Flourishing Together: Flower Communion, Norbert Čapek, and Robin Wall Kimmerer on Mutual Flourishing & Flower Communion by Eric Hepburn

The Great World House segment recounts the origin: in 1923, Norbert Čapek, founder of the modern Unitarian church in Czechoslovakia, asked each congregant to bring a single flower. Placed together in one vase, blessed, and exchanged — each person carrying home a flower someone else brought — the ceremony offered his largely ex-Catholic congregation a communion rooted not in bread and wine but in nature herself: receive the gift, cherish the gift, pass the gift on.

The Voice of Wisdom, read by Billy Adams, comes from Robin Wall Kimmerer: ceremony focuses attention until attention becomes intention.

The sermon is a meditation on enoughness — against the most toxic message most of us ever receive, that we are somehow not enough — and on Kimmerer's twin teachings that all flourishing is mutual and that hoarding won't save us. Along the way: why your story is worth telling, the children planting a garden they may never see bloom, control and hoarding as two fingers pointing at the same scarcity, Miss Rumphius scattering her seeds, and the flower in your hand that was never yours: receive it, cherish it, pass it on.

We are also celebrating our annual Flower Communion so all are encouraged to bring a flower and leave service with a different one!

After service we're having a congregational information meeting and potluck.

https://youtu.be/ZIQAc7Tb0mk

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Full Podcast Transcript

Lightly edited for readability: transcription errors corrected, filler words reduced, punctuation repaired. Bracketed items are editorial.

[00:00:00] Eric Hepburn (host intro): Welcome to the thirty-fourth episode of the second season of The Pulpiteer. I'm your host, Eric Hepburn, and I'm glad to have you join us for today's episode. Today's episode is called "Flourishing Together," and it was also our annual Flower Communion service. We'll begin with our Great World House segment, and then our Voice of Wisdom, read by Billy Adams.

The Great World House — Eric Hepburn

Now we pause to honor the Great World House, of which we are a part — lifting up the needs, the hopes, and the voices beyond these doors.

Today, we're going to talk about the history of the Flower Communion.

Norbert Čapek was the founder of the modern Unitarian church in Czechoslovakia. One Sunday in 1923, he asked each congregant to bring a single flower to church. During the service, the flowers were placed together in a large central vase, to symbolize how diverse individuals come together to form a beautiful, unified community. After the blessing, everyone took home a different flower than the one they had brought — symbolizing the acceptance of one another in the shared connections of a free church.

Here's what I want to center. His congregants were largely former Catholics, feeling disenchanted and disconnected from bread-and-wine communion — feeling disenchanted and disconnected from human institutions and their corruption. So when that happens, where do you turn for meaning? When human-made rituals and institutions feel like they're not meeting your needs — where do you turn?

I say that the Flower Communion tries to teach us this: that we turn to the source — nature herself, the most salient expression of the divine, that which is in us and all around us. We turn back to nature as our first and most powerful teacher. And under her tutelage, we contemplate a flower. We receive the gift. We cherish the gift. We pass the gift on. And in that reciprocity, nature herself shows us the way.

It is a great gift that we can make things sacred with the kind of attention we give them. And so we make of these flowers a sacred symbol: of life's yearning for itself, of our commitments to one another, and of our commitment to gratitude — at the gift of life that we are, and the gifts of life that we give one another when we come together in community.

A Voice of Wisdom — read by Billy Adams

Let us enter a still place within, opening our hearts and minds to receive this Voice of Wisdom, carried through Robin Wall Kimmerer. If you don't know her already, I hope you come to. She studies plants; she is a teacher; and she also shares her Native American heritage — its learnings and its spirituality. After the words are spoken, we will breathe together in silence, preparing ourselves for the Word unfolding among us.

Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote:

"Ceremony focuses attention so that attention becomes intention. If you stand together and profess a thing before your community, it holds you accountable. Ceremonies transcend the boundaries of the individual and resonate beyond the human realm. These acts of reverence are powerfully pragmatic. These are ceremonies that magnify life."

The Sermon: Flourishing Together — Eric Hepburn

From breath to word, from silence to speech — we enter the Unfolding in Word.

You brought a flower this morning. You chose it — for whatever reason, you chose it. And then you gave it away. It's a strange thing to do, if you think about it: to choose something beautiful, and then hand it over. But that's what we practice here. We bring what we have. We offer it. And we trust that what comes back to us will be enough. We offer our things of beauty to one another, and we trust that what comes back to us is enough. And in doing so, we reaffirm that we are enough — and that our gift, whatever it was, was enough.

In a world obsessed with more, I want to invite you to fall back in love with enoughness. Enoughness.

