By The Reverend Claudia Scheda, Diocese of Western New York (Province II)

My experience on the Presiding Bishop’s Delegation to the UN Commission on the Status of Women’s 68th session is a little complicated to explain. Despite my best planning and intentions, sometimes the presentations I want to attend I could not access. The event may have moved to a different space, or the room was already at capacity and the session wouldn’t be streamed or recorded. I’ve frequently felt frustrated and grudgingly trolled the hallways looking for a second or third choice session to view; or just anything where I could get inside the door and feel like I was actually participating. With a sigh, I’d find a seat in some random conference room and begin to take notes.

You may have heard it said, “When people plan, God laughs” and these moments were just that in my experience at the UN. God was literally moving me away from my own desires and closer to where God would desire that I be. Relatively early on I gave in to the realization that God’s plan for me would be better than whatever I would have planned for myself. That’s how I found myself in a presentation on Domestic Care Workers. There, we learned just how large an impact in home care for children, elderly, and the disabled made a difference in the lives of people in developing countries. This impact is compounded when we realized how so much of this work is underpaid or not paid at all, and how many vulnerable women and girls are funneled into such systems; and how easily they become victims of violence and abuse. As in many places in the world, the most easily victimized are the poor, the young, the migrants, and people of color. We learn how “unskilled labor” isn’t really about skills—it’s code to justify unlivable wages.

One day en route to a session in the General Assembly building I realized I wouldn’t get through security with my giant delicious coffee. I stopped into the Church Center at the UN, just across the street, and wouldn’t you know, I was just in time for a presentation by Catholics for Choice on reproductive rights. My cup and I were welcomed inside and I met an inspiring speaker who brought her theological expertise to her work with marginalized persons and the LGBTQ community.

The members of our delegation take turns viewing and note taking the daily plenary sessions, each on a different topic. I wouldn’t have chosen the topic of the G20 Summit (the Group of 20;  the forum for international economic cooperation), but here God had put me and I came away with some valuable insights. We learn progress for international poverty relief has suffered serious setbacks, largely due to COVID. We learn the number of hungry children in the world is equal to the population of the ninth largest country in the world. We learn climate change worsens as the world’s largest economies expel the most carbon emissions into the air. We hear how warfare stretches the UN’s resources for global peacekeeping.

I’m inspired by the delegates who’ve traveled here from all over the world to compel our leaders to act in the best interests of the people and the earth which we inhabit. There’s a lot of work to do; but I’m convinced I (and you!) have important roles in that work—and that God will lead us where we are needed most.

About the author: The Reverend Claudia Scheda, Diocese of Western New York (Province II) has been a priest for 13 years. She leads two congregations in the Diocese of Western New York; St. David’s in suburban West Seneca and St. John’s-Grace in the city of Buffalo. She has worked in prison ministry, reproductive health education and access, and medical missions to Nigeria, and her congregations support ministries for the poor and hungry in their neighborhoods. She is deeply concerned that a world-wide increase in authoritarianism and national increase in fundamentalism threaten the safety of women and families at home and abroad.