A Sermon offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church
Lafayette, Indiana
May 6, 2001
by Rev. Hilary Landau Krivchenia

Narrative

The Flower communion -- is a rare creature – a Unitarian Universalist ritual. Oh, we have rituals of a sort – joys and Sorrows, the hymn sandwich, the reciting of a covenant, the use of a doxology – even congregational response – but the flower communion is a ritual created for a Unitarian congregation. It was first performed in the Unitarian church in Prague, Czechoslovakia on June 4, 1923. The people of Capek’s congregation still longed for rituals of community – communion – but they were no longer comfortable with the traditional communion service. Capek wanted a ritual that spoke of the freedom of the people to gather – to bring together their free spirits, their dreams, their individual characters, and their beauty. While the word communion may be freighted with history for some of us the ritual itself is alight with new freedoms and stands worthy on its own.

Norbert Capek was born in June, 1870, in the South Bohemian village of Radomysl. He was the son of simple peasant folk. At age 18 Capek resigned from the Roman Catholic Church and was baptized a Baptist. He entered the Baptist faith with his whole heart and founded almost a dozen churches from Ukraine to Budapest. Capek’s studies as well as the direction of his heart and intellect made him increasingly liberal. This put him at risk and in 1914 he left Bohemia to serve a Baptist church in New York City. However, in 1919 he left that -- in his diary he wrote, "I cannot be a Baptist any more. The fire of new desires, new worlds, is burning inside me." It was then that Capek and his wife Maja encountered Unitarianism more closely and joined the Unitarian Church in Orange, New Jersey in January, 1921, having been led there by their children's interest in the church's religious education program.

In 1921 the Capek family returned to their newly independent country. Capek with the dedicated help of his wife and family built a vigorous nation-wide Unitarian religious movement. In just twenty years the Unitarian Church in Prague, with 3,200 members, was the largest Unitarian congregation in the world and more than 8,000 Czechs called themselves Unitarian.

Capek and his daughter Zora – 29 years old were arrested by the Gestapo on the 28th of March, 1941. They were accused of listening to foreign broadcasts and distributing the content of some BBC transmissions. The Gestapo sent Capek to Dachau, Zora to forced labor in Germany. Capek died in Linz, Austria in 1942.

Capek’s faith evolved into one beyond labels – he spoke of the "hidden cry for harmony with the Infinite" in every soul. " The church's task, he said,"must be to place truth above any tradition, spirit above any scripture, freedom above authority, and progress above all reaction."

Capek wrote:

There is a "hidden cry for harmony with the Infinite" in every soul. But he saw that infinite expressed as one of his hymn says, in a handful of pebbles, high mountain passes, depths of the ocean, and dew on the grasses."

The simplest things reveal the greatest wonders.

We are, indeed, as wondrous as flowers – precious, fragile, eloquent in our delicate beauty – each blossoms in an sacred garden. And -- you remember that Capek and his congregation turned to a flower communion because they no longer connected to the symbolism of the traditional communion – the transubstantiation of wine and wafer into body and blood. The flower communion is about transformation but it is about the transformation of the community through the gifts each person brings and the possibilities that all of those gifts create together. I was reminded of this recently when, a few weeks ago, I was able to take part in the Lafayette Volunteer Association Annual luncheon. I really didn’t know what to expect but it turned out to be a special event. It was a great way to get to know the Lafayette area even better -- I heard so many good stories and met so many dedicated people. I’ll bet that some of you have attended this luncheon in the past. There were hundreds of volunteers from all around this area and I was able to learn about all sorts of programs all around the county in which people work to create a healthier community. I was moved by the outpouring of volunteer spirit. It was energizing and it was great to watch these people honored for their labors – but -- of course they weren’t doing the work to receive honors – it was clear that they were just people who felt moved by some need they saw around them to serve and others.

I was particularly inspired by a contingent of young people from Purdue University who were being honored for their many efforts. I was reminded of so much that I have seen and read about the importance of learning to volunteer early in life – like that a person who volunteers in youth is twice as likely to volunteer as an adult.

I felt truly hopeful as I watched these young people. Norbert Capek said the "sky song of celestial children turns each winter into spring." That is the transformation of the flower communion – the hope carried into the world by each person that turns winter into spring. And it was that Spring I felt at the luncheon as I politely munched around my mixed greens. It was that same Spring that brought me hope as I witnessed the young people of our congregation two weeks ago during their youth service. And, two weeks ago, it was that Spring I felt when I found myself deep in theological exploration with Jane Fischbach and Patty Woods and the questing minds and spirits of our campus group. Celestial children – of every age. Vivian Paley says that children are always on the brink of kindness – always on the edge seeking an opening for the good. I think that this is true that celestial children of every age are ever ready for the invitation to some powerful earthly communion – to be called more deeply into life and connection with all of being. I think it is a wonder and a miracle – you remember the poem by Mumia Abu Jamal that Carter read two weeks ago – an amazing poem

not miracles
like walking on waves,
transforming water into wine,
but miracles of love arising

As Carter read the poem we witnessed his own transformation – his passion and hearing – his response to the world reflected in a poem he discovered and claimed.

