at the Monte Vista Unitarian Universalist Congregation
Retold by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, May 9, 2010
The Flower Celebration is a beloved ritual in many, if not most, Unitarian Universalist congregations. It was first created by the Reverend Norbert Capek in 1923, in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and was introduced to Unitarian congregations on the East Coast of the United States in 1940 by Maja Capek. This year, in honor of Mother’s Day, our focus is on Maja, seeing the world through her eyes and her experience. I will tell Maja’s story as a first-person narrative, drawing on a sermon written by my colleague Ann Schranz of the Monte Vista UU Congregation in California. Ann researched this narrative using a biography of Norbert Capek written by Richard Henry, and the Reverend Daniel R. Harper of the UU congregation in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where Maja Capek served as minister nearly 70 years ago, as well as materials available on the UUA website. (See references below.)
Let us invoke the spirit of Maja Capek and invite her speak to us . . .
I am Marie Veruna Oktavec Capek. My friends and family call me Maja. I was born in 1888 and grew up in the city of Chomutov, then in Western Bohemia, now in the Czech Republic. As a young woman, I rejected Catholicism, and became quite liberal in my religious outlook, but I did not join a church.
In 1907, when I was 19 years old, my parents, my sister, and I emigrated to the United States. It was not easy learning English. I envied the small immigrant children that I knew – they seemed to learn the new language so easily! I worked hard to learn English because I wanted to go to college.
Some people called me ambitious, and it was no compliment. I felt pressure to get married and start a family, but I longed for something else. I never felt so alive as when I was learning something new. I wanted a life of the mind, as well as a home life. I wanted to be able to support myself, and not be dependent on a husband.
I was admitted to the School of Library Science at Columbia University, and graduated. You cannot imagine how good that felt! I began working in a branch of the New York Public Library. There I met another Czech émigré, Norbert Capek, a Baptist minister. He spent a lot of time in the library studying for his Ph.D. and because he could read newspapers from Bohemia there. He was 47, and I was 29 when we met. The 18-year age difference between us bothered some people, especially because he had been married twice, and he already had 8 children. But Norbert was so bright, so fun to be with, so handsome, and so kind. I fell in love with him and he with me.
I will tell you of his life before he met me. Norbert had become a Baptist after being raised a Catholic by his devout mother. (His father was a religious agnostic.) At age 10 he became an acolyte at St. Martin's Catholic Church, but he was soon disillusioned by the priest's cynical attitudes and behavior toward his parishioners. At age 18, Norbert resigned from the Roman Catholic Church and was baptized a Baptist. Soon he became a Bible distributor and Baptist evangelist in the regions of Saxony and Moravia. In his energy and dedication, he founded almost a dozen churches from Ukraine to Budapest, and edited various religious journals.
In those years, he married and had several children. Sadly, his first wife died. Within a year, overwhelmed with caring alone for his family, he remarried, and they had 3 new children within 4 years.
As the editor of various journals, Norbert was quite outspoken in his anti-clerical views, which caused much criticism and threats of reprisals from the government. Under pressure, he left Bohemia in 1914, and accepted a call to serve a Baptist church in New York City. That same year, Baptist church leaders accused him of heresy because of his outspoken liberal religious views. At his heresy trial, he was asked about this passage from the church’s newsletter:
We are neither a club nor a church in the common meaning of that word. We are a spiritual family, brothers and sisters, and we have One Father, One God and only one leader, our oldest and most perfect brother, Jesus Christ.
That sounded suspiciously as though he thought that Jesus was not God. In another pamphlet from the church, Norbert wrote that the Kingdom of God will only come about with the elimination of injustice and when the gulf between rich and poor is not so huge. That sounded heretical to Baptist church leaders because they said that the Kingdom of God will only come about when everyone in the world accepts Jesus Christ as God and as their personal savior. Despite this testimony, Norbert was found not guilty of heresy, but still it was a very stressful time for him. Adding to his stress and sadness, his second wife had a stroke and died. He had 8 children, can you imagine?
A year after the trial, Norbert moved to a larger congregation in Newark, New Jersey. It was during this time that he met me, and we were married in 1917. It was soon clear to both of us that Norbert was too liberal to be a Baptist minister. In 1919, after 25 years, he resigned from the Baptist ministry, with my full support. Our plan was to go back to Czechoslovakia to start some kind of liberal church. Many people were leaving the Catholic Church, and we thought they would be interested in liberal religion. But we could not leave right away, for we had trouble selling our house in Newark, so we rented an apartment in East Orange, New Jersey, and bided our time until our return to Czechoslovakia.
