Norbert Capek’s Flower Communion: A Call To Honor Life
Reflection given at Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
May 18, 2014
By Rev. Craig M. Nowak
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Familiar words, I trust to some of us here today...words found in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Perhaps you’ve uttered them or some version of them yourself in moments of despair or anguish. I think of these words sometimes when I read or hear the news. Indeed, I’ve often felt that the news, with headlines that highlight things like growing income inequality, cowardly politicians in a world desperate for leadership here and abroad, growing violence against women, children and GLBTQ people in Africa and other places at the hands of religious thugs, callous disregard for worker safety like the miners in Turkey, and draconian laws in our own country that shame our criminal justice system...when I read or hear these I think the news should come with a warning: Read at Your Own Risk; Contents May Be Hazardous To Your Spiritual Health.
Let’s face it, some days hope can be hard to find.
And then we are reminded of people like Norbert Capek. As the story from our reading tells us, Capek, a Unitarian minister in Prague, created a ritual called flower communion, a ritual he described 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.”
Years later, this seemingly benign sentiment would come to brand Capek a threat to the Nazi occupiers of his homeland. In 1941 Capek’s apartment was raided by the Gestapo.
Caught listening to a BBC broadcast, Capek was arrested and his books and sermons were confiscated. Capek, a man who called his congregation to honor life, was found, according to Nazi court records, too dangerous to be allowed to live.
Capek was sent to Dachau, where he continued to write and preach and console his fellow prisoners. Survivors of the camp would later testify Capek could not have been sent to a place where he was more needed. On October 12, 1942 Capek was sent to the gas chamber.
On that day Norbert Capek might have cried out, “My God, my god, why have your forsaken me?”, but instead he left us these words:
“It is worthwhile to live and fight courageously for sacred ideals.
Oh blow ye evil winds into my body’s fire; my soul you’ll never unravel.
Even though disappointed a thousand times or fallen in the fight and everything would worthless seem,
I have lived amidst eternity.
Be grateful, my soul,
My life was worth living.
He who was pressed from all sides but remained victorious in spirit is welcomed into the choir of heroes.
He who overcame the fetters giving wing to the mind is entering into the golden age of the victorious.”
Norbert Capek possessed what one might call a mature spirituality, evident especially in his awareness of, and commitment to honor the sacred in himself and others. Armed with these he could not be defeated even in death.
Most of us will not experience life or death in as dramatic a way that Capek did, but we all will struggle to find hope and making meaning for our own lives and the wider world in which we live. One of the primary roles religion has typically played in human societies is to bring people together for a common purpose including to find hope and make meaning in this life about which we know surprisingly very little.
While some religions seek to make meaning and find hope by looking outside or towards a place or time beyond the realm of humankind, Unitarians and Universalists have tended to seek and make meaning in the here and now...and find hope in human potential rather than pronouncements from the heavens.
For anyone who follows the news, Norbert Capek’s hope-filled message of freedom, human dignity, and love for one another, a message that understands human diversity as a blessing to be celebrated rather than a curse to be eradicated, is as radical today as it was some seventy years ago. All the more important then, this ritual we celebrate today.
In a world that continually attempts to reinforce the message that some people matter and many others do not, Flower Communion calls us to remember and practice a different message...one that calls us to honor life in all its diversity...a message that says every person, no matter what shape, size, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, class, creed, age or ability carries within them the spark of the divine...a spark that when ignited within the soul burns with a passion for the possible, shines as a beacon of hope even in the most desperate of times, and pierce the mind’s defenses and illusions to illuminate the miraculous in the ordinary.
Flower Communion is more than an aesthetically pleasing ritual and celebration, it is an affirmation of our highest ideals. Norbert Capek’s wife, Maja, put it this way:
“No two flowers are alike, not two people are alike;
yet each has a contribution to make;
each would help to make this world as beautiful
as a colorful bouquet.
Organized and growing into a true community.
We are ready to serve one another,
The nation and the world.
By exchanging flowers we signify that we are willing,
in the spirit of tolerance and patience,
To march together in search of truth,
Disregarding all that usually divides humankind.”
A beautiful sentiment. A risky practice.
Let us not forget, that this historically Unitarian and Universalist conviction, this affirmation of human worth and dignity which today in the relative comfort and peace of this nation may please our mind, and warm our heart, cost Norbert Capek and many like him, past and present, their lives.
Today then is a day to both remember and recommit to the faithful practice of our highest ideals, to lend a hand to those who might join us, and forgive ourselves and others as we stumble along the way, assured, in the words of Norbert Capek, “It is worthwhile to live and fight courageously for sacred ideals.” Today is a day to risk heeding our call to honor life.
