• Reflections on Holidays

    Flower Communion

    Communion and Community We Unitarian Universalists have few rituals of our own. The Flower Communion, created in 1923 in Czechoslovakia by Unitarian minister Norbert Čapek, is one of them. The church he founded was only a few years old, yet already he sensed discomfort among the members. Having left behind Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish faiths, many of them struggled to open their hearts to something new. They didn’t trust one another. Knowing that ritual touches hearts and spirits, Čapek thought some kind of ceremony would help, perhaps something like the Christian communion. For many of his members, though, this practice would bring up old wounds. How could he bring the…