BROOKFIELD UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH
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  • BUUC Home
  • Events
  • About the BUUC
    • Our History
    • BUUC Committees >
      • Executive Committee
      • Worship Committee
      • Membership Committee
      • The Women's Alliance
      • Flower Committee
  • Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
  • Stewardship and Gift Policy
    • Saints We've Known
    • Charitable Giving and the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
  • Sermons 2022-23
    • A Waste of time
    • The Seventh Principle
    • Make Light of It
    • A Turn of the Screw
    • America: Part II
    • What Do You Expect?
    • Good Mourning
    • Beyone Repair?
    • No Signal
    • Absolutely, Maybe, Definitely Not
    • Do Guardian Angels Exist?
    • Right Here
  • Our Covenant
  • Minister's Welcome
  • Religious Exploration
  • Music & Choir
  • We Rise: Social Justice Resources
  • Newsletters
  • Church Calendar
  • Unitarian Universalism
  • Driving Directions
  • Photos of Us
  • Making the BUUC Accessible
  • LOVEUU
  • Community Resources
    • Mental Health Providers, Worcester MA
    • Southern Worcester County Parent Guide
  • Contact Us
    • Sermons 2021-22
  • Sermon Archives
    • Finding Joy in Uncertain Times
    • The Arithmetic of Joy
    • Of Muck and Martyrs
    • Doing Dishes
    • Idle Worship
    • The Fear of the Refugee
    • It's Not Just You
    • If We Choose
    • Lazy Busy
    • A Most Human Season
    • Running on Empty
    • Alone Together
    • Come Home
    • Winter Warmth
    • How Big Is Your Circle?
    • Thanksgiving Life
    • Kurt Vonnegut: Humanist Hero
    • In Costume
    • Again
    • Borderland
    • The Geometry of Life
    • Transformation and Growth
    • Come Build a Land
    • Our Brains, Our Minds and Our Hearts
    • Gifts
    • Repairers of the Breach
    • The Times They Are A-Changin'
    • Mission Possible
    • It Matters
    • Thanksgiving Reflection
    • Shoes That Fit
    • Winter
    • Ignorance, Answers, and Bliss
    • Questions, Questions
    • Living to the Point of Tears
    • Lost in the Shuffle: UU's Less Popular Principle
    • On the Turning Away
    • A Matter of Degree
    • A Collection of Near Death Experiences
    • I Know Her So Well, I Think. I Thought.
    • Faith-based Resilience
    • To Abet Creation
    • Who Cares?
    • A Matter of Life and Depth
    • Pass/Fail
    • Enough
    • O Holy Light
    • With New Eyes
    • Coming Alive
    • Beyond Words
    • Becoming
    • A Miracle Even Thomas Jefferson Could Embrace
    • Fear Not!
    • The Miracle of Change
    • Meeting Grace
    • R-E-S-P-E-C-T
    • Serving with Grace
    • The Pursuit of Happiness
    • When Heresy Met Sally
    • The Souls of All Living Creatures
    • What Are You Looking For?
    • Beloved
    • Let Me Count The Ways
    • Happiness
    • Chosen
    • Faith and Belief
    • Room To Grow
    • Blessed Fools
    • Don't Be a Superhero
    • Getting There from Here
    • Unfinished Business
    • Universalism's Origen
    • Yearn to Learn
    • Beauty Saves
    • Commentary on Freedom
    • Being Human: Religious Community in a Plastic Age
    • Questionable Certainties and Faithful Doubts
    • Commentaries on Murphy's Law
    • Children of a Lesser God
    • Fragile Nets of Meaning
    • Life Incarnate
    • So You Want to Be Happy
    • A Year's End Resolution
    • Where Stars Are Born
    • Thanking Eve
    • Anger, Our Teacher
    • Everlasting Punishment
    • Comprehending Moral Imperatives in a Me-centered World
    • Promises Kept
