Each attendee is asked to take a flower of his or her choice.

“It can be fake, silk, a weed, homegrown or store bought,” said J. Scott Horsak of Temple, program coordinator. “It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s a flower.”

After that, the process of the flower communion is fairly simple.

“You get there and there’s a table where there’s a big vase,” Horsak said. “Everyone puts their flower in the vase and what you end up with is a big random bouquet. It symbolizes everyone in the community coming together and forming a single entity.”

That bouquet will sit on the table for the remainder of the program, and when it’s time to leave, each person will go home with a different flower.

“And it’s like the community becomes tied together,” Horsak said. “It’s symbolic.”

Norbert F. Capek established the flower communion in 1923 when he founded the Unitarian Church of Czechoslovakia. History says it was a field of summertime flowers that inspired Capek’s idea for the flower communion.

“He felt the need for a symbolic ritual that would bind people together and alienate no one,” Horsak said. “People of all faiths were to be welcome, and the ritual was not to focus on any religious element.”

The theme and tradition of the flower communion is common among all Unitarian churches.

“But it holds no specific date like Easter or Christmas,” Horsak said. “It’s just sometime in spring, and it’s up to individual congregations to carry it out.”

The service also contains no particular prayer, though there is a traditional poem that’s read. Its opening words are: “We stand in this instant, A garden blooms, We gathered it, Each flower one of us, Single, Together, The quiet surrounds us, One and many, One.”

The flower communion also doesn’t focus on any particular scripture.

“We (Unitarians) don’t hold any holy book over another,” Horsak said. “We take teachings from everywhere, the Koran, Bible and Torah.”

The guest speaker for Sunday’s flower communion will be Bernard Bassig of Killeen, a Scott & White chaplain. He plans to discuss Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy.

“I want to address the fears we have today,” Bassig said. “Whether those fears are for personal reasons or because of the economic reason, I hope to encourage the congregation to look to the spirit of power, love and self-control for guidance and help.”

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Bell County meets at 10:45 a.m. the first and third Sundays of the month at 1726 Morgan’s Point Road.

“We don’t have a regular, full-time pastor,” Horsak said. “Our programs are by a variety of guest speakers, from all kinds of backgrounds and faiths.”

Dress isn’t an issue, and neither is sexual preference.

“You can wear flip-flops and an irreverent T-shirt and you’re just as welcome as if you wear slacks and a button-up shirt,” Horsak said. “The Unitarians are also very welcoming to homosexuals. It doesn’t matter who you are. You have a place here.”

For that reason, atheists are also welcome.

“The Unitarian Universalists celebrate every individual, including his right to believe and not to believe,” Horsak said. “It’s a warm, welcoming place to be.”

In addition to Sunday programs, the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Bell County holds routine roundtable discussions.

“Fifty percent of those talks is about social justice and current events,” Horsak said. “The other 50 percent is more spiritual in nature. But they’re all talks that get you thinking, talking and learning about all ways of life.”

Details on the fellowship are available online at uufbc.org.