Original Dialogue

Patricia Smith Melton calls a three-day forum of six women experts in peace and women's rights to answer the question, "What is peace, and how can women be empowered to create it?" The women of the Circle represent a mix of religious beliefs and cultures, and their conclusions will define the vision and founding principles and process of Peace X Peace. The Original Dialogue becomes the first step toward a global movement.

September 18, 2001, I woke in a hotel room in San Francisco to find the room filled with a presence. As we each searched to understand what had happened on September 11, this palpable presence filled me with a "knowing" that a handful of women of different cultures, each expert in aspects of social building, needed to come together in a protected space to answer the question "How can women bring peace?"

It was difficult to escape that the presence occupying my hotel room probably had a relationship to me, and I reasoned that, yes, I probably did have the capability to make such a gathering happen. I accepted the "assignment" and within the hour placed calls to two friends-Susan Collin Marks, Executive Vice President of Search for Common Ground, and Barbara Marx Hubbard, Founder and President of The Foundation for Conscious Evolution.

I further reasoned between 6 and 9 women would be best and that we would record everything said, edit the transcript, have it published as a book, and save the world. My work done, I would return to being a playwright and poet living quietly in a more or less orderly world.

Susan and Barbara said "yes." From there, the gathering grew. When Isabel Allende received my fax, she called immediately. "I want to be there, have you set a date?" "Not yet." "I'm on book tour in Virginia mid-January, would that work?" We had our dates: January 19-21, 2002.

Women, such as Isabel, busy beyond imagining and who had never heard of me, cleared their way to be there. Fatima Gailani, who had been unable to return to Afghanistan in 23 years, turned to her husband after my phone call and said, "I don't know why but I'm supposed to be at a gathering of women in Virginia. Can we fly to Kabul a week later than planned?" Dr. Azizah al-Hibri, who, as a leading female interpreter of the Qur'an, typically declines almost daily invitations to present somewhere, responded within an hour of my email, "Patricia, what took you so long?" The Circle was meant to happen, though at that time I did not know the social concept of a Circle. It simply made sense that the women would sit at a round table.

They arrived to my home at the end of a snow storm that enclosed us in a protective white silence; and they arrived weary. Between the seven of us, we collectively had chronic bronchitis, a headache bordering on a migraine, extreme weariness, and even more extreme weariness. Susan literally had arrived the night before from The Democratic Republic of the Congo from meetings with rebel leaders.

When we sat at the table, I realized for the first time the magnitude of the event, and that these astonishing women were in my family room because I had asked them. The first words at the table for what would be the founding event of Peace X Peace burst out unbidden from my mouth: "Omigod, you're here."

The Original Dialogue

The women came to the Circle because the need was great, because they recognized that women can bring peace to the world-i.e., empowered women is the idea whose time is now-and because I asked them.

A week before their arrival I began to panic: what have I done? Who am I to do this? What if they find out how stupid I am? By the time the Circle began, I had a 6" stack of notes and maps beside me. My socio-political-historical knowledge was still minimal but I knew key dates of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and which Muslim nations were tending towards democracy. Once the conversation began-all recorded by a court reporter-there was no need for notes. The women, as women do, brought depth beyond dates, geography, and current politics.

Within a few hours the energy in the room shifted. It went into a sort of overdrive. I may not have known all the Balkan states but I did know energy. As a group, the women shifted positions, most unconsciously touching the vulnerable parts of their bodies that needed healing-the chest, the head, the stomach. We looked at each other. Susan: Do you feel that? Barbara: We just went into resonance. From that point, we were one organism thinking, searching, laughing, caring, healing, finding answers together. We were different facets of the same crystal. This is how I came to understand the power of the Circle.

Patricia Smith Melton with founding members of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo during filming in Argentina.

The Documentary

Before Peace X Peace as it exists today was fully envisioned, Patricia Smith Melton begins production of a documentary. The film documents women who are healing and rebuilding communities, work that tends to be undervalued even though building the social components of healthy societies is the most effective means to lasting peace. Filming continues over a year, featuring women in Afghanistan, Argentina, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Burundi, and the United States.

After the women left from what we now call the Original Dialogue, I felt ten months pregnant-bursting, but not knowing with what. They left having defined peace and defined empowerment of women through connection, communication, and consciousness shift-first of the individual and then of larger groups-so that new actions bring positive change. But, we did not delineate a Global Network of connected Circles; we hadn't gotten that far, so I didn't know what was to be born. They left assuming there would be a book, end of story. But the publisher, whose interest had been piqued by the idea of a gathering of powerful women, found the words of those women (on how to empower women) not as interesting. Something happened when the concept of the power of women's Circles was run by the men in the marketing division.

Few things are as annoying as men who make decisions that limit the potential of women. So, if not a book, why not something bigger? What vehicle would carry the story to a large populace to show that peaceful, harmonious societies are built of components -such as financial equity, education, inclusive governments, freedom of speech, and restorative justice-and that women are doing this work every day, and not recognized or honored for it; and that we'd better start investing in women if we want sustainable peace? Having never done a home movie, I brought together a crew to make a documentary. If one picture is worth a thousand words, let the filming begin.