Norbert and I did not want to go to any church, but we did want the children to learn about religions. So every Sunday we sent them off to a different church and had them report to us when they got home. One day in 1920, the children attended the Unitarian Church in East Orange. When they came home and told us what they learned at the Unitarian Church, we were astounded. We said, “My goodness! This is different – this is how we think about religion. We must investigate this church for ourselves.”
Well, after our first visit, it did not take long for us to see that this was our church home. In January 1921, we signed the membership book of the Unitarian Church in East Orange and became Unitarians. That year, we were able to return to our country, and we started a Unitarian church in Prague. The American Unitarian Association provided us with lots of encouragement and a little money. We first rented space wherever we could, and once again Norbert was a popular preacher. Within a year, we were ready to officially open the church; 1,200 people showed up to celebrate! Over 20 years, the congregation grew to over 3,000 members!
The congregation ordained me into the ministry in 1926. My ordination was important to the congregation, and it was important to me. I had never seen myself as just the minister’s wife, and my ordination made it official that what I was doing was indeed ministry. It is not bragging to say that we were always co-ministers, but now it was real.
My Norbert was a wonderful man and a wonderful minister. He was so talented, so charismatic. He composed over 90 hymns, for example; he was always writing poems and essays. Those years were tiring and yet exhilarating. We did such good ministry together. Among other things, the Prague church sponsored a counseling program conducted jointly by Norbert and a medical doctor. The program provided classes for expectant parents, marriage counseling, and conflict resolution courses, and counseling for those suffering the loss of a loved one. This was very innovative for that time, although it is common now.
It is hard for me to talk about what happened next in our lives. Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia in 1938. In early 1939, Norbert and I decided that I should go to the United States to speak to Unitarian churches across the country about the situation, and raise funds for relief work in Czechoslovakia. American Unitarians told him he could have a job in Boston if he wanted it, to escape the Nazis. He thought about it, and we talked about it, but in the end, Norbert decided that he had to stay. We knew there were no guarantees that we would see each other again. It was such an emotional time, so difficult for all of us.
After two decades of sharing daily life and building a church together, we were true partners and loved each other so much. But our call to ministry required of us love in a different form, a larger form. It required a sacrifice of us, and so I went on my lecture tour in the United States. It soon became clear that I would not be able to return to Czechoslovakia. The loneliness was nearly unbearable, and I missed Norbert so much, and I worried about his safety.
During my 1940 speaking tour in the United States, I introduced the “Flower Celebration” ritual to the Unitarian churches in Cambridge, Massachusetts and New Bedford, Massachusetts. The Flower Celebration – we did not call it a “communion” as many of your churches do today, because we felt that was a Catholic term – was something that Norbert and I first introduced at the Prague Unitarian church in 1923. This is what we did: People were asked to bring a flower of their choice, either from their own gardens or from the field or roadside. When they arrived at church a large beautiful porcelain vase stood waiting in the vestibule, attended by two young members of the Church Sunday School. Each person was asked to place their own flower in the vase. This signified that it was by their own free will they joined with the others. The vase that contained all the flowers was a symbol of the united church fellowship. The young people helped with the arrangement of the bouquet. Later they carried the vase proudly up to the front of the auditorium and placed it on a table. This service became so popular that eventually we hold to hold it in the Prague Opera House in order to hold all the people who came!
After the children brought the vase forward, Norbert would say this prayer, which he had written. I will change the words he used to fit the way people pray in your day:
In the name of Providence, which implants in the seed the future
of the tree and in the hearts of men [and women] the longing for living united in [human] love; in the name of the highest, in whom we move and who makes the mother [and father], the brother and sister what they are; in the name of sages and great religious leaders, who sacrificed their lives to hasten the coming of [peace and justice] – let us renew our resolution – sincerely to be real brothers and sisters regardless of any kind of bar which estranges [one from another]. In
this holy resolution may we be strengthened, knowing that we are God's family, that one spirit, the spirit of love, unites us, and [may we] endeavor for a more perfect and more joyful life. Amen.
