Unity of Walnut Creek

2023-03-19 March 19, 2023 – Blessing Brings Joy Guest Speaker: Johanna Van Gelder Guest Johanna Van Gelder offers a heartfelt exploration of blessing as a transformative spiritual practice, using the parable of the prodigal son to illustrate how we all journey away from and back toward our divine nature. Drawing from her own life experiences - from rejecting God as a teenager to exhausting herself with affirmations alone - she shares how surrendering and reconnecting with the divine presence brought her home to herself. Guest Johanna Van Gelder demonstrates how blessing ourselves, others, and even our surroundings dissolves separation, releases self-judgment, and restores the joy that flows naturally when we recognize the divine in all things.

2023-03-12 March 12, 2023 – Soulful Service Rev. Kristin Powell In this inspiring fourth installment of the Core Values Series, Rev. Kristin explores soulful service as the action piece that brings love, connection, and wisdom to life. Rev. Kristin shares powerful stories of divine guidance unfolding through everyday moments - including her own journey into ministry - illustrating how following intuitive nudges leads to sacred purpose. She invites listeners to ask three guiding questions - What are my gifts? Who are my people? Where is home? - as a pathway to discovering what makes them come alive. Rev. Kristin reminds us that the world needs each person's unique contribution, and that when we say yes to spirit's call, we are fully supported.

2023-03-05 March 5, 2023 – Accessible Wisdom Rev. Kristin Powell In this third installment of the Core Values Series, Rev. Kristin explores the difference between knowledge and wisdom - reminding us that while knowledge comes from the outside in, wisdom is an innate inner knowing we all carry within us. Drawing from Proverbs, Unity teachings, Sufi stories, and personal experience, Rev. Kristin offers a simple yet powerful mantra for accessing divine guidance - listen, trust, and follow. Rev. Kristin encourages us to approach life with childlike openness and humility, trusting the wisdom of our solar plexus - our "second brain" - and allowing divine discernment to guide our choices toward the highest good.

2023-03-04 March 5, 2023 – Accessible Wisdom

2023-02-26 February 26, 2023 – Divine Connection Rev. Kristin Powell In this heartfelt message on divine connection, Rev. Kristin explores how we bridge the distance between knowing and feeling God's love - drawing inspiration from Dr. Maya Angelou's powerful journey from reading "God loves me" to truly embodying that truth. Rev. Kristin invites us to ground our spiritual connection through physical practices like walking the labyrinth, movement, and everyday rituals that help us carry the divine presence in our bodies, minds, and spirits. Highlighting the unity of all beings, Rev. Kristin reminds us that when our cup is filled through connection with the divine within, we naturally connect with others in ways that smooth our rough edges and awaken remembrance of our shared oneness.

2023-02-19 February 19, 2023 – Neighborly Love Rev. Kristin Powell In this opening message of the Core Values Series, Rev. Kristin explores neighborly love as the foundational core value of Unity of Walnut Creek, drawing from the golden rule shared across the world's religions to illuminate our essential oneness. Rev. Kristin invites us to examine where we draw the boundaries of our hearts - who we might be leaving out of our circle of love - and challenges us to expand those edges with compassion, generosity, and celebration of diversity. Through stories of Mother Teresa and Harriet Jacobs, Rev. Kristin reminds us that love is not merely an intellectual concept but a lived practice of seeing every living being as our neighbor and treating them with the kindness that flows naturally from our shared divine source.

2023-02-12 February 12, 2023 – Creating a Harmonious Life Guest Speaker: Dimitry Doronkin Dmitri Doronkin shares his personal journey with tithing, describing it as an ancient spiritual ritual that harmonizes your life through energy exchange. Drawing from eight years of experience at Unity of Walnut Creek, Dmitri Doronkin offers candid stories - including experiments with giving more, less, and nothing at all - to illustrate how dedicating 10% of income to your place of spiritual nourishment creates a two-lane road between you and the divine. He emphasizes that tithing is not about supporting a community but about becoming the primary beneficiary of a powerful spiritual practice that brings harmony and flow into your life.

2023-02-05 February 5, 2023 – The Cosmological Power of Synergy Dr. Brian Swimme Brian Swimme explores the cosmological power of synergy - the beneficial effects that emerge only through relationship - revealing how this force has driven the universe's creative unfolding from elementary particles to complex life. Using vivid examples from neutrons that last a billion years only in partnership, to single cells that eventually gave rise to whales, Brian Swimme illustrates how deeper relationships bring forth capacities we cannot predict or imagine. He connects this cosmic principle to our present moment, encouraging optimism and hope as the human expressions of synergy entering conscious self-awareness, reminding us that civilizations have always been built by those who trust in what is yet to emerge.

2023-01-29 January 29, 2023 – Centered & Affirmed, Principles #4 and #5 Rev. Kristin Powell Rev. Kristin closes out the Unity Big Five series with a heartfelt exploration of prayer and meditation, reminding us there is no wrong way to pray - whether conversational, surrendered, or structured through Unity's affirmative prayer method of acknowledging, claiming, and expecting. She explains how regular meditation practice helps us become the compassionate witness of our thoughts, giving us greater access to wisdom, peace, and confidence in daily life. Rev. Kristin encourages us to simply do it - pray and meditate - so we can live spiritually centered, joy-filled lives as instruments of divine peace.

