Everyone brings a flower to the service—from a garden, the woods, the roadside, wherever. We place them in vases. After the service everyone leaves with a flower different from the one they brought.

Norbert and Maja Čapek founded the Unitarian church in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Rev. Norbert Čapek is credited with creating the ritual in 1923. Čapek was a visionary minister with a church ahead of its time, a BOLD church, a church thinking beyond its doors, beyond what it thought possible. It was a church that was willing to take risks; to make tough decisions; to bear disappointment; and to build a new way…first by building a church, and that church could build up the world.

Rev. Maja Čapek brought Flower Communion to the United States.

Norbert Čapek died in the Dachau concentration camp during World War II. Even in starvation and torture, he held a flower ceremony with his fellow prisoners, finding whatever flowers they could among the weeds of the camp. They testified to a beauty larger than themselves, and a love that would outlive them.

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 hope to see you (and your flower!) on May 10, 2026 for our annual flower communion.

Questions? Send us a message on Facebook or email us at contact@uuquincy.org