The most toxic message we receive in our lives — and most of us receive it over and over again — is this idea that somehow we're not enough. Whatever it is: not tall enough, not smart enough, not clever enough, not kind enough, not dedicated enough. Probably, whatever your parents were most afraid of in this life is the thing you think you're not enough of.

If there's only one thing you learn in church — if we accomplish only one thing — if I had to make a list and put something at the top of it, then you getting to walk out of here every Sunday knowing, deep in your heart, deep in your soul, that you are enough just as you are, and that you are worthy? It'd be a contender for the top of the list.

We do it all the time, right? We're willing to go to the store and spend money on a book somebody else wrote about their life — but we often don't think our own stories are worth telling. "Oh, who would want to hear that about little old me?" But every author who wrote the stories you've read felt that way. They felt the am I enough? Why would people care about my story?

It's one of the things about radical democracy and radical pluralism: it states, quite unequivocally, that each of us is that worthy. Now, whether you choose to write a book about it is a choice you get to make about how you want to spend your life energy. But it's not about whether your story is worth telling. The choice of whether you want to write a book about it, or sing a song about it, or make a painting about it — or even whether you want to sit with your nieces, nephews, grandkids, neighbors, and share your story orally with them — none of that choice is about whether your story is worthy. Because your story is worthy, just as you are worthy. But I will tell you this: it would be a tragedy if you never chose to share it, in any way, with anyone. That would be truly tragic.

While we are in here doing this, our children are outside doing something even more interesting. They went into a garden that was planted before many of them were born. They received from it. They got their hands in the dirt. And now they're out there planting seeds for another season — seeds they may never see bloom.

That's what flourishing looks like. Not a single flower in full bloom, but a garden that someone planted for you, that you tend for a while, and that you plant forward for people you will never meet.

Robin Wall Kimmerer tells us that all flourishing is mutual — and that hoarding won't save us. I'll say that last part again: hoarding won't save us.

Now — when you read The New York Times this morning, or last night, or whenever was the last time you decided you were willing to tolerate it — you saw a lot of behavior that tells you there are people out there, holding lots of power, who believe that hoarding will save them. The belief is out there. It's rampant in the culture: that hoarding — power in particular — might save you from what's coming. Might save you from the consequences of climate change, and poverty, injustice, and genocide. But you can see, in the apparent toxicity of the folks who believe that, the untruth of it. You can see that it's a lie they want to believe — that they're clinging to it as if it were a piece of driftwood after a shipwreck. But it's not going to save them.

But learning to trust one another, and build a community that takes care of one another — that might.

Learning to put your gift on an altar: that small act of giving away something meaningful. That small act of giving away the illusion of control over that resource — let's call it that for a minute. You are trusting someone else to shepherd that beauty after you. You're not demanding that the only way this goes right is if you have control over it, holding on as tight as you can. That's part of the disease, folks. The desire for control is part of the disease — [hand in hand with] this belief that hoarding is going to save you. Control and hoarding are just two different fingers pointing at the same moon. They're two different words pointing at the same scarcity mindset. And that scarcity mindset starts with the false belief that you're not enough. It's all one constellation.

These flowers on our altar are proof — proof both that flourishing is mutual, and that hoarding won't save us. In just a little while, you will come up here again, and you will accept into your stewardship a flower that was someone else's offering. You didn't grow it. You didn't choose it. Someone else brought it here — for you. And you will carry it home. That's not a metaphor. That's just what's happening this morning. And it's also how life works, when we let it.

Miss Rumphius — the story Candice shared with the children — spent her whole life trying to figure out how to make the world more beautiful. The answer, when she finally found it, was simple: scatter some seeds. Not grand plans. Not institutions. Just beauty, freely offered in every direction, trusting that some of it will take root in soil you may never see.

Norbert Čapek understood this. When the old rituals no longer moved his people, he didn't build a more elaborate ceremony. He simplified. He turned to the thing that was already blooming all around them. He trusted a flower to do what theology could not: to connect human beings to each other, and to the sacred, without requiring anyone to believe anything first.

So here is what I want to leave you with this morning. The flower you will hold in your hand is not yours — and it was never yours. It was given to you by someone in this room whose name you may not even know. Your job is simple: receive it. Cherish it. And when the time comes, pass it on.

That's the whole thing. That's the sermon. That's the ceremony. That's the life.

May we flourish together. Amen.

[00:16:47] Eric Hepburn (host outro): Until next time — thank you for joining us on The Pulpiteer. If you enjoyed the podcast, you can help others find it by liking and subscribing. If you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can make a donation at sangabrieluu.org/give. The Pulpiteer podcast is a production of the San Gabriel Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Georgetown, Texas. The podcast is hosted on Spotify, and theme music is by John Faber. Our live recording tech crew this week was Frank Sanders, Rob Berthold, Keith Hutchinson, and Andrea McDaniel. The podcast is produced and performed by Eric Hepburn. See you next time.