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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

Third Sunday of Advent

Dec 16, 2018

  “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice!” Phil. 4:4   Many years ago I served as a parish priest. On a particular Sunday, the...

mm Tom Carney

Some More Equal than Others?

Dec 13, 2018

A few months ago, a church in Des Moines displayed a big banner on its building that proclaimed, “Black Lives Matter.” It should be no surprise that in today’s...

mm Ted

Second Sunday of Advent

Dec 07, 2018

“John went through the whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Lk 3:3   Think of it: Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Herod,...

mm Tom Carney

Dec 06, 2018

I’m about to finish reading “The Indifferent Stars Above” by Daniel James Brown – the tragic story of the famous Donner Party, after whom Donner Pass and Donner Lake...

mm Tom Carney

Being with the One You Love

Nov 29, 2018

Writing notes for this blog, I stare out the window of the retreat house at New Melleray, a Trappist monastery in northeast Iowa, at what I believe is a...

mm Ted

First Sunday of Advent

Nov 29, 2018

“Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent ….” Lk. 21:27   Here we go again! Advent is...

mm Tom