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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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Past Posts

mm Tom Carney

How to Love “Church”

Sep 07, 2023

I love to fish, but I don’t go as often as I’d like. In fact, when we lived in Iowa I hardly ever went, mostly because in the area...

mm Tom Carney

Is Wrong the New Right?

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Bryce Miller, who formally worked at the newspaper where I was employed, is now a sportswriter for the San Diego Union Tribune. His very active life was recently interrupted...

mm Ted

Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

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“But who do you say that I am?” (Mt. 16:15) Today’s gospel begins in an unusual way. It starts with a statement about geography, about a particular location far...

mm Ted

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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“”’O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”’ And the woman’s daughter was healed from that hour.” (Mt. 15: 28) Today’s gospel...

mm Ted

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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“Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Jesus said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water,...

mm Ted

Feast of the Transfiguration

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“Jesus took Peter, James, and his brother, John, and led them up a high mountain …. And he was transfigured before them.” Mt. 17:1-2 Astonishing things happen on mountain...

mm Tom Carney

Faith as War

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The mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 of 2021, “included a large cohort that hoisted Confederate battle flags and Trump banners. But mixed among those standards...

mm Tom Carney

Ten Years of a Religious “Rock Star”

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I’ve often read or observed media reports of huge crowds that turn out for rock stars and other popular celebrities, wondering if that could ever happen to a religious...