After this prayer, Norbert would go over and consecrate the flowers while the congregation stood. The two children then took the vase back out into the vestibule. After the service, as people left, they went to the vase and each took a flower from the vase other than the one that they had brought. The significance of the Flower Celebration was that just as no two flowers are alike, so no two people are alike, yet each has a contribution to make. Together the different flowers form a beautiful bouquet. Our common bouquet would not be the same without the unique addition of each individual flower, and thus it is with our church community – it would not be the same without each and every one of us. By exchanging flowers, we show our willingness to walk together in our search for truth, disregarding all that might divide us. Each person takes home a flower brought by someone else – thus symbolizing our shared celebration in community. It was a beautiful ritual, and it satisfied the need of many of our members, former Roman Catholics, who needed and wanted a religious ceremony to express how thought felt about being Unitarians.
After my lecture tour, I settled in the north end of New Bedford, Massachusetts, where there was a large population of Czechs, Bohemians, and other people who had come from central Europe. I became a part of North Unitarian Church. A visiting minister had begun trying to reestablish worship services there, because for the previous 14 years, the church had a Sunday school but no worship. A student minister led services for a year, and then I was invited to serve as minister. I served North Unitarian Church from late 1940 through most of 1943. I helped to revitalize the church and its ministry. My work at North Unitarian Church helped me focus on something positive during the agonizing time of Norbert’s imprisonment.
Back in Czechoslovakia, in March 1941, Norbert and his adult daughter, Zora, were arrested by the Gestapo and taken to prison. Zora was accused of listening to foreign radio broadcasts and distributing the content of BBC transmissions. Norbert was accused of listening to foreign radio broadcasts and of "high treason." Several of his sermons were cited as "evidence" of his treason. Listening to foreign broadcasts was a capital offense under the Nazis.
Two separate trials were held, the first at the prison soon after their arrest; the second, an appeal of the original decision, was held in Dresden in April 1942. I imagine that Norbert might have caught a glimpse of the night sky and used it as inspiration for these words he wrote during that time:
View the starry realm of heaven, shining distant empires sing.
Sky-song of celestial children turns each winter into spring,
turns each winter into spring.
Great you are, beyond conception, God of gods and God of stars.
My soul soars with your perception, I escape from prison bars,
I escape from prison bars.
You, the One within all forming in my heart and mind and breath, you,
my guide through hate’s fierce storming,
courage in both life and death.
Life is yours, in you I grow tall, seed will come to fruit I know.
Trust that after winter’s snowfall walls will melt and Truth will flow,
walls will melt and Truth will flow.
The appeals court found Norbert innocent of the treason charge, recommending that, given his age (he was nearly 70 at this time), the year between his arrest and the appeals trial be counted toward his jail time. The Gestapo completely ignored the court's recommendation, and sent Norbert to Dachau and Zora to forced labor in Germany. It was not until after the war ended that I learned he had been killed, and it is not clear to this day how he died. My dear husband was 72 years old. My grief was beyond words . . . So many people lost their lives at the hands of the Nazis. It is an evil beyond telling.
In 1944, I started working at the headquarters of the American Unitarian Association in Boston, working for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency, including work for a number of years as a Displaced Persons Specialist in Egypt and Palestine. I felt that I honored Norbert’s memory and my own call to ministry by that work, which I did until 1950.
After I retired, I continued to preach at Unitarian churches and to give lectures to gatherings in Europe and North America in support of the Prague church, so dear to my heart. I leave you with these words, which Norbert wrote while in Dresden prison:
When a holy enthusiasm seizes the heart
Your face lights up. You feel like a star singing.
Your very soul, hearing your song, is radiant.
It was, and it will be again.
With the sun on our brows,
Enthusiasm will bloom once more.
With paradise in our hearts
Clouds will disappear,
And the sun’s rays bring the earth back to life.
The sun of your hope will shine again
Along the dangerous narrows of your life,
Bringing warmth and light
And the air of freedom, peace and happiness.
It was, and it will be again.
See http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/norbertcapek.html, an article by Richard Henry on the Dictionary of
Unitarian and Universalist Biography website; http://www.essexuu.org/capek.html, an article on the website of the
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Essex County in Orange, New Jersey;
http://archive.uua.org/aboutuu/flowercommunion.html, an article by Reginald Zottoli on the UUA website,
http://danielharper.org/archive/?p=268, a sermon by the Rev. Dan Harper entitled “Maja Capek and an Immgrants’
Church; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_Communion, the Wikipedia article on the Flower Communion;
http://clf.uua.org/quest/2002-06.html#becelaere, a sermon by the Rev. Joan Van Becelaere entitled “Fragile and
Rooted” in the UUA Church of the Larger Fellowship’s “Quest” newsletter; and
http://www.eliotchapel.org/sermonDocs/Flower-Communion-2006.php, a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Daniel O’Connell
entitled “Flower Communtion.”
