Sermons

READING ~ Peonies by Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open ---
pools of lace,
white and pink ---
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities ---
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again ---
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

READING ~ Unity by Jennifer Pratt-Walter

Ultimately it will be the small things
that unite us: how sweet this air is
that we are breathing together,
or how magnificent the arch of these maples
shaking their papery leaves.
How beautiful it is that our eyes see the
sun set like treasure into the horizon
day after day. How tenderly the bees tongue the flowers.
How simple it could be for small acts of caring to
be spread upon the bread of unity like honey made from
wild clover growing in the lawn of our hearts.

Jennifer notes, "This poem was inspired in part by Rev. Kathryn Bert in a sermon in January 2023."

CONSECRATION of the FLOWERS ~ STLT#724 by Norbert Fabian Capek

Infinite Spirit of Life, we ask thy blessing on these, thy messengers of fellowship and love.

May they remind us, amid diversities of knowledge and of gifts, to be one in desire and affection, and devotion to thy holy will.

May they also remind us of the value of comradeship, of doing and sharing alike.

May we cherish friendship as one of thy most precious gifts.

May we not let awareness of another's talents discourage us, or sully our relationship, but may we realize that, whatever we can do, great or small, the efforts of all of us are needed to do thy work in this world.

HOMILY

Three things for you this morning.

• Knowing the backstory of the Unitarian Universalist Flower Ceremony is helpful.
• The Flower Ceremony is not a tribute to the life and death of Norbert Capek.
• The Flower Ceremony is a ritual of unity, diversity and love.

Many of you are quite familiar with the origin story of the Flower Ceremony and I ask your indulgence as I retell the story for those who are not familiar and for those of us who could benefit from a reminder.

[Much here is excerpted from “The Story of Norbert Čapek's Flower Ceremony” by Teresa and David Schwartz]

His mother was a devout Catholic, his father agnostic. He became an acolyte at age 10, in 1890 at St. Martin’s Catholic Church. In the years that followed, he became disillusioned.

Slowly, his faith became more and more liberal.

He left Bohemia under government threat and … joined a Unitarian church in New Jersey in 1921—for the same reason a whole lot of you did: their children liked the religious education program.

After World War I ended, his home country now independent and safe, he and [his family] returned home to Czechoslovakia.

His Unitarian church was the Prague Liberal Religious Fellowship. In just 20 years, his church had 3,200 members.

The traditional Christian communion service of bread and wine wouldn’t meet the needs of his congregation, because his church—like ours—had people who believed different things.

Čapek turned to the beauty of the countryside; to the beauty of flowers. In 1923, he developed the flower ceremony. He asked his congregants to bring a flower to church—from their gardens, the field, or the roadside. He invited each person to place their flower in a vase. Following the service, each person could receive a flower from the vase—a different one than they had brought.

Norbert Čapek invented this ritual of community, but he would not want it to be celebrated now as a memorial remembrance of him. As the Rev. Dr. Petr Samojský, current minister of the Prague Unitarian Church, reminds us - The Flower Ceremony is not a tribute to the life and death of Norbert Čapek, it is a reminder of the beauty of the natural world that comes to us, and to everyone everywhere, in the same humble and astonishing way.  Norbert Čapek influenced thousands of people with the beauty of his words and ideals, including the Flower Ceremony that he originated, symbolizing the light and color and fragrance of many creeds, many cultures, and many races joining together in a bright, living bouquet.

This flower ceremony, lovely though it is, isn’t a diversion from ugly reality, but a gentle fierceness which proclaims that in the midst of sinister days there is always the light of beauty.

We are here not to recall something that happened, but to remember something that is happening: to re-member—to put it back together again—and in that remembering, may we put ourselves back together again, each as a part of the body of this community: out of many, one.

This ceremony is a celebration of life, specifically the life we share – the One Life, the One Light, the One Love that never lets us go – ever.

Let us share that beauty, unity and love now.

Blessed Be.   I Love You.   Amen.