Join the Hope Tank Community

“We don’t need another think tank; we need a hope tank”

–Katie Monsen

We took Katie at her word.  For nearly three years we have met every Friday morning to meditate, share a pot-luck breakfast, and then have an open but focused conversation to advance the quiet revolution, “great turning,” paradigm shift or whatever we want to call the great struggle we are all involved in.  This is our attempt to bring civil discourse and appropriate rationality back into our society — and get real traction on solving the problems we deal with.  These conversations were so rich that we took to recording them, as you see on this page.

We’re happy to say that the ongoing discussions, which now take place at Metta’s new location in Petaluma, have sparked interest in our developing community of respondents around the world (including Pakistan) and we take this opportunity to share some guidelines with you if you would like to start one of your own.  Needless to say, you are free to experiment with whatever works for you; if you do follow these general guidelines, though, we will be happy to provide some sort of “glue”:

• Format: as mentioned, we set aside time for silent meditation (in our case, 8:30-9:00 am), then have a potluck breakfast, and at some point find ourselves talking about a new article, new idea, or approach one or the other of us has come up with; sometimes we plan responses to current events (like the egregious attempt by Glenn Beck to portray himself as a follower of MLK).
• Recording and Facilitation: both optional.
• The Content: anything about nonviolence itself, that is, principled or spiritually-based nonviolence, and nonviolent approaches to the paradigm shift.  At various times our discussions ran in themes, like modern science, new organizational formats (we read Starfish and the Spiderand other works at this point), what is svadeshi (see our glossary), and especially what would be the equivalent of Gandhi’s famous charkha (ditto) in the constructive program wing of today’s nonviolence.
• Networking: we will establish a system for sharing among us, including a Facebook group. Please send us regular updates.
• Resources: of course, Search for a Nonviolent Future is useful, along with the glossary and other resources on this site.  We do not envision Hope Tank as a reading group, but it could take that form at times.  

Metta Hope Tank Community

Visit this group