Today we hold our annual Flower Communion at the Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry. It is a Unitarian Universalist tradition, one of the few original ones that we didn’t inherit from our more conventional Christian roots or simply rip off from somebody else’s tradition. It is also the 100th anniversary of the first such service held in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
These Days the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) encourages folks to call the service a Flower Ceremony in deference to the denomination’s most hard core humanists/atheists/agnostics who break out in hives at any suggestion of Christian practice.
The UUA explains it thusly:
The Flower Ceremony, sometimes referred to as Flower Communion or Flower Festival, is an annual ritual that celebrates beauty, human uniqueness, diversity, and community.
Originally created in 1923 by Unitarian minister Norbert Capek of Prague, Czechoslovakia, the Flower Ceremony was introduced to the United States by Rev. Maya Capek, Norbert’s widow. [Capek died in a Nazi concentration camp.]
In this ceremony, everyone in the congregation brings a flower. Each person places a flower on the altar or in a shared vase. The congregation and minister bless the flowers, and they’re redistributed. Each person brings home a different flower than the one they brought.
I have been participating in this tradition now for more than 30 years with this congregation through four name changes, six ministers called or interim, three intern ministers, and two buildings. It is a highlight of the church year.
This is the latest Tree of Life has ever celebrated. Most congregations have the service sometime in the Spring when flowers begin to bloom, usually in April or May.
In 2016 as I watched it unfold again, I began to scratch a note in my Order of Service.
Flower Communion
Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation
April 17, 2016
Those Unitarians have a thing,
a ritual if you will—
yeah, I know, hard to imagine.
They call it Flower Communion
or if that gives the congregation hives
for sounding damned
you know, churchy and Christian,
the Flower Service—
like FTD delivery
But don’t worry,
you know the details are fuzzy
and it will be different everywhere
you know—
no Pope or Book of Common Prayer
to set the rules just so.
They can’t even agree on a date
though most of ‘em do it in the Spring
sometime around when,
if you’re lucky,
it has been warm long enough
to pluck some blossom
from your yard—
If you have one.
Where I have parked my ass
on Sunday mornings
these last several years,
Spring cheated us
unless you planted daffodils
or are unashamed
by a handful of dandelions.
The supermarket flower wagons
got a workout this year
I’m guessing
by the bright look
of the vases and baskets
on the table by the Chalice.
In some churches they try
For proper liturgy—
prayers or meditations
if they are queasy,
songs and blessings.
Folks file orderly
to lay their blooms in baskets
or fill lovely vases
and then some tidy system
is employed to deal them out again.
But at our place we defy order
and occasional attempts
to impose it—
the poseys are supposed
to go in the baskets
before the bell is rung.
But a lot of us are late
or left the bouquets in the car,
wander in
and add their nosegays
to haphazard piles
after things a have started.
The timid and confused
have to be called up
for last moment deposits.
Then the Children and the Youth
are beckoned from their seats
toddlers and teens
grab fistfuls and plunge randomly
among the seats offering flowers
and bouncing off each other
like bumper cars
until everyone has a flower—
or three or four
and the kids can’t find
anymore takers.
Ah, the happy chaos.
—Patrick Murfin
