Choose Your Own Adventure

The Rev Lizzi Green and I attend a Side Event in the ECOSOC chamber

Being at the UN CSW is like an extended insertion into a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ narrative. With over 700 events to consider, each day is a careful discernment of how to spend our time and energy. We consider the topics, speakers, hosts, and themes of Side Events (events on UN grounds, usually panels by nation states) and Parallel Events (in surrounding buildings, led by non-governmental organisations and civil society). We contemplate what we hope to learn, or with whom we intend to network, ally, and advocate, along with concerns of access and space.

In all our time here at the UN, we connect with one another to share our experiences, our learnings, and the lessons we will take home to implement real change for increased justice in our homes, churches, and communities.

CSW changes us, and we get to participate in the selection of the trajectory of that change.

As we heard during the opening session on Monday, equality is an active choice… and that the systems and structures rolling back and eroding women’s rights and gender equality is also an active choice. We know why we need equal rights; we are being challenged to consider why we are not taking action.

 It’s a choice. 

I am reflecting on choices; the choices we make as individuals, families, churches, communities… the things we choose to do and say, and the things about which we choose to stay silent or inactive.

It’s a choice. 

So what is our choice, as the church?

We have the option to make gender equality a fully integrated reality in our shared institutions. We can choose to shape change in our church in ways that uphold the dignity of every human being. We can choose to make gender justice not simply a box to be checked off, but a value to be actively implemented.

We can do this through our prayers, our re-understanding of scripture from a feminist perspective, in how we involve the members in our liturgy, and how we reach beyond our walls. 

The world sees us, and sees how we treat all people. Will we be known to ignore or diminish half of our society, or will we choose to fully engage and cherish the fullness of humanity that God has blessed the world with.

It’s a choice. 

Let us choose for justice.