Led by Lucille LePage July 18, 2021
So, what is a Flower Communion? And what is its significance?
The story begins almost 100 years ago, in Czechoslovakia, with Dr. Norbert Capek and his wife Maja. Both were Unitarian ministers who started the Unitarian Church of Czechoslovakia in Prague.
It was there, in 1923, that Norbert Capek created the Flower Communion ritual. Each participant would bring a flower, join it with the flowers brought by others to form a bouquet, and then at the end of the ceremony choose a different blossom from the bouquet to take with them.
Czech Unitarians called it the Flower Festival or Flower Ceremony to avoid confusion with the traditional bread-and-wine forms of Communion. Rev. Maja Capek, while touring the US in 1940, introduced the Flower Festival to the Unitarian Church in Cambridge, MA. She was unable to return to Prague and to her husband there because of the outbreak of World War 2. Then, after the war, Maja found out that her husband had been sent by the Nazis to the infamous Dachau concentration camp, where he was put to death. Shortly before his death, at Dachau, Dr. Capek had written these words:
“I have lived amidst eternity. Be grateful, my soul. My life was worth living.”
The world lost a courageous, compassionate, wise, and profoundly good person in Norbert Capek, but his vision and spirit live on. After its introduction in Cambridge, the Flower Ceremony was warmly embraced by many UU congregations. In one form or another, every spring or early summer, the ritual is a treasured annual tradition.
What is its significance? The giving and taking of the flowers represents something much greater than a mere exchange of gifts. Its meaning centers primarily around the complementary values of diversity and community. Each blossom brought by a participant is a symbol of that person as a unique individual personality, a distinctive convergance of experiences, passions, perspectives, abilities, weaknesses, ideas, dreams, talents and more. When the flowers are gathered into one common bouquet, they form together something new that is greater than the sum of its parts. As for the human participants in the exchange, the possibility is one that exists any time individuals connect in shared, meaningful purpose, namely that each one will come away having grown, learned, changed and been enriched.
As with other thoughtfully created rituals, the Flower Communion probably holds a range of other meanings for us as individuals.
And of course, it’s also about the amazing flowers themselves. Dr. Capek described them as “messengers of fellowship and love”. They are true gifts: bright and cheering, often unpredictable, fragile, sometimes surprisingly strong, courageous, subversive. They are worthy of attention and appreciation. They are much like us.
