A Letter from Father Rich
Our main reflection follows below this special request…
Dear Reader,
As we step into a new year, I want to ask you to consider becoming a paid supporter of this ministry.
What we’re building here is more than commentary or content creation. It is a spiritual refuge for people who have felt pushed to the margins by the loudest voices in modern Christianity… a place where the Gospel is preached as compassion, truth, mercy, and unconditional love.
Your support makes this ministry possible in a very real and practical way. It helps me devote time each day to writing reflections that speak to wounded hearts. It supports the creation of prayers, pastoral messages, and resources for people who are trying to rebuild their faith after spiritual harm. It allows me to keep showing up online, not as a brand or a shouting pundit, but as a priest who believes the Gospel is good news for everyone, especially those who have been told otherwise.
Every paid subscription sows into that work.
It helps amplify a theology rooted in the tenderness of Christ rather than fear or domination. It helps create a space where lgbt, deconstructing, exhausted, grieving, hopeful, uncertain, and searching people can hear someone say: you are loved, you are worthy, you are not outside the reach of God’s grace.
In a world drowning in cruelty, grievance, and spiritual manipulation, this ministry exists to proclaim something radically different… that love is stronger than fear, that compassion is not weakness, and that the Gospel still has the power to heal.
If that mission matters to you, I would be deeply grateful if you would consider becoming a paid supporter as we enter the new year. It doesn’t cost much, less than the price of a Sandwich each month. Your generosity keeps this work alive, sustains my ability to serve this community, and helps carry a message of hope to people who truly need to hear it.
And if you can’t right now, I understand, you are still more than welcome here. Your presence matters. Your prayers matter. This community is for you, too.
But if you’re able to invest in what we are building together… thank you. You’re helping sow seeds of love in a world that desperately needs more of it.
With Much Appreciation, Yours in Christ,
Fr. Rich
There’s a lot of noise floating around this week. Resolutions. Reinventions. Predictions. Spiritual influencers selling optimism like it comes in bulk at Costco. Every year, this season turns into a referendum on whether the next twelve months will finally be “our year,” or whether we’re bracing for more turbulence.
But here’s the truth I keep returning to as a priest, as a pastor, and as a fellow traveler in this messy world…
It doesn’t actually matter what the next year brings.
Not because hardship is easy. Not because faith makes everything painless. And certainly not because God rewards us with comfort if we pray hard enough.
It doesn’t matter what the next year brings… because we already possess something that no season of life can take away.
We carry a wealth the world cannot measure, and cannot repossess.
We live in a culture that treats abundance like a scoreboard: income, achievement, security, popularity, influence, victory over your enemies, the illusion that you are winning while someone else is losing. That projection of prosperity is fragile. It is dependent on good fortune, on the behavior of others, on the tides of politics and the market and fate.
And when any of those collapse, the story tells us we have become “less.”
But the Gospel has never spoken that language.
The Holy Spirit has been forming something inside us far more enduring. A conscience that still cares about the vulnerable, even when compassion costs us. A heart that can love after disappointment. The courage to speak truth when silence would be easier. The ability to sit with grief instead of numbing it. The quiet, stubborn refusal to let cruelty become normal.
These are riches beyond measure.
You may have lost relationships this year. You may have walked through illness, financial strain, burnout, fear, or deep loneliness. You may feel like parts of your life were stripped away. And still, you are here. Still capable of tenderness. Still capable of mercy. Still capable of choosing love when resentment is right there, tapping its foot and waiting to be invited in.
That is abundance.
Not the glossy kind, not the kind anyone will put on a magazine cover… the kind that has been forged in difficulty, shaped in dark seasons, and strengthened by survival.
Even in the worst conditions, we are not spiritually impoverished. The life of God does not evaporate when the calendar turns against us. Grace is not seasonal. The Spirit does not disappear when circumstances turn inhospitable. In fact, some of the deepest forms of wisdom and compassion only grow in those very wilderness places.
Joy, in that context, stops being a mood. It becomes an act of resistance.
Not denial of suffering… but a declaration that our worth is not defined by it.
As we step into the new year, I am not praying that everything suddenly becomes easy. I am praying that we remember what we already carry with us. The humor that helped us survive. The relationships that held us together. The lessons we learned the hard way. The faith that has been cracked, tested, questioned, and yet still reaches toward God.
Those are treasures. Holy ones.
And when the world tells us to measure our lives in wins and losses, we can quietly smile and decline the premise… because we know better. We know what real prosperity looks like. It looks like compassion. It looks like solidarity. It looks like choosing love when there is every excuse not to. It looks like refusing to surrender our humanity in a season that keeps trying to cheapen it.
Whatever the new year brings, we are already rich in the things that endure.
And our calling, I believe, is to invest those riches back into the world. To use our compassion generously. To use our courage wisely. To use our faith to heal rather than to dominate. To lift one another when the weight gets heavy… because abundance grows whenever it is shared.
If you’ve been reading my work and you feel seen here, know this… you are not walking this road alone. In the coming year I’ll be writing more reflections, prayers, and spiritual resources for people who want a faith that sustains rather than exhausts. If you’d like to walk more deeply with this community, I would be grateful if you considered becoming a paid subscriber and helping me continue this ministry.
But whether you’re free or paid, near or far, barely hanging on or standing strong… I am grateful you are here.
May the God who has already given us riches beyond measure, keep strengthening our hearts for whatever lies ahead… and may we discover joy wherever it can be honestly found.
Happy New Year, my friend. I’m glad we get to step into it together.
A Prayer for the Turning of the Year
God of time and eternity…
as we stand at the threshold of a new year,
we pause for a moment of holy honesty.
We carry into this year our joys and our sorrows,
our gratitude and our regrets,
our hopes… and the quiet fears we don’t always name out loud.
You have walked with us through every season of our lives,
and even when we felt lost,
your grace did not let go of us.
So tonight, we do not ask for perfection,
or for ease,
or for certainty about the road ahead.
We ask instead for hearts that remain tender,
for courage that does not depend on outcomes,
for compassion that deepens rather than withers in hard times.
Teach us to measure our lives, not by success or fortune,
but by the love we give,
the truth we tell,
and the mercy we practice.
Where we feel weary, breathe peace into us.
Where we feel hardened, soften us again.
Where we have grown cynical, rekindle our hope.
Help us to see your presence in ordinary days,
in small acts of kindness,
in the resilience of those who refuse to give up on one another.
And when storms come, remind us
that we are not spiritually poor,
that your Spirit has already placed within us
wisdom, tenderness, and strength enough to endure.
Bless those we love, Z
those we struggle to love,
and those who have no one to pray for them tonight.
May this year make us more just,
more gentle,
more awake to the needs of the world…
and more confident that nothing—
not time, not loss, not fear—
can separate us from your love.
We place the coming year into your hands,
and we place ourselves there too.
Amen.