2023-01-22 January 22, 2022 – Co-Creating With Source Energy, Principles #3 and #5 Rev. Kristin Powell Rev. Kristin explores the transformative power of co-creation in this inspiring message from the Five Basics Series, illuminating how our thoughts and feelings serve as fuel for manifesting the lives we truly desire. Drawing from stories ranging from Yoda's wisdom to the biblical account of the hemorrhaging woman, Rev. Kristin reminds us that desire is only the starting point - it is faith-filled believing and openness to receiving that complete the co-creative process. She encourages us to move beyond states of longing and wanting into the felt experience of our already-realized dreams, inviting us to perceive the divine presence, believe in our power to co-create, and joyfully receive the good that flows to us.

2023-01-15 January 15, 2023 – I AM Divine, Principles #2 and #5 Rev. Kristin Powell Rev. Kristin explores Unity's second principle - "I am divine" - inviting listeners to discover the inherent goodness and divinity within themselves and all people. Drawing from a Hindu legend about hidden divinity, the Gnostic Gospels, and the teachings of Jesus, Rev. Kristin illuminates how we can awaken to our true nature by beholding the divine in all life, loving unconditionally, and serving others with open hearts. Weaving in the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., she reminds us that greatness is found not in fame but in simple, everyday acts of connection, kindness, and service that flow naturally from knowing our divine nature.

2023-01-08 January 8, 2023 – Divine Omnipresence, Principles #1 and #5 Rev. Kristin Powell Rev. Kristin opens the new year by inviting the community to revisit Unity's first principle - God Is - encouraging everyone to freshly examine their understanding of the divine as an all-pervading, self-existent presence from which all things spring forth. She explores how this infinite source is available to us in every moment, offering whatever we need - love, guidance, companionship, peace - when we actively engage with it through spiritual practice. Rev. Kristin offers practical ways to live this principle, including tithing and sacred service, as concrete actions that align us with divine energy and open the floodgates of blessing in our lives.

2023-01-01 January 1, 2023 – A Brilliant 2023 and White Stone Ceremony Rev. Kristin Powell

2022-12-31 January 1, 2023 – A Brilliant 2023 & White Stone Ceremony

2022-12-25 December 25, 2022 – Merry Christmas: Interview with Father Christmas Rev. Kristin Powell and Santa Claus Rev. Kristin brings the spirit of Christmas to life in this delightful and heartwarming interview with Santa Claus himself, who visits Unity of Walnut Creek to share the story of his origins as a boy named Nicholas in the forests of Finland. Through this creative and touching conversation, Rev. Kristin draws out profound spiritual truths - that one gift given with love is more than enough, that kindness extended even to those who are unkind transforms hearts, and that magic becomes real when we truly believe. Santa reminds us that his bag of presents is really a bag of hope, magic, and love, and that the spirit of Christmas lives in our willingness to be generous givers and ambassadors of kindness every single day.

2022-12-24 December 25, 2022 – Interview with Father Christmas

2022-12-18 December 18, 2022 – Joy Like a Fountain Rev. Bella Blackstock Rev. Bella Blackstock delivers a radiant message on joy as our natural state of being during the fourth week of Advent, drawing on the angels' announcement of "great joy" at Jesus' birth. She distinguishes between relative happiness - found in external things like a perfect sweater or relationship - and the eternal, divine joy that resides within each of us, inviting the congregation to reclaim their inner Christ through presence, authenticity, and childlike playfulness. Rev. Bella Blackstock encourages spiritual "toys" over "tools," leads the community in laugh therapy, and reminds us that no person or circumstance can ever steal the joy that is our birthright.

2022-12-11 December 11, 2022 – Love Like an Ocean Rev. Kristin Powell Rev. Kristin invites us to experience divine love as vast, deep, and rhythmic as the ocean itself - a love that washes over us, surrenders us, and flows through us without limit. Drawing on the story of Mary's radical surrender throughout Jesus' life, Rev. Kristin reminds us that love requires openness, vulnerability, and a willingness to let our hearts break open so the divine can be birthed through us. She encourages us to ask where we might be withholding love and to practice giving it freely, trusting that grief is simply the price we pay for a love worth choosing a million times over.

2022-12-04 December 4, 2022 – Peace Like a River Rev. Kristin Powell Rev. Kristin invites us into the sacred metaphor of the river during this second week of Advent, exploring how peace comes when we dare to let go of limiting beliefs, old patterns, and the need to control outcomes. Drawing from the story of a small creature who releases its grip on the river bottom in Richard Bach's "Illusions," as well as the courageous example of Mary saying yes to her divine appointment, Rev. Kristin reminds us that we are not meant to cling to stagnant ways of being but to flow with the current of Spirit. She encourages us to trust that when we release our grip, we will be lifted, guided, and carried by the surprise of our own divine unfolding.

2022-12-03 December 4, 2022 – Peace Like A River

Unity of Walnut Creek - Messages