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

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mm Ted

Third Sunday in Lent

Mar 22, 2019

                  “… if you do not repent, you will all perish ….” Lk 13:3 High anxiety. That’s what we’re introduced to in today’s Gospel. The people Jesus is addressing...

mm Tom Carney

Chasing Certainty

Mar 21, 2019

In the newsroom at the newspaper where I worked was a sign saying, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” The message, of course, is that...

mm Ted

Second Sunday of Lent

Mar 15, 2019

“Jesus took Peter, John, and James and went up the mountain to pray. While he was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white.” Lk....

mm Tom Carney

Good, and Bad, Priests

Mar 14, 2019

My best friend – after my wife and kids – is Father Gerald Waris. We’ve been friends for at least 72 years when his family moved in “across the...

mm Tom Carney

Should You Be Loyal to a Religion?

Mar 07, 2019

I once wrote a newspaper story about a man in his mid-80s who cared for his wife who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease at a young age. She...

mm Ted

First Sunday of Lent

Mar 07, 2019

“Jesus … was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil.” Lk. 4:1 Temptation. Even the word itself is enticing, glamorous,...

mm Ted

Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Mar 01, 2019

“”Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye...

mm Tom Carney

The Search for Truth is the Search for God

Feb 28, 2019

Imagine a world in which nobody lies. Now imagine a world in which lying is illegal and enforced by law enforcement officers who “speculate” about who is lying and...