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“Do Not Be Afraid … You Are My Dearest Friends”*

Toxic Fear is perhaps life’s greatest hostage-taker. One psychiatrist calls it a “disease of the imagination.” Fear and disabling Worry can start off like a tiny seed and, watered by thoughts that emphasize worst-case scenarios, grow into a virus-like fiend that ends up dominating our mental state. It then holds us back from our ability to enjoy nearly every dimension of our life: our talents, our work, our love, our play, and our approach to a life in the Spirit.

This website is dedicated to three major Defense Systems that can be effective in helping us overcome the insidious nature of fear, as well as other mental health demons like depression. It will also focus on how we can better live out our lives free of those persistent foragers that roam throughout the corners of our minds… relentlessly haunting us.

Those three Defense Systems are: Spirituality, Psychology and Addiction. All three of these provide newly developed means of delving into the root causes of fear and depression and other mental health disorders, and assisting people in finding improved pathways to freedom, joy, and peace.

“Do not be afraid” – a phrase found 365 times in Sacred Scripture!

*Luke 12:32; translation found in The Bible in Contemporary Language, Eugene H. Peterson

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mm Tom Carney

The Case for Change

Oct 06, 2016

A few years ago, I visited a Greek Orthodox monastery in Arizona with my wife, sister and brother-in-law. It was a beautiful, tranquil place, an oasis in the desert....

mm Ted

The 4 Traits That Put Kids at Risk for Addiction

Oct 06, 2016

From the New York Times. Early trials show that personality testing can identify 90 percent of the highest risk children, targeting risky traits before they cause problems.  Click here to...

mm Ted

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sep 29, 2016

“O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save? Why do you make me...

mm Ted

Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sep 22, 2016

                          “ … a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from your side to ours ….” LK 16:26 “How can justice be...

mm Tom Carney

God Myopia

Sep 22, 2016

Back in the day, the Des Moines Register, where I worked for 22 years, was a marvel of a newspaper. It had expert writers in so many areas, including...

mm Ted

Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sep 19, 2016

Today’s gospel account from Luke is considered to be among the most difficult of all scriptural texts to understand. Even as great a biblical authority as St. Augustine remarked:...

mm Tom Carney

A Blight on Humanity’s Soul

Sep 15, 2016

As I age, I find it much harder to watch scenes of violence on TV or in movies. That’s especially true of period dramas that depict Nazi atrocities or...

mm Ted

Richard Rohr: A Spiritual Paradigm Shift

Sep 15, 2016

A Spiritual Paradigm Shift Wednesday, September 14, 2016 History has so long operated with a static and imperial image of God—as a Supreme Monarch who is mostly living in...