I found renewal – a winter turned to spring because these encounters at the lunch and here at church, embody my own deepest dreams and wishes – about the hope born by each person and the healing communion it offers. I will take you back to an experience I had as a child of about eight years old – it was turning point in my life – the moment when my awareness of the world changed. I guess that it would have been about nineteen sixty three.

My cousins lived in Boston and my parents and I were flying there to spend the holidays with them. I was excited and I loved riding on the airplane. The night was dark and it felt mysterious as we flew from Rochester, New York toward Boston – vast expanses were darkened below us with only occasional splashes of light. But then we were due to approach New York City – the pilot announced – ooh – now that was a magical place. As the lights increased below I was entranced by the city. It glittered. This was long before the first George Bush, so I was free to enjoy the brilliant points of light sparkling up at me from the ground. I remember the intensity with which I gazed down through the window of the plane at the lights. It was cool being up way past my bedtime. I wondered about how many of those many people down below were tucked into their beds. I knew that not everyone would be in bed – after all here were all these folks on the plane and all those grown ups down below. And then – it was as though someone had placed a special lens over the window of the plane – my vision changed – and sharpened. And I could see the lives beneath those lights – the lights of a million lives – more. The lights of cozy apartments where families nestled, of fancy theaters where people mingled, the lights of alleyways where cold people huddled, the lights of shabby boarding houses where the beds were rough and filthy and lonely people sat awake, houses of joy and houses of misery, streets filled with moving people, and tall buildings shining up at me with their electric stars and radiant with life. And I could see those people – each one of them – in some long and intense moment – I could see them and feel them – in all their coziness, and coldness, their hopelessness, and anger, and joy, and misery. All at once – each one as clear as if they were – my very own self – strong and alive as my very own self – wishing for just as much from life, fearing just as much, deserving, longing – intensely to thrive – down below all those lights and all of those feelings.

It was a moment that changed me forever. I recall with crystal clarity the intensity of their longing for life, the way that I felt their preciousness, their isolation, and their vulnerability – and the way that that recognition moved me though I am sure that none of those words had entered my mind yet. But the feeling I had made an instant demand upon me. Each life below was clear and vibrant as my own – as needful and equally valuable. And, as the window became mere window again I made a promise that I wouldn’t forget the lessons of that moment and I promised to answer that longing and living. It was a defining moment – sufficient to transform a life. Many years have passed and my thoughts and feelings have developed but that moment still defines the core of my theology and purpose – it’s laced through my life. But there was so much that had prepared my heart and mind for that swift moment on the airplane: the example of my dedicated and justice seeking parents, the peace and freedom movements of that time, every adult who had ever asked me to think or to care, and every child who offered or asked for real friendship. All of those things shape each of our mortal moral souls.

Vivian Paley in The Kindness of Children – quotes Rabbi Nisiah who said that the moral universe rests on the breath of school children. And so it does – the moral universe begins there – I have seen it birth – in myself, in my children, in our children, in your stories. Norbert Capek said "as in the seed the future of the flower is planted so in the hearts of men and women is planted a longing for people to live in harmony". The future is planted in our hearts early in life – or devastated in us early in life.

The ability to respond to the world – to be transformed toward the good, to be a helper of life – it is cultivated into us young – with every draught of milk and every serving of food, every smile that greets us and every hand that reaches out to help us along or to ask for our help.

One model of how this happens, that has guided me, is that the of the Search Institute in Minneapolis – which, after working with hundreds of thousands of children and families in all kids of communities all across the country, offers a framework of forty developmental assets that build character and conscience. The Assets are divided into two broad areas – external assets and internal assets.

The external assets – or those that arise around each person –offerd by family, community, church, school – are divided into five areas: Support, Empowerment, Boundaries and Expectations, and the Constructive use of time.

The Internal Assets—or those that develop within each person – are divided into four areas too: Commitment to learning, Positive Values, Social Competencies, and Positive Identity.

These assets are simple things: they’re created by our choices in schools, neighborhoods, families, and churches. They’re remarkably simple to determine and to do -- for example under Support there six assets: family life provides love and support, family communication is positive and open, young person receives support from other adults, experiences caring neighbors, parent is involved in young person’s schooling. One asset area. How the assets are embodied range from taking time to listen to young people, to asking them to help out, to offering support and praise, to going together to special events, to helping create a balance between work and play, to setting boundaries. Simple things that take time. And develop hope for the future in the small acts of the present. Things needed not only by children and youth, but by everyone -- keys to growing and serving in ways that restore energy and teach new wisdom and don’t drain resources and dull spirits.

