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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

  • A Religion of Impossibilities?

    Pigs Fly. People walk on walls. Catfish play the trumpet. All among things that are impossible, most would agree. Then there are the theoretical or apparent impossibilities. World Peace. Democrats …

  • Figuring the Odds

    Many of you, when studying physics or math, may recall learning about Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, philosopher, physicist and theologian who lived from 1623 to 1662. Pascal came up …

  • God: Busy Elsewhere?

    In “Darkest Hour,” a Netflix movie about Second World-War England, Winston Churchill – the frumpish prime minister who rallied his country to resist the Nazis – told King George VI: …

  • The Benefits of Thankfulness

    This blog, as they say in show biz, is partly an encore performance; that is, it’s partly from a Thanksgiving blog I wrote in 2016. (Hey, the blog is free!) …

  • “Religion Pure and Undefiled”

    Pardon me if I’ve told this story before. On one of my trips to rural El Salvador with fellow parishioners from Iowa, I was walking down a dirt road – …

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Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Jun 16, 2023

“… The love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given us.” Romans, 5:5 There’s a story that’s told about...

mm Tom Carney

The Problem with Religious Language

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After I had been a writer at the Des Moines Register for several years, the editor came to my desk one day to ask me to become the medical/health-care...

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Wanting “the Best”

Jun 08, 2023

Rachel Connolly recently wrote a column in the New York Times called “The Tyranny of the Best.” “There is a kind of person who finds the idea of seeking...

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Why Bad Things Happen

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My brother-in-law, Jose Mario Botero, recently took a terrible fall down a spiraling, steel staircase in his home in Medellín, Colombia. It resulted in a massive head injury, and...

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Spirituality Found in the Obvious?

May 25, 2023

An online ad for a book on spiritual practices reads: “We all have a spiritual side, but for many of us, it’s something we don’t quite understand. We may...

mm Ted

Feast of the Ascension of the Lord

May 19, 2023

(note: This feast is often observed on the Seventh Sunday of Easter instead of the Thursday before) “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky?”...

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The Seventh Sunday of Easter

May 19, 2023

“As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.” Jn.17:18 “If you want to follow Jesus, you better look good on wood.” These words...

mm Tom Carney

Taking Another Look

May 18, 2023

First, a disclosure: this blog – as many of my blogs – uses the experience of a Catholic to illustrate its purpose. I believe, however, that people of any...