Amen and Blessed Be
Reflection given at Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
May 18, 2014
By Rev. Craig M. Nowak
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Familiar words, I trust to some of us here today...words found in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Perhaps you’ve uttered them or some version of them yourself in moments of despair or anguish. I think of these words sometimes when I read or hear the news. Indeed, I’ve often felt that the news, with headlines that highlight things like growing income inequality, cowardly politicians in a world desperate for leadership here and abroad, growing violence against women, children and GLBTQ people in Africa and other places at the hands of religious thugs, callous disregard for worker safety like the miners in Turkey, and draconian laws in our own country that shame our criminal justice system...when I read or hear these I think the news should come with a warning: Read at Your Own Risk; Contents May Be Hazardous To Your Spiritual Health.
Let’s face it, some days hope can be hard to find.
And then we are reminded of people like Norbert Capek. As the story from our reading tells us, Capek, a Unitarian minister in Prague, created a ritual called flower communion, a ritual he described 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.”
Years later, this seemingly benign sentiment would come to brand Capek a threat to the Nazi occupiers of his homeland. In 1941 Capek’s apartment was raided by the Gestapo.
Caught listening to a BBC broadcast, Capek was arrested and his books and sermons were confiscated. Capek, a man who called his congregation to honor life, was found, according to Nazi court records, too dangerous to be allowed to live.
Capek was sent to Dachau, where he continued to write and preach and console his fellow prisoners. Survivors of the camp would later testify Capek could not have been sent to a place where he was more needed. On October 12, 1942 Capek was sent to the gas chamber.
On that day Norbert Capek might have cried out, “My God, my god, why have your forsaken me?”, but instead he left us these words:
“It is worthwhile to live and fight courageously for sacred ideals.
Oh blow ye evil winds into my body’s fire; my soul you’ll never unravel.
Even though disappointed a thousand times or fallen in the fight and everything would worthless seem,
I have lived amidst eternity.
Be grateful, my soul,
My life was worth living.
He who was pressed from all sides but remained victorious in spirit is welcomed into the choir of heroes.
He who overcame the fetters giving wing to the mind is entering into the golden age of the victorious.”
Norbert Capek possessed what one might call a mature spirituality, evident especially in his awareness of, and commitment to honor the sacred in himself and others. Armed with these he could not be defeated even in death.
Most of us will not experience life or death in as dramatic a way that Capek did, but we all will struggle to find hope and making meaning for our own lives and the wider world in which we live. One of the primary roles religion has typically played in human societies is to bring people together for a common purpose including to find hope and make meaning in this life about which we know surprisingly very little.
While some religions seek to make meaning and find hope by looking outside or towards a place or time beyond the realm of humankind, Unitarians and Universalists have tended to seek and make meaning in the here and now...and find hope in human potential rather than pronouncements from the heavens.
For anyone who follows the news, Norbert Capek’s hope-filled message of freedom, human dignity, and love for one another, a message that understands human diversity as a blessing to be celebrated rather than a curse to be eradicated, is as radical today as it was some seventy years ago. All the more important then, this ritual we celebrate today.
In a world that continually attempts to reinforce the message that some people matter and many others do not, Flower Communion calls us to remember and practice a different message...one that calls us to honor life in all its diversity...a message that says every person, no matter what shape, size, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, class, creed, age or ability carries within them the spark of the divine...a spark that when ignited within the soul burns with a passion for the possible, shines as a beacon of hope even in the most desperate of times, and pierce the mind’s defenses and illusions to illuminate the miraculous in the ordinary.
Flower Communion is more than an aesthetically pleasing ritual and celebration, it is an affirmation of our highest ideals. Norbert Capek’s wife, Maja, put it this way:
“No two flowers are alike, not two people are alike;
yet each has a contribution to make;
each would help to make this world as beautiful
as a colorful bouquet.
Organized and growing into a true community.
We are ready to serve one another,
The nation and the world.
By exchanging flowers we signify that we are willing,
in the spirit of tolerance and patience,
To march together in search of truth,
Disregarding all that usually divides humankind.”
A beautiful sentiment. A risky practice.
Let us not forget, that this historically Unitarian and Universalist conviction, this affirmation of human worth and dignity which today in the relative comfort and peace of this nation may please our mind, and warm our heart, cost Norbert Capek and many like him, past and present, their lives.
Today then is a day to both remember and recommit to the faithful practice of our highest ideals, to lend a hand to those who might join us, and forgive ourselves and others as we stumble along the way, assured, in the words of Norbert Capek, “It is worthwhile to live and fight courageously for sacred ideals.” Today is a day to risk heeding our call to honor life.
Amen and Blessed Be
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