Imagine this. You’re growing something new. It’s a place you never imagined could exist before now.
And you know that making something new brings its own challenges. How, you might wonder, will you care for all of these people? Some of them were raised Catholic. Some Jewish. Some Protestant. You wonder what could help them reach a place of reverence and celebration, despite their many differences. You are treading toward a pluralism that celebrates the diversity in this community you are building together. One that gives proper respect to the beauty of all of this difference.
This was the challenge that faced Norbert Čapek. Over a hundred years ago, he offered the first Flower Ceremony to the Unitarian church in Prague where he served as a minister.1 It’s a dearly beloved story for many of us. Each year, Unitarian Universalist congregations celebrate spring with this tradition. Across time and space, we honor this tradition to remember something important and enduring. Like the lushest gardens, like the healthiest ecosystems, we each bring our differences into this faith. And we are richer as a whole because of it.
But it’s easy to take difference for granted. To let it be a part of our landscape. A vista we pass each day without lingering in it. In many of our Unitarian Universalist communities, we proudly proclaim that we are places which welcome diversity. Where the Atheist sings next to the Pagan in choir. Where gay and straight people alike lay down roots. What’s not to be proud of there? Yet we don’t always grow from these differences. We might hear each other’s perspectives in a service, or in passing conversations over coffee. And that’s about the deepest sharing we do. I admit I have contributed to this at different times and places, too.
But we can be more purposeful in how we embrace the diversity around us. Our own and each other’s gifts. Lovingly. Respectfully. Reverently. Knowing that it is a gift to receive each others differences, to foster these gifts, and grow together. We can imagine and move toward learning from each others differences. We can cultivate communities where we cross-pollinate our perspectives, ideas, sentiments.
Flower Ceremony gives us an opportunity to reflect on this. Čapek’s story invites us into the imaginative work of so many stories. To ask ourselves, how do we bring the spirit of this old story to life, today? How do we reincarnate it, for this time, and this place? Like Čapek’s church decades ago, our congregations are also gardens bursting with all kinds of flowers.
But a garden doesn’t just happen. You gardeners and groundskeepers know that. It isn’t a “pure miracle,” as Vanessa Rush Southern puts it2. It is beautiful and messy, nourishing and frustrating, and overall it is a lot of work. I learned that early. Each year my mother put in a vegetable garden, and each year my brother and I would help her. I remember many summer mornings and evenings wading through humid air and rows of tomato plants and green beans, their rough leaves brushing up against my arms and legs. I remember admiring their delicate blossoms, and wrinkling my nose at fruit that had fallen and begun to rot. And of course, I remember all the weeding and watering that came with it.
But as hard as we worked, our mother worked harder. And like so much in life, I only appreciated the good hard work of my mother’s gardening when I grew up and tried to do it myself. There’s soil to prepare. Seeds and seedlings to plant. Weeding and watering day in and day out. And harvests that come in a slow trickle followed by an onslaught of tomatoes and zucchini. And then cleaning it all up at the end of the season, to prepare for the next. It isn’t all glamourous. It takes hard work and perseverance. Of hearts as much as of hands and knees and backs. Because a garden is a community of living things. And the love and care with which we nourish living communities belong to the realm of the heart as much as to any other.
And it was failure, in fact, that taught me this the most. The first time my spouse and I tried our hands at a community garden plot, it was mostly satisfying. The second year we cared for this plot, it got away from us. There were days we didn’t get in to weed or water or pick, and it became more than we could handle. As grew without us, weedy and rotting, I felt a pang in my chest as though I had neglected someone close to me, in my care. Not something, but someone. From this failure, I learned that a garden doesn’t just happen. It takes an abundance of care and attention for us to enjoy its gifts in their fullness.
Healthy, vibrant communities don’t just happen, either. The gifts are always there. The diversity, in whatever form, is always there. But left to their own devices, our gifts may not always flourish together. Some will sprawl out across the whole plot. Meanwhile others will wither in the corner. Our communities need our care to flourish. They need principled commitment from us to experience their full potential. The hedge, the garden, will never be straight or perfect. There are rocks and ledges and old tossed glacial memories3 to plant around. But if we are going to build a “shelter for a nest of visions,” it will take careful, caring work.
And the fruits will surprise us. The gifts we thought were weeds will surprise us. There will be the occasional strangers who fill us with doubt and skepticism. But here in the garden, they have the chance to bloom into wildflowers. To share their unlikely gifts. Held in the same care as everyone, everything, else.
This is the lesson I find waiting in the Flower Ceremony. This is a story which calls us to replant it year after year. And each year, the flowers will look largely the same, but just a little different in each season. The lessons, just a little bit different. And this is a new season.
I am not here telling you this story to “play Čapek.” And yet I can’t help looking to him and his example as I offer this ceremony. I am not here to offer you a flower garden blooming just from my own wit and wisdom. In coming back, in retelling this story, I am realizing that we often leave something out. We have so much to say about Capek, but what about the people in his congregation? Who sang in the choir? Who accompanied them? Who made their sanctuary ready for worship the week or day or hours before? I don’t doubt the Flower Ceremony was Čapek’s own idea, but I know he didn’t do it alone. No minister does.
Neither you nor I are building community alone. You and I are joining in a partnership. We are partnering as gardeners of our faith. Of our faith here at the Unitarian Congregation in Missisauga. Of our faith in Canada and beyond. A faith where we know each plant in the garden has deep-rooted worth and dignity. Where the roots of each are entangled with the roots of the many. Where together we support each other’s search for truth and meaning.
Flower Ceremony teaches us a lesson in living our faith in the world. Honouring our diversity, deeply and truly, calls us to cultivate something great. It calls us to acknowledge that each of us has a gift to nourish, a gift to share. This is our opportunity to grow something new, which we could have only imagined before now.
1. "Flower Communion." The Pluralism Project, Harvard University. Accessed August 1, 2026 https://pluralism.org/flower-communion
2. Vanessa Rush Southern, "This Piece of Eden," in This Piece of Eden: Meditations (Skinner House Books: 2001), 3.
3. Barbara Pescan, “Planting Burning Bushes II,” in Morning Watch: Meditations (Skinner House Books: 2013), 47.