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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

Recent Posts

  • Can You “Practice” Joy?

    How should you judge whether a Mass, or church service, was good or bad? For me, among the criteria is whether or not you leave happier than you went into …

  • Ruined for Life?

    In 1989, the military in El Salvador murdered six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter in their home in San Salvador. The priests were internationally recognized scholars who wrote and …

  • Insights into What Comes Next

    I’ve written before about my 4-year-old grandson, Leo. Many grandfathers would say this about their grandchildren, of course, but I think he’s exceptionally smart. He asks a lot of smart …

  • Boring? Maybe, but Worth It

    The Internet and social media are full of articles about people who have given up on religion and churchgoing. I get it. People ask themselves why they need it. Compared …

  • The Essence of Christianity?

    A few months ago, I attended an event at a theater in downtown Denver. My companions and I were waiting in line in the cold, when I spotted a presumed …

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Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Oct 21, 2015

“Master, I want to see.” Mk. 10:51 In a recent column, the journalist John Allen tells about a dinner experience he had while covering the Synod of Bishops now...

mm Tom Carney

God as Magician

Oct 15, 2015

I traveled to Europe as a young seminary student and had my first encounters with non-believers. They awakened a sense of the fragility of my faith with which I...

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Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Oct 15, 2015

“You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them … But it is not so among you” Mk 10: 42 You...

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Should a Skeptic Pray?

Oct 08, 2015

As a missionary years ago among the Aymara people of Bolivia, I was struck by the popularity of a statue in the church I served. It was by far...

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Back to Business as Usual?

Oct 01, 2015

The Pope is back in Rome, and everything’s back to normal. Whew! Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives can go back to attacking each other, ignoring the poor, the unborn,...

mm Ted

Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sep 29, 2015

“How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” Mk. 10:23   Here’s a trivia question for all you baseball fans: What was...

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Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sep 29, 2015

“ … what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” Mk 10:9 Listen to these heart-rending words of a 43-year-old mother: “’Are you trying to tell me...

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Sr. Rachel Bergschneider: Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sep 25, 2015

Here’s another reflection for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. It is written by Sr. Rachel Bergschneider, OSB, pastoral associate at St. Thomas the Apostle parish in Peoria Heights,...