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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 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...

mm Ted

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...

mm Ted

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,...

mm Tom Carney

How to Die with Dignity

Sep 24, 2015

Ron Flug, the husband of my friend and former newspaper colleague, Polly Flug, died several years ago of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. I’m somewhat...

mm Ted

Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sep 24, 2015

“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off… if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off … if your eye causes you to sin, pluck...

mm Tom Carney

An Antidote to Indifference

Sep 17, 2015

These weekly blogs are primarily meant for skeptics who, despite their skepticism, search for God. And they’re based on the premise that there is no contradiction between skepticism and...

mm Ted

Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sep 17, 2015

“Taking a child, he placed it in their midst, and putting his arms around it …” Mk, 9, 36 We humans crave power. All of us do. We love...

mm Ted

Learning and Memory

Sep 15, 2015

“Memory is of critical importance to our very existence.” James McGaugh, Ph.D. How do we remember what we remember? Like most of the brain’s processes, memory remains a bit...