Tessa Thompson, a teenager involved in the Break the Cycle Program to end domestic violence, wrote: the Courage to give is the fuel to live. The fuel to live -- What I noticed among the Volunteers at the luncheon was that they were clear and energized – the work they were offering to the world was nourishing them in return. And at all times the work that is done here should nourish and at times it should stretch and challenge.

The assets together form a picture of a person who grows internally and externally to be able to respond to the world and to their own dreams – mature, morally, socially, spiritually, emotionally positive forces in their own lives.

Able to respond to the world – Capek said – "whatever we can do, great or small, the efforts of all of us are needed to do the work of this world." And each one who does it –and the many of you who do this work -- volunteering in a shelter, or on a church board, or in a prison parole program, or working with youth, or feeding the homeless, teaching religious education, working for justice and equity in human relations – each one who does answers not only a need but also creates the future community in which new generations will learn to live with compassion and vision and to do the work of the world.

It is a wonder and a miracle but it is not a dense religious mystery. I suspect that many of you know this from your own service to this congregation and to your community – it is a process more humble than wondrous – more concrete than ethereal.

Perhaps it’s never really like the calling of the prophets – with the mark of God on their lips – like Isaiah who had a vision of his Lord on a great throne with fierce angels in attendance who touched his mouth with a burning coal and declared him ready to serve his lord.

I think that we are not swept up by winged angels – not grabbed and anointed by other than the longing touch of the world. The call to service is the crying out of need that cannot be denied by the heart. And maybe sometimes the spirit of service is reminiscent of the prophets when no one else hears the urgency or when the task ahead seems so large and the work is a stretch for the heart and mind – like the prophet Jeremiah – who cried out about pretty much everything, cried to his god – "I do not know how to speak for I am only a boy."

But mostly the call to service is a quiet one – made in response to needs that are seen and felt. Whether it is folding leftover clothes at a rummage sale or showing up to show support when a crucial vote is taken or authoring legislation… Mostly it is understanding that a task that needs to be done before the next task can be done… and the next and the next. Or what Dar Williams calls "the rise and fall of a daily victory." Humble calls to service.

Jim Wallis in his book "Who Speaks for God" says that you can tell the difference between an authentic religious call to service and a spurious one because a spurious one is a call to hold power and to serve the self and the interests of the self where an authentic call is to serve those without out a powerful voice – the outcast, the stranger, the disenfranchised, the broken, the other.

I’ll admit that I thought about that a few weeks ago when I sat across from a team of clergy opposed to the non-discrimination ordinance for Tippecanoe county – these clergy asked to be exempted from honoring that ordinance in deference to their religious freedoms – and I was reminded that any sense of a call needs to be examined with care and integrity. But I digress.

I know that each person who serves well and with love does so simply – out of a desire to be of use to the world.

Vivian Paley tells a story you may know about a boy of five named Teddy, who is confined to a wheelchair. His classmates – also around four or five years old – respond to him with great care inventing roles for him in their play and their stories, perfect for someone who cannot walk but who needs to be included. She tells another story of boy whose nightmares are terrible and the shy girl who responds to them with a story of a safe, secret garden where, the little girl said, "It was always peaceful and there was never any fighting." And Paley, watching the two sit silently together and color, says – "Here it is again – the incredible ability of children to create moments of hopefulness for one another, to explain that somewhere there is a garden with birds and flowers."

Horace Cobb – a high school student who witnessed a school shooting wrote: "There’s always a life out there that needs our help." The motivating vision is one not of golden thrones and winged hosts but of simple and sometimes profound needs. Not miracles like walking on waves, or transforming water into wine, but miracles of love arising.

There’s always a life out there that needs our help. A life out there.

Often since I have been here I have heard various people speak with longing for a vision that would shape the future of this congregation – of the work of this congregation and even the shape of the future building. At a recent meeting of long range planning the question arose – how is that vision found? Perhaps the word vision is misleading – perhaps the word is more – hearing – to listen for the call made of the need of the world – the world outside as well as inside the walls – internal and external. If we can marry the many wisdoms, needs, and energies we have here among us to the needs – simple and profound – of our community perhaps that is the key – not of vision but of calling. The key to energized community – the key to new church.

Today we gather in celebration of the generous volunteer work of this congregation – it is an honor to serve with you. The sweeping dreams and mundane tasks that each one of you engages in and offers here week after week and year after year here – that is the true communion – the real gathering of precious blossoms. Together they form a community as lovely as these gathered flowers and as enduring as the courage that heartened Norbert Capek and brought these words his words down to us: May we be strengthened, knowing that one spirit, the spirit of love, unites us, and thus may we endeavor for a more perfect and more joyful life.