Return the group from the activities and if necessary change the setup of chairs to a circle. Invite the group to set up.

Transcription

1 Session #H6 Flower Communion Goal: To understand the origins of the Flower Communion. To learn more about our Partner Churches. Overview: If your congregation offers a Flower Communion, you might ask if group members can usher and/or distribute the flowers at the service. Otherwise offer it for the group. Supplies: o Extra flowers to give to those who forgot to bring one. o Vases for the flowers o Quiet music for guided meditation. o Supplies for the activity that you choose. In Advance: If there is a person or group of people involved in the Partner Church movement in your congregation, invite them to talk about Partner Church with the group. Send out a note inviting group members to bring a flower with them to Sunday morning. Invite the group to gather early if you are going to help with the Flower Communion Service in the adult service. Entering Activity: If you are going to help with a Flower Communion Service, gather early so that you can usher or help with the tradition of your congregation. Otherwise, place the flowers that group members bring in vases. Invite the Middle Schoolers to go outside and take pictures with a smart phone of any blooming flowers and trees they can find nearby. Place the photos near the vase. Chalice Lighting and Opening: Return the group from the activities and if necessary change the setup of chairs to a circle. Invite the group to set up. Set up the chalice. Invite group members who know this to lead the chalice lighting. Consider a call and response if there are new folks to the group, so they can learn it too. We light this chalice as Unitarian Universalists. When saying "Unitarian," cup your right hand in a U shape. When saying "Universalists," cup

2 This is the church of the open mind. This is the church of the helping hands. This is the church of the loving heart. Together we care for our earth and work for friendship and peace in our world. your left hand in a U shape. Touch your hands to your head, then open them outward. Hold your hands out in front of you, palms up. Cross your hands flat over your heart. Adapted, with permission, from the UUA Tapestry of Faith program Building Bridges Invite them to share their name. Use the Lodestone as a talking rock and pass it around during the sharing. Invite participants to share a joy or concern. Remind participants that they can always Pass. Focusing Activity: Read the first verse of #545 in Singing the Living Tradition "In Time of Silver Rain" by Langston Hughes Ask group members to pick a flower out of the vase other than the one that they brought. Hold it in their hand. By giving and receiving flowers, we remind ourselves of our responsibility to care for other people. Invite those with smart phones to share the flower photos on Social Media, such as the church Facebook page, with each other through Instagram, etc. Focusing Questions: What do you know about the UU Flower Communion tradition? Have you attended a Flower Communion Service before? Have you attended another type of Communion Service before? What was it like? Teachable Moment: Ask for some readers from the group. Each read a paragraph of the story in Handout #6. Extinguish the Chalice: We gather the openness, helping and loving into our hearts. [Scoop hands across chalice and bring to heart at each of the words openness, helping and loving ] Back

3 into the world of do and say, carry it forward into the dawning day. Activity: Arts and Crafts Make a Paper Flower Materials needed for one flower: 4-8 sheets of tissue paper (any color) 6" x 12" each 1 green pipe cleaner scissors ruler markers, optional 1. Stack 4 pieces of tissue paper together. 2. Fold the tissue paper together starting at the bottom allowing 1" folds. Fan fold back and forth making a 1" by 6" piece. 3. Cut the folded tissue at both ends, rounding off the corners. 4. Fold a pipe cleaner in half. This is used for the flower stem. Squeeze the tissue paper in the middle and twist the piper cleaner tightly to secure. 5. Fan out the piece on both sides of the pipe cleaner. Remember there are 4 layers. Begin pulling up the petals. Start with the top tissue being careful not to tear it. After you have done the top layer, go on to the second layer, then the third and the fourth. Straighten out the flower to your liking. 6. You may use a marker to highlight and add more color to your flower. 7. The pipe cleaner may be shaped into a leaf on one side. YouTube How To Video Silence Play quiet music during this part. (A guided meditation on the beauty and uniqueness of your own flower.) Pick up your flower. It may be the one you brought here this morning; or it may be one you received. It may be a photo of a flower nearby. The bounty of nature knows no limits; we are each recipients of beauty. Hold it carefully; look at its color and shape. Feel its texture -- is it smooth, soft, rough; does it tickle when you rub it on your cheek or behind your ear? Smell it, listen to it -- does it have a message for you? Study your flower so that if there were 100 of the same variety, you could pick out your own from among the others. Spend some time really looking at your flower Now close your eyes and recreate your flower in your mind s eye. When you are ready, return to the room, and to the group. What did you notice?

