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

  • RSVP

    My wife, Amparo, and I recently bought a car, not a new one but a late model. It seemed to make the most economic sense. What didn’t make sense as …

  • Faith Like Falling in Love?

    I’ve often quoted New York Times columnist David Brooks in these blogs because I find his columns unusually insightful. And, unlike many columnists in that publication and others, he doesn’t …

  • Do What We’ve Always Done?

    It may not come as a surprise to most readers of this blog that the presidential election did not go my way. And I’m not encouraged by the choices for …

  • 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 …

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Past Posts

mm Tom Carney

A Man and His Daughter at Mass

Nov 14, 2019

It’s no secret that many people have stopped going to church. At most churches, you can observe what national polling data have reported. Many say they get nothing out...

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Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Nov 10, 2019

“he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for him all are alive.” Lk 20:38 After the untimely death of his four-year-old son, Eric Clapton wrote...

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Is Kindness Dead?

Nov 07, 2019

I recently came across an online video that moved me. A sanitation worker – among people I’ve noticed who are always in a hurry – shows patience, kindness and...

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How Jesus Became Uncool

Oct 31, 2019

I have a friend who recently posted a beautiful quote online from a famous eastern mystic. I liked it, but it occurred to me that he would never post...

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How Faith Is Good for Us

Oct 24, 2019

I have a friend who is the eternal pessimist. His outlook is almost always dismal. He looks at life through the lens of Murphy’s Law – anything that can...

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Love, and Hate, of Work

Oct 17, 2019

I was fortunate to have had a career I loved. The pay was not great and the hours were unpredictable. But often during my 25 years as a reporter/editor,...

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Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Oct 13, 2019

“… and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan.” Lk 17:16 One of the great mystics of the Church, Meister Eckhart, once...

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The Wolf of Gubbio

Oct 11, 2019

According to legend, around the year 1220 when St. Francis of Assisi was living in Gubbio, Italy, a fierce wolf began attacking livestock. And then it began attacking humans....