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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-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Oct 08, 2023

“Have in you the same attitude that is in Christ Jesus … who emptied himself taking the form of a slave.” Phil. 2:5 “What is your opinion?” Today’s Gospel...

mm Ted

Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Oct 08, 2023

“Are you envious because I am generous?” Mt. 20:16 Our usual answer to the above question asked by the landowner at the end of this Gospel story is an...

mm Ted

Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Oct 08, 2023

“Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?” Mt. 18: 34 Debt. It is somewhat astounding to realize how much of...

mm Tom Carney

Faith Makes Suffering Surmountable

Oct 05, 2023

Esau McCaulley, an associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College – a Christian school in Wheaton, IL. – is also a contributing opinion writer at the New York...

mm Tom Carney

We Don’t Talk about Bruno

Sep 28, 2023

My four-year-old grandson, Leo, is crazy about the Disney movie, Encanto. It’s a musical about a family in Colombia whose on-and-off magical powers are not always helpful. Leo’s fascination...

mm Tom Carney

More Than Tolerance Required

Sep 21, 2023

Luke Olliff, a 30-year-old resident of Atlanta, says he and his wife gradually shed their religious affiliations throughout their marriage. “My family thinks she convinced me to stop going...

mm Tom Carney

Are We Born Blind?

Sep 14, 2023

One of my favorite Simon and Garfunkel songs, “The Boxer,” was released in 1969. The last lines of the first verse go like this: Still a man hears what...

mm Ted

Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sep 10, 2023

“Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Mt. 18:20 Disaster relief has been consistently in the news this summer....