This coming Sunday May 14th will be a beautiful and full worship service. It is Mother’s Day, of course, which is cause for celebration. Mother’s Day was founded by a Unitarian Julia Ward Howe in commemoration of peace. Despite years of effort to create a national “Peace Day” in May, it would take Woodrow Wilson to name the second Sunday in May “Mother’s Day of Peace” in honor of mothers everywhere and their work towards peace. The word “Peace” was dropped from the final proclamation.
This Sunday we will also be celebrating two baby dedications and blessings, which is always a cause for joy. Our dedication service is similar to baptism except we do not cleanse children of sin but rather celebrate their potential.
We will also recognize our newest members, many of whom have joined just recently.
Finally, we will participate in our annual “Flower Communion”. Please bring some flowers to place on our chancel which will be shared by all at the end of the service. The Flower Communion is conducted each spring in recognition of the inherent worth and beauty of every person. Just as each flower is different so are each of us different, bringing our own beauty into the world.
The Flower Communion originated with a Czech Unitarian Minister, Norbert Capek. The UUA says of this remarkable man “Norbert Capek (1870-1942) (pronounced CHAH-pek) was a Unitarian minister who, with extraordinary energy, talent, and commitment, brought the Unitarian faith from the United States to thousands in Czechoslovakia. Capek believed that a truly religious person should have ‘the ability to have faith and confidence, the ability to hope, the feeling of worship, charity or selfless love, and conscientiousness.’ In 1941 he was arrested by the Gestapo for listening to foreign broadcasts and for high treason. He was put to death in a Nazi prison camp the following year.”
All beauty, indeed all life, is born of death. The falling of leaves creates the humus for the beauty of flowers, whose death will provide soil for further beauty in future springs. Norbert Capek died but the beauty of his ministry lives on each spring in hundreds of UU congregations across the world. Our mothers gave us life, but will pass on so that we may give life and meaning to those we love.
Such is the Circle of Life.
See you Sunday! – Rev. John