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

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  • Between Belief and Faith?

    Many people think that either you’re a believer or you’re not. If you’re a believer, they may say, you must adhere to a faith that is expressed in dogma and …

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    On social media, and in person, many people seem to dislike the phrase, “You’re in our thoughts and prayers,” used when someone discloses a tragedy such as a death in …

  • “She Who Is?”

    I’ve mentioned several times in these blogs that I had a sort of awakening in my early 30s about my image of God. A homily by a young priest declared …

  • Does God Have Favorites?

    Five years ago, I wrote a blog called “What’s So Great about Being Poor?” “Nothing,” I wrote, “unless being among God’s favorites counts for nothing.” It’s true that poverty, in …

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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....

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Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Oct 04, 2019

“O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save? Why do you make me...