4 Sunshine/Movement: 1. Visit UU Heritage sites in Eastern Europe, a magical skit. Take a virtual pilgrimage to some Unitarian heritage sites in Hungary, Czech Republic and Transylvania. Act out the trip using Handout #H6. What would you do if you could visit a partner church in Eastern Europe? 2. Play Honey if you love me won t you please, please smile? Form two lines about 3 feet apart consisting of two teams. One team member from each team take their places at either end of the lines. The line members chant AHoney, if you love me, won t you please, please smile? As they walk between the lines, the lines heckle, giggle, make faces, and try any other way, short of actual touching or tickling, of making the opposite team member crack a smile. If they are successful that person joins the opposite team and becomes a heckler for the next pair of people. If the walker makes it through the line without smiling, they are free to rejoin their team. Whoever has the most team members after all the players have walked between the lines, wins. Or else, when everyone dissolves in laughter! Alternate version for a smaller group: Pair up and try to make the other partner smile. Each partner has 1 minute. If the partner remains stony faced, another person may attempt to make them smile. Whoever remains stony faced the longest, wins. Service 1. Find out if the group can help with the congregational Flower Communion Service. 2. Create posters to remind folks to bring flowers, if your session is taking place before the congregational Flower Communion. 3. Offer to help clean up petals and leaves from dropped flowers after the service. 4. Teach a younger group how to make Paper Tissue Flowers. 5. Offer Tissue flowers to congregants and children or to the minister or worship leader to give to someone who is unable to make the service. Closing Worship: Read the second verse of #545 in Singing the Living Tradition "In Time of Silver Rain" by Langston Hughes

5 Closing Chant: Boom Chicka Boom I said boom! I said boom chicka-boom! I said booma-chicka-rocka-chicka-rocka-chicka-boom! Uh huh! Oh yeah! One more time... Extra Verses: Underwater: sing with fingers dribbling against your lips Loud: as loud as you can! Slowly: as slow and drawn out as possible Opera: sing in an opera voice Flower Style: I said a bloom. I said a bloom chica bloom. I said a bloom chica blossom chica blossom chica bloom... Race Car Style: I said a vroom. I said a vroom shifta vroom. I said a vroom shifta grind-a shifta grind-a shifta vroom... Astronaut Style: I said a moon. I said a shoot-me-to-the-moon. I said a shoot me blast me shoot me blast me shoot-me-to-the-moon... Camp Counselors Boom Chica Boom Learning Station version with Elvis and Baby

6 Handout #H6 Flower Communion Here is the story of the Flower Communion. It all began with a very brave and very loving man. His name was Dr. Norbert Capek. He was born more than 130 years ago, in June, in Bohemia, which is now the Czech Republic. Norbert was the only son of a tailor, a man who sewed shirts and dresses and suits for people. He joined a youth group as a teenager and did a great many things to help other people. He went to the university and studied to be a minister, and when he was only 25 he was ordained a Baptist minister. Soon he was chosen to be the head of all the Baptist churches in the area. Now, Dr. Capek was a very liberal thinker. He felt he could not continue in the ministry and be true to his own thoughts. So he left the ministry and became a journalist. He wrote articles about the impending First World War that got him in trouble with the government, and he fled to the United States. He learned about Unitarianism and even received a doctor of divinity degree from Meadville Theological School. Then he returned to Czechoslovakia and, with the help of American and British Unitarians, started Unitarian groups and schools. People came to his churches because they wanted to think for themselves religiously. They had left the Catholic, Orthodox and Jewish religions and didn't want anything that reminded them of their religious past. Capek's first church wasn't even called a church, it was called The Liberal Religious Fellowship. However, Dr. Capek knew that people needed some ritual with mystery and power to bind them together. It was early spring in Prague, Czech Republic, and as Dr. Capek walked along the cobblestone streets, he saw the bare trees just beginning to push out tiny green shoots. He sighed. It had been a long winter and he needed a new symbol for his own faith, a symbol he could share with his congregation. Other churches had a ceremony of communion, a sharing of wine and bread, which gave comfort to their members. What could he offer his people? As he walked along, he said to himself, "We need a living communion." He began thinking that soon the gardens, yards and roads would be full of green trees and flowering bushes. The park would be alive with color -- purple, pink, yellow, red and white. "That's it!" he shouted. "That's it! A living communion of flowers!" The other people in the park where he was walking laughed at him for talking to himself. But he was too busy with his plans to notice. "Each person will be asked to bring a flower," he said. "They will place them in baskets in the church, then each person will take one and give it to someone else. Each flower will be given and taken and given again. The church becomes alive with gifts of each individual, who then receives and gives again. Lovely! A living communion, a flower communion." And that is how the tradition of the flower communion began. The Unitarians of Czechoslovakia were delighted with their very own ritual of communion.

7 But Norbert Capek's happiness did not last very long. With the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, Dr. Capek was arrested for treason and put in a concentration camp. There he was a minister to hundreds of people and an inspiration because of his courage in the face of torture and starvation. In 1942, he was killed in Dachau. We remember this creative and loving and courageous man each year with our Flower Communion. And by giving and receiving flowers, we remind ourselves of our responsibility to care for other people. -From an Easter sermon by Rev. Carol S. Haag, The Unitarian Church in Summit, N.J. April 4, 1999, used with permission.

