years I have organised conferences, campaigns, educational camps and retreats.
I now work in aid and sustainable development, evolving ways of using Internet and group process to encourage conflict resolution and help localities find their future through consensus-building and social process. Currently this involves Jerusalem Peacemakers and a social development project on the island of Kalymnos, Greece.
I live with my partner Sheila Martin and son Tulki in Glastonbury, a rather special place. In the 1980s I was prominent in community development in the town. In the late 1990s was central in Glastonbury's development as an online town.
I have four wonderful children: Maya, Gwen, Marieka and Tulki - two grown-ups, a teenager and a boy. They're not following in my footsteps: I'm clearing a way for them to walk through.
Spiritually my main influences have been broad: Tibetan Buddhism, the Council of Nine, the wide-open spaces of the mountains and a long series of profound inner experiences. Growing up as a teenager in 1960s Liverpool had a big impact on me.
By the time I had progressed to student political activism at the LSE in 1968-70, my big life-decisions were made, and I have done my best to act on them ever since.
Not without times of crisis and reassessment. To my elders I'm still a young squirt in my fifties, yet I've had an eventful and interesting life. And there's a lot more to do.
