It has been said that Unitarian Universalism does not have any special holy days. That just isn't true. Our Flower Communion service is a uniquely Unitarian Universalist celebration developed by Norbert and Maja Capek, Czechoslovakian Unitarian ministers. Norbert was born in 1870 Czechoslovakia and was ordained a Baptist minister. He left the ministry and became a reporter covering the beginnings of the First World War. This angered the government, and so he came to this country, where he served in the Army intelligence during the war.
What is often left out of the story is the role of his wife Maja. Maja Veronica Oktavec was born in Bohemia in 1888 and attended Catholic schools there. Her intellectual curiosity quickly led her to question the theology she was taught. In 1908 her family moved to New York where she studied at Columbia. Later she became head librarian in the Czech section of the Public Library. She met Norbert Capek, a Baptist studying at City College, and at her suggestion they became Unitarians. Norbert was twice widowed and had nine children. Maja and Norbert were married and had one child.
They returned to Prague in 1921, with the backing of the American Unitarian Association, and founded a Unitarian Church there, with mission stations in Kladno, Pilsen and Brno. Maja was ordained in 1926.
The Prague church met in a rented hall and the services were lectures. The members were mostly rebels from the Catholic church who wanted nothing that reminded them of the mass, the form of worship they were fleeing. They wanted no ritual or music. They wanted no gown worn by the minister, no elaborate ritual, no singing of hymns, no ornate building, and no formal prayers. They didn't even want the Fellowship to be called a church.
The Capeks, however, felt the lectures alone were too sterile. Gradually they introduced some of the more traditional elements into the service of worship. Norbert Capek wrote some hymns which expressed Unitarian ideas.
But they felt the need for some ceremony which would be non-threatening and would bind the people closer together, and make them feel like a religious community. And so they created the Flower Communion we share this morning. It was always on the last Sunday before the summer vacation. We usually celebrate it the second Sunday of June. The first Flower Communion Ceremony was celebrated June 4, 1923.
Maja came to the United States in 1940 to lecture and raise money for the Prague church. It was in the spring of that year that she introduced the Flower Communion to America at First Parish Church in Cambridge. During this tour World War Two broke out and Maja was unable to return to Prague. She stayed on, performing ministerial duties at Unity House and First Unitarian Church in New Bedford.
Norbert continued to preach liberal religion in Czechoslovakia. Then the Nazi Gestapo (secret police) broke into his apartment, took his books and sermons and arrested him and his youngest daughter. A charge of treason was leveled against him and he was imprisoned, eventually being sent to Dachau, where he was executed one year after his arrest - in 1942. Maja did not learn of his death until 1945. It must have been a terrible time.
Before his death, Dr. Capek's courage in the face of torture and starvation was a source of inspiration to his fellow prisoners. While in the camp he led the prisoners in worship, using the Flower Communion Ceremony as the ritual. Each prisoner brought what flowers they could find in the camp to a service. At the end they took with them a different flower than the one they brought, to symbolize their sense of community. Fortified by his words, they held together despite the grim rigors of the camp. After the war, survivors testified that the Unitarian minister could not have been sent to a place where he was more needed.
Norbert's daughter, Bohdana, and her husband, Karel Haspl, both ordained Unitarian ministers, had carried on the ministry in Prague, and so Maja decided to remain in the United States. She traveled and lectured for the International Association for Religious Freedom - a world-wide organization of liberal religious groups from all the major world religions. In 1944 she joined the staff of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency and worked for a number of years as a Displaced Persons Specialist in Egypt and Palestine. She died in 1956.
Maja Capek was a woman of extraordinary energy and warmth. She was somewhat short and stout but had a commanding presence. She was extremely articulate and spoke with authority in English with a strong British accent. She was affectionately referred to by her family as "The General."
And so today we honor both Norbert and Maja Capek and their courage. We have each brought with us a flower or some other object of natural beauty to share with one another. Together we have created our worship center - the beauty you see before you. This symbolizes our acceptance of one another - it symbolizes the fact that we not only give, but receive, this beauty. We are a community of shared hopes and joys, of burdens and sorrows. These flowers symbolize that community. These flowers remind us that in spite all the sorrow of our world, beauty and friendship also exist.
Just a brief footnote to this story. This summer Joyce and I and a number of people from this congregation will visit our sister congregation and join our fellow Unitarians from Prague at a retreat. The good news is that the Prague Unitarians have re-acquired their building, which had been kept from them by an insurgent group. The bad news is that they still struggle to survive in the aftermath of a long and tedious legal battle. We will bring back word of their situation when we return in the fall. We must keep the chalice burning.
return to main page