    • Dancing With The Stars: Science and Religion
    • Two Steps and Missteps: Church Membership for Human Beings
    • Light of the World
    • Dear God
    • Imago Hominis
    • CESA: Reflections on Drug Addiction
    • Falling in Love Again
    • How Does Your Garden Grow
    • Repent! No Guilt Trip Required
    • Go Out into the World
    • Thanks-living
    • Life and Not Life
    • Guilty As Charged
    • Dare To Hope
    • Don't Forget To Chew
    • Break the Silence - Stop the Violence
    • Living Among Strangers
    • What Is Religion Anyway?
    • East of Eden
    • Praying Attention
    • Wholly Human
    • The Healing Power of Forgiveness
    • All I Want for Christmas
    • Let It Be...Let It Go
    • Why Not?
    • People Like You
    • Vulnerable Trust
    • Thin Places
    • Now What?
    • Courageously Humble
    • The Last Butterfly
    • The Good, The Bad, and The Whole
    • Sacred Souvenirs
    • Made Whole
    • This Wild and Precious Life
    • Fragile Nets of Meaning
    • Where Our Future Can Begin
    • Taking Stock: Managing Our Spiritual Inventory
    • To Convert Life into Truth
    • Are We There Yet?
    • Family Matters
    • Ordinary Saints
    • All I Wanted Was Everything
    • Giving Thanks
    • To Be or Not To Be
    • Entering the Christmas Story
    • A Great Light
    • What's Real?
    • Troubling the Water
    • The Amazing Mr. Wedgewood
    • Lend Me Your Ears
    • Work That Is Real
    • Happy Melba Toast Day
    • The Great Pacific Garbage Dump
    • Plastics, Benjamin!
    • Surprise Beginnings
    • A Place at the Table
    • Norbert Capek’s Flower Communion: A Call To Honor Life
    • Voices of God
    • Hold On To What Is Good
    • The Little Stone Church That Rocks
    • What Would Jean-Luc Do?: A Tribute to Humanist Hero Gene Roddenberry
    • From Who am I? to Whose are We?
    • Turning
    • Spirituality
    • R & R
    • Spritual F-Words
    • Does Anyone Really Like Herding Cats?
    • Prepare to Be Amazed
    • The Greatest Gift
    • The Impossible Will Take A Little While
    • Taking Sides: Journey to the Center of the Universe
    • Help Wanted, Apply Within
    • Two Truths & Plastics and Water Don't Mix
    • The Third Conversation
    • Good People >
      • UU You >
        • Twitter and Covid and Wall Street, Oh, my!
        • I Do Believe in Spooks >
          • Holy Homophones >
            • What's in a Name?
            • So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye!
            • Open-Mindedness, As Assigned
            • Going on a Journey
            • Cheap Love
            • Nonproductive Delight
            • The Persistence of Memory
            • Thoughts about the Historical Jesus
            • Lindens and Tiarella and Bearberry, Oh My!
            • Season's Greetings
            • I Still Have A Dream
            • Peace Corps - A Lesson in Caring
            • Spiritual Engineering
            • Thanks for the Memories
            • Our Stories, Ourselves
            • Anxious Gardeners
            • The Best Sermon Ever!
            • UUnited
            • We Are Courageous
            • A Right Way to Be Wrong
            • Sacred Ideals
            • This Wild and Precious Life Revisited
            • 20/20
            • Home
            • What About Now?
        • Fragile
        • Time Ravel
        • Now Is Not the Time for Hope
        • The G Word (It's Probably Not what You Think)
    • No Thanks, I'll Walk
    • Be the Change
    • I Don't Know
    • What Lies Within
    • Guest Perspective
    • Growing Panes
    • De Colores
    • Roots and Wings
BROOKFIELD UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH

