Welcome!

“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

  • Who, or What, is God?

    Do you ever stop to think about who, or what God is, and where we get our image of God? The title of this blog, “Who or What is God?” …

  • Conforming to “the Real World”

    My friend, Ted Wolgamot, a retired psychologist, also writes a weekly essay on religious matters and last week included this anecdote. A priest received a phone call from an irate …

  • Is Forgiveness Overrated?

    A recent article in the New York Times reports on a new book by trauma therapist Amanda Gregory entitled, “You Don’t Need to Forgive: Trauma Recovery on Your Own Terms.” …

  • The Best We Can Do?

    It’s strange what you remember, and don’t remember, in old age. I remember, for instance, the oddity of the snail darter – a tiny, seemingly insignificant fish that stopped for …

  • All About Heaven?

    Fox News interviewed former president Donald Trump in early June and among the questions was one on the meaning of religion. I’ll provide his answer, but first, a caveat. This …

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Past Posts

mm Ted

Feast of All Saints

Oct 30, 2015

Recently I had the opportunity to visit several of my nieces who live in various parts of the West Coast. Each of them have young children – delightful, smart,...

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Cramming Religion Down Your Throat

Oct 29, 2015

Back in 1983, Joseph Girzone, a Carmelite priest, wrote his first book. It was self-published and his advertising was by word-of-mouth, but the book became wildly popular and was...

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What Its Like to Be Us

Oct 22, 2015

I grew up in a loving family but we never said we loved each other and rarely showed it physically. That all changed for our family, and I believe for many...

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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...

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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,...