By Bonnie Withers

There is hardly a UU congregation anywhere in which the Flower Communion is not celebrated, often in June. The timing is fitting because June 3, 1870, is the birthday of Norbert Capek (cha-pek), the creator of this simple and treasured ritual.  The extraordinary life of this bright, energetic, and brave man is well worth celebrating. He was born into a Roman Catholic family in Bohemia. By age 18, he had become a Baptist and then a minister of that faith.  His liberal views led him to a discussion in 1910 with Tomas Masaryk (later a president of Czechoslovakia) where he first heard of Unitarianism. He asked for assistance from the American Unitarian Association, but could not get attract their interest. 

Capek, in danger because of his nationalist and anti-Catholic views, came to the U.S. with his second wife (first had died) and nine children in 1914. This wife died soon after arrival (poor guy!).  In 1917, he married Maja, a fellow émigré, who was a professional librarian. Capek was twice hauled before Baptist tribunals for heresy. He was acquitted, and served two Slovak Baptist congregations. Finally disillusioned, he resigned as a Baptist. He and Maja sent the kids around to local churches to report on which was the most attractive to them. The Unitarians won, and the family joined a Unitarian Congregation in 1921. Capek quickly proceeded to get support from the president of the AUA, Samuel May Eliot, to begin a Liberal Religious church back in Prague where he and Maja then returned.  

After only one year, the church was immensely successful, at one point reaching a membership of over 3,000. Capek must have been a most dynamic speaker because there was nothing else to the service. No decoration, no music, no flowers, no candles. Finally, complaints reached Capek (or he figured it out himself, depending on the source), that the congregation wanted a spiritual dimension to their experience. The result was the Flower Communion, which was introduced in 1926. (Czechs did not call it a “communion” but I have not been able to find the word they used.)

Fast forward to 1939, where Czechoslovakia was about to be taken over by the Germans. Maja, who was herself now an ordained minister, came back to the U.S. to raise funds for endangered internees and refugees.  Norbert was urged to return to the U.S. as well, but he refused assistance offered by the AUA and continued to preach under Gestapo surveillance. In 1940, he and his daughter were arrested for listening to radio broadcasts. Capek had served his entire one-year prison sentence when word came from the Gestapo that he was to be sent to Dachau with the ominous notation, “return unwanted”. He was tortured there and died in October 1942.

Meanwhile, it was Maja who introduced the Flower “Communion” in the U. S. in New Bedford, Mass., in 1940. She did not learn of her husband’s death until after the war. Maja went on to a long career working for refugees around the world and died in 1966.