How Does Your Garden Grow?
 
Reflection for Flower Communion Sunday given at
The Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
May 15, 2016
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
         

In our most recent Food For Faith session our topic of discussion was aging. (Food For Faith, for those of you who may not know, is the the adult religious education program I facilitate here)  Participants were invited to name what they considered the greatest blessing of aging.  Several named what could be summarized as a sense of perspective as the greatest blessing that has come with age. The ability to pause, discern and act…or not…from that place of discernment is hallmark of maturity.  Now everyone ages, but not everyone matures.  Aging requires little more than the passage of time.  Maturity requires something more.
 
One of the things I like to do in my leisure time is visit historical houses and gardens.  I especially like to see old photographs of a house or garden when it was first constructed.  In these early photographs the landscape is often bare and the foliage and flora small or sparse. Comparing these early photos to the current state of a landscape often reveals whether or not the property has merely aged or if it has matured. 
 
Mature landscapes reflect a certain level of thoughtfulness, planning, direction and care…and this is true whether it presents as a formal space (like those designed for a grand estate…the gardens at at the Villa Borghese in Rome, for example) or more freestyle (like the Berkshire botanical gardens in Stockbridge, MA.)  They are places and sources of joy, awe and wonder, inspiration and beauty.
 
Aged landscapes tend to appear random, overgrown or underdeveloped.  They may be uncomfortable places that engender feelings of anxiety, loneliness, or isolation.  Often they are weighed down by an air of melancholy and sense of missed opportunity.  (The grounds surrounding strip malls in the US or Soviet era apartment blocks in central and eastern Europe come to mind as such landscapes.)
 
Our spiritual lives, are in some ways, a sort of landscape or garden.  Though initially quite bare, it will not stay that way for long. Feelings, thoughts and ideas will take root and be given wings through our actions.  Our garden will age until our last breath, but without some effort it will never mature. 
 
Like the gardens I enjoy visiting, our spiritual lives, in order to mature, require more than the passage of time; they require practice within time, the practice of growth.  So, how does your garden grow?
 
Part of the answer to that question can be found in the ritual and story of Flower Communion.  Norbert Capek, the Czech Unitarian minister who created what we today call Flower Communion described it as “A new experiment in symbolizing our liberty and unity (originally brotherhood)...in which participants confess that we accept each other as brothers and sisters without regard to class, race, or other distinction, acknowledging everybody as our friend who...wants to be good.”
 
In this brief statement, Capek alludes to three essential practices of growth:
          1. Ritual.  Capek created a ritual, that is he specifically set aside time to focus on the nature of our humanity and our relationship to others.  Ritual can be as elaborate as a formal ceremony with a set liturgy and music or it can be simple, like time put aside each day to sit in silence or walk in the woods.  The point is to regularly set aside time to step out of one’s routine and shift one’s attention or focus.  Here growth is practiced through intentionality.
          2. Boundaries.  Capek speaks of “our liberty and unity.” Here Capek alludes to our need to establish both a healthy sense of self and connect with others in community.  People with a good sense of self learn to respond to life from an understanding of their own feelings and values rather than in reaction to the feelings and values of others.
Community provides opportunities to refine our self-understanding, learn from and share with others.  Here growth is practiced by discerning one’s place in the world.
          3. Humility.  Capek notes participants in the flower ceremony “confess and accept each other…without regard to class, race, or other distinction, acknowledging everybody as our friend..who wants to be good.”  This is perhaps Capek’s most daring statement because it goes against the message we receive from our culture from the minute we’re born which basically tells us our gain requires another’s loss and vice versa.  Capek challenges us to renounce this message and instead confess and accept not just a radical equality, but a radical valuing and affirmation of others rooted in an acknowledgement of our interconnectedness.  Here growth is practiced through transcendence of the ego toward an embodiment of a life lived for a greater good.
 
Lest we think Capek’s words and ideas quaint musings for people with time on their hands, they, in fact, cost Capek his life only 74 years ago in a Nazi gas chamber.  Indeed, his ideas were deemed dangerous. For they were recognized as powerful.  Powerful enough to subvert and bring down the ruling party. Powerful enough to unite people in celebration, rather than fear, of human diversity…a threat without equal to any system or ideology of oppression.
 
We are here today, protected rather than persecuted by our government, in our pursuit and exercise of religious and spiritual practice. I is probably hard for most of us to imagine life without this freedom.  An unintended consequence of this freedom, is the diminishment of the value and urgency of developing a mature spiritual life, a life, when joined with others over time, capable of liberating humankind from the very conditions which cause us despair.
 
Still, though we are not subject, as Capek, to the tyranny of government, we are at the mercy of time.  There is no question we will age and with us, the garden of our spiritual lives too.  The question thus is, will we mature? Together, may it be so.
 
Amen and Blessed Be
 
 
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