We’ve had a place on Nantucket for years but never been inside the Unitarian church on Orange Street. This spring, Lauren and I decided to try it. What I want to tell you about happened on our second visit.
The minister started telling a story passed down from a local family. She said the word “Czechoslovakia,” and I sat up. This island and my second home, Czechia, were suddenly connected.
It was 1939. Nazi forces had just marched into Prague. Czech intellectuals and religious leaders were being hunted. Some escaped.
Word spread that Czech Unitarians were in danger. Congregations in the U.S. arranged passage for those fleeing. When this little Nantucket church learned Czech families were arriving with nowhere to go, they opened their homes. Quietly and without fanfare.
One family they took in was Maja Capek, her teenage son, and her elderly father. Maja’s husband was Reverend Norbert Capek, who had founded the Unitarian Church in Prague. In 1923, he created the Flower Communion. Each person brings a flower and places it in a shared vase. At the end of the service, each person takes home a different one. We come from different places, but we belong to the same community. We are changed by being part of it.
That ritual spread everywhere. Congregations still hold a Flower Communion each spring. Capek believed in human diversity and spiritual freedom. The Nazis saw those beliefs as a threat. He was arrested in 1941 and murdered in 1942.
Another family the church took in was Zdenek Kopal, a young astronomer, with his wife and infant daughter. He went on to help NASA map the moon for Apollo. That journey started in a stranger’s home on Nantucket.
The Capeks and the Kopals arrived with almost nothing. No luggage. No certainty. Just hope someone would help. And someone did.
Sitting in that pew, I felt the weight of it.
The values Capek held onto did not die with him. They lived on through his family. They lived on in Nantucket. They live on every time people come together to honor difference.
The connection between the U.S. and Czechia runs deeper than diplomacy. It shows up in what it means to show up for one another.