Walking Between Worlds
by Leslie Takahashi Morris
Delivered at the 3rd APIC Annual Meeting
First Unitarian Church, Oakland, CA
Sunday, February 20, 2005

As a pre-teen, I wrote a lot of bad poetry and most contained the word, "grey," my reaction to the monochrome of a black and white world in which the in-between state is to be feared or unseen. Only a decade later when I was able to claim the multiracial heritage which had previously caused me mostly shame, did I understand why growing up half-Asian, half WASP in the northeast in the 1960s and 70s might have made me feel grey-grey is that color space between colors you see, it is the color of fog and it is often unseen. Now for me as a visitor here to speak of fog here is as ironic as it is for me to be sharing my perspective on multicultural families when this part of the world knows more about than the part in which I live. Yet even here, part of me walks in this world, for California was my father's family's state before they were relocated to the internment camp at Poston, AZ during World War II and so I am stranger and not.

I have been part of a multicultural family since childhood, the product of a union when such was not done. Yet we never spoke of it in that way-we were all just people in the good, liberal way which I affirm and yet which denied my experience of being treated differently as a result of being "hapa". An exercise common to a number of multicultural gatherings I have been at is to ask everyone present to is to ask people to describe their first encounter with a person of another race-I remember the day when I realized that mine was when I met my mother.

A walk in the fog is a walk between worlds and a walk between worlds is a walk in the fog, full of the uncertainties in this mortal life. We walk between worlds when we hold identities that the world struggles to comprehend, identities that the world is too busy-or too frightened-- to want to consider. In Unitarian Universalism today, we have many blended families, through marriage, union and transracial adoption, yet still too often we have not helped the children in those families voice the complexity of who they are. I can tell you from personal experience that we who hold those identities need them to be claimed and we need to claim then in the context of our religious community if we want their richness to inform us as well. As I have had to learn the hard way, part of how we develop an identity is to find someone that mirrors us for a while. When I was a teenager I understood that very few people in my world look like me so I decided I was ugly and I did not understand the hidden costs of internalized racism in all its modern and subtle.

In my created family now, we make sushi while listening to Celtic music. When we drink tea, it might be green and it might be English breakfast. Not one of the four of us has the same racial mix. In the Virginia town we live in, the last name my husband and I share is a constant source of consternation. My 5 year-old son had to sort out recently what it meant when a classmate in his liberal preschool told him randomly that he hates Chinese people. My daughter who is red-haired and freckled but who took my name when I transracially adopted her, once was reduced to helpless giggles when a band leader tried to intimidate her into marching more carefully, shouting, "Do I have to say it in your native language?" And I am regularly followed in a department stores, asks to produce the second piece of ID, etc. Though this is not an experience my family members have, they share it with me for that is our bond.

I believe that all of us must work as Unitarian Universalists to figure out the balance between unity and honoring difference. As UUs, we are in the religious minority and so, sometimes I think we are especially fearful of anything that might divide us. I remember speaking as a young adult about how I wished I had been UU as a child, how that would have helped me. Many of the youth of color in our movement are multiracial folks like me, or trans-racial adoptees, people with very complicated identities at a time of life when identity is complex. What makes me sad is that many of them are still asking what I asked as a teen-to be seen for what they are, someone whose experience is not the same as those of their white parents or even their parents who are people of color. We cannot rest until they all know the truth of black, gay poet and performance artist Craig Hickman who notes, "I am often seen by people as a "What's that?" to which I usually respond, "Isn't beautiful enough?"

The thing about fog is that sometimes it makes it impossible to see the ordinary, everyday things you expect to see, while, at the same time, letting you see amazing, unimaginable things you've never seen before. In my pre-teen years I wrote bad poetry. In my teen and young adult years, I switched to mediocre song lyrics. I remember only one of those songs now. Walk into the fog and hold my hand. The mist shrouds quiet places only we know. Somewhere out of touch of time's cruel hand, there are places in our hearts where only love shows. I still believe in those places, the places where only love shows. We find their truths by walking between worlds.

Bio: Leslie Takahashi Morris is co-minsiter at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. She and her partner, David, and their two children, Garner (15) and Liam (5) are active in UU activities including the Thomas Jefferson District Anti-Racism Transformation Team.