Flower Communion

Today, the first two morning glories opened on the back fence. I saw the buds yesterday while weeding and tearing off the nightshade and its berries. I do spend time communing with the flowers but until today I did not know of the Flower Communion, an actual service also known as the Flower Celebration, of the Unitarian Church.

Today my church revived a recent local tradition of communal (shared) service with the Unitarians.

Each of us brought a flower to church, placed it in waiting vases, and plucked a random flower (not chosen, really, and not our own) from the vases during communion. (We also had grapes and yogurt-covered pretzels.) I learned about Norbert Capek, founder of the Unitarian Church in Czechoslovakia, and creator of the flower service. Capek died during World War II, at Dachau.

It's a Random Coinciday in the blog, because I was just telling the cast of The Language Archive, by Julia Cho, about H.E. Jacob, who also spent time in Dachau, as well as Buchenwald, but who survived to write Six Thousand Years of Bread, which really is a history of bread. Bread is an important part of the play, and Cho has used a quotation from Jacob's book as the epigraph to her play:

"'Why should I take up such a burden?' I thought to myself. 'Who would ever finish gathering so much material?' But then I did take up the burden. And I gathered--without finishing. And now, in the midst of the gathering, I begin the tale."

I love it when stuff in my life falls together like this.

Meanwhile, six thousand crickets have been born in my back yard, with nary a praying mantis in sight to eat them. Crickets are good luck, especially when found in the house. I imagine some will find their way inside. But not all six thousand. Jiminy Crickets! That's a lot of crickets. Maybe ten thousand. Maybe more. Plenty of good luck to go around.