Flower Communion

Flower Communion was founded by Norbert Capek who was born June 3rd, 1870. Capek was born in Bohemia into the Roman Catholic Church but he had trouble with some of the dogma he was taught, so he left to become a Baptist. In that role, as a young man, he went door to door to convert people from Catholicism. After so many conversations with people, he realized that there were many paths to truth, and that no one church really had a corner on it. He was looking for a faith that was more expansive, more inclusive, a faith that could celebrate a diversity of thought.

In the early part of the 20th century, Capek and his family, having moved to the United States, found a Unitarian Church which fit their faith perfectly. Capek loved its optimism, which reflected his own disposition. He loved this new faith so much, in 1921, Capek went back to his homeland where he started a Unitarian Church. Free, liberal religion was unusual and refreshing. The Unitarian Church in Prague, with 3,200 members, was the largest Unitarian congregation in the world. Some 8,000 Czechs considered themselves Unitarian as a result of Capek’s evangelical spirit and message of universal hope. (If you’re interested, Community Church of New York holds the record for being the 3rd largest ever, and the 1st largest in the Community Church movement clocking in at 1800 people.)

As much as his people loved this freedom of thought and the use of reason, they were craving something more spiritual. On June 4, 1923, 100 years ago last Sunday, Rev. Norbert Capek created Flower Communion. The idea was that each person would bring a flower to church and would place it in a vase. The minister would bless the flowers and then every person would pick a flower different from the one they brought. In this way, every person knows they are necessary to form a bouquet. That our individual selves, when held together in community, create something gorgeous. That the whole is not the same when the individuals aren’t there. And then, after bringing ourselves, we take with us a gift from the community that leaves the church with us, just as we carry our faith wherever we go.

Rev. Capek’s church celebrated Flower Communion every year in June as we do here. When the Nazi’s took Czechoslovakia, they started attending his church, suspecting that he was preaching values that opposed fascism. In 1940, they arrested him and sent him to Dachau.

When he was there, Rev. Capek took to ministering to other prisoners. In fact, he brought Flower Communion into the Nazi Concentration Camp. He sent people to the fields to look for flowers. Sometimes they could find a dandelion, but more often they brought sticks and rocks and blades of grass. It was, he told them, enough. The survivors of Dachau remember him and his spirit of inclusion. When the world was contracting, Rev. Capek’s spirit was expansive.

In 1942, Rev. Capek was killed for his faith. His witness to truth, his faith in the power of the human spirit and his willingness to become a martyr in service of our shared ideals lives on in all of us.

Flower Communion also lives on, celebrated every year all over the world. Unitarians in the Philippines, in Scotland, in India, Transylvania, Latvia, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and in Pakistan

are all celebrating the 100th anniversary of Flower Communion, this celebration of the wide range of human expression.

In the spirit of unity in diversity, of optimism and hope for our collective liberation, and in the spirit of bearing witness to a world of both pain and terrific beauty, we bring flowers to our final service in June to share with each other. And then, we leave with flowers, bringing our faith and the spirit of love everywhere we go.