8 Handout #H7 A magic pilgrimage to UU Eastern Europe Skit. We fly to Prague, Czech Republic, as if by magic! And walk to the statue of Jan Hus, born in 1369, the Unitarian who was burned at the stake for his anti-catholic church beliefs. We find the striking statue in the middle of the main square in Prague. The inscription reads Love each other and wish the truth to everyone. When Czechoslovakia was under Communist rule, sitting at the feet of the Jan Hus memorial became a way of quietly expressing one's opinion and opposition against the Communist rule. So we sit there too to stand for freedom of belief. We fly to Bucharest, as if by magic! Bucharest Capitol of Romania. We meet Norbert Capek s granddaughter, Dr. Livia Dvorakov-Haspi, a lay minister following in her father and grandfather s footsteps (he is famous, among other accomplishments for devising the Unitarian flower communion). Each person receives a pin with the Czech Unitarian symbol- a U on a sunflower. We walk by the Romanian national rugby team bus! We drive to Budapest as if by magic. Budapest, capitol of Hungary - The next day we drive into Budapest to stay at a hotel on the Danube River. We visit a Budapest Unitarian church, a lovely place with Transylvanian hand-painted motifs on the pews and pulpit. God is one is written over many church doors in Transylvania. In Hungarian that is written Egy az Isten and pronounced Edge oz eesh-ten. We rent bikes and ride over the bridge to Margaret Island. We head to Torda, over the Carpathian Mountains, as if by magic! Torda - where the first act of religious tolerance in Europe was signed in There was a 10 day debate from dawn to dusk called the Diet (Dee-et) of Torda. The first and only Unitarian King declared that each man must worship in peace according to their own conscience. We recite part of the edict no one shall be reviled for his religion by anyone and it is not permitted that anyone should threaten anyone else by imprisonment or by removal from his post for his teaching. For faith is the gift of God and this comes from hearing, which hearing is by the word of God. We visit Kolszvar, as if by magic! Kolozsvár the city in central Romania where the Transylvanian Unitarian Church has its headquarters, high school and the church which houses the rock that

9 Francis David spoke from when he "converted the whole town s population to Unitarianism." We attend a religious education class taught in public school once a week by the ministers of each religion. If there are only a few children of a certain religion in a village, a minister will come once or twice a month to worship and give lessons. We head to Gyulafehervar, as if by magic! Gyulafehervar where a 1000 year-old church houses the tomb of the Unitarian King Sigismund and his mother, Isabella. The name Transylvania means beyond the forest region of Hungary. It is a land of rolling hills and valleys, dotted with small villages. We eat a picnic lunch in one of the forests. Many Transylvanian Unitarian boys are very good at catching fish. Some can even catch them with their hands. They invite us to try. We drive to Sighisoara, as if by magic! Sighisoara 13th century medieval walled city which is the purported birthplace of Vlad Tepes aka Dracula. In each region of Transylvania there are dances that children do. We joined some. The girls usually dance in a circle while singing. The boys dances have lots of jumping and slapping their boots. A few dances are done by boys and girls together. Supper was a delicious Hungarian goulash cooked over an open fire. A three-piece band and folk singers entertained, with the chef doubling as a zither player. We head to Fuzesgyarmat, as if by magic! The Unitarians in Fuzesgyarmat announce their greeting by ringing their church bells. We drink polinka, the beverage from grapes that is downed at any time of day, and eat bread and cheese. We attend a wedding. Weddings and Christenings are big celebrations, with cooking and preparation for the feast starting at least a month ahead; the party goes on all night till mid-morning. We can t believe so many days have passed. The Unitarians of Transylvania are warm and friendly. Finally, we have to head back. We jump on a plane, as if by magic and return home! Some descriptions adapted from the Partnership Church Council curriculum Things to Know Transylvania.

10 Background for Leaders: One symbol of the potential priesthood and prophethood of all believers is a very simple ceremony held each spring in many of our congregations, the flower communion. It comes to us from what was, before World War II, the largest Unitarian congregation in the world, in Prague, [Czechoslovakia.] In the 1920's the minister there, Norbert Capek, designed this communion to include everyone in the congregation, regardless of belief or background - Protestant, Catholic, Jew, or agnostic. Each worshiper is invited to bring a flower or bit of greenery to church, or provided with one on arrival. Each contribution, like the participants, is quite unique. In the course of the service the flowers are collected in baskets, blessed with a prayer written by Capek, and then redistributed. Everyone leaves with a bit of beauty brought by someone else. Capek publicly opposed the Nazis, and died at Dachau. His congregation today is a struggling remnant. The flower communion remains. It reminds us of the perishable gifts each of us can bring to encourage, include, and inspire one another. It perpetuates his memory, and that of other martyrs, and helps renew our awareness of Aall those known and unknown, remembered and forgotten who even now live as true servants of humankind. - From "A Chosen Faith" by John Buehrens, Forrest Church Copyright 1989, 1998 by Beacon Press Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston