All are invited to our Sunday service with guest speaker Rev. Diane Rollert, the UUA Ambassador to EUU, on June 4 at 14:00 at the Unitarische Freie Religionsgemeinde K.d.ö.R (UFR) at Fischerfeldstraße 16, 60311 Frankfurt am Main. The service will be centered around ”Flower Communion”, a beloved UU tradition that has its 100th anniversary on June 4th! 

Please bring a flower for this ceremony with you to the service.  

Following the service, all are welcome to join us for an extended coffee hour with “Kaffee und Kuchen”. 

In the evening, there will be an (unrelated) choir concert happening at the church at 7 p.m., so if you want to stay around, you are guaranteed entertainment for the evening! Tickets can be purchased at the church.

Please RSVP by Sat, May 20 to esearlewhite@gmail.com and let us know if you will be joining the service and coffee hour. 

We are extending this service invitation to our hosts — the Unitarische freie Religionsgemeinde, as well as EUU members, other German Unitarians and anyone else who‘s interested. Feel free to spread the word and find more information below!

Feel free to reach out to Emily at esearlewhite@gmail.com, if you have any questions.

We are looking forward to seeing you there!

About Flower Communion

The flower communion service was created by Norbert Capek (1870-1942), who founded the Unitarian Church in Czechoslovakia. He introduced this special service as a way to find a symbolic ritual that would bind people more closely together. The format had to be one that would not alienate any who had forsaken other religious traditions. So he turned to the native beauty of the countryside for elements of a communion which would be genuine to them. 

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, they were asked to place their own flower in a vase. This signified that it was by their own free will they joined with the others. After the service, as people left the church, they went to the vase and each took a flower from the vase other than the one they had brought. The significance of the flower communion is that as no two flowers are alike, so no two people are alike, yet each has a contribution to make. Each person takes home a flower brought by someone else – thus symbolizing our shared celebration in a community. This community of sharing is essential to a free people of a free religion.

The flower communion was brought to the United States in 1940 and is celebrated by many Unitarian Universalist congregations to this day. Our June service with Rev. Rollert will take place on the 100th anniversary of the first Flower communion.

About Rev. Diane Rollert

In 2006, Reverend Diane Rollert became the 11th settled and first female minister of the Unitarian Church of Montreal since its founding in 1842. She completed her studies in parish ministry and Masters of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School in 2005, after careers in the online information industry (before there was an Internet!) and in education as a Montessori teacher and then as a beloved UU religious educator at the First Parish of Concord, Massachusetts.

Raised in a non-practicing Jewish family, she discovered Unitarian Universalism as a young adult. She says, “I truly found a home where I could interweave my Jewish roots with my growing spiritual curiosity.”

Rev. Diane is passionate about celebrating spiritual diversity within the congregation and beyond its walls. She is recognized as a bridge builder between religious and non-religious communities in Montreal. 

Rev. Diane serves as UUA ambassador to the Unitarian Universalists in Western Europe. 

You can learn more about her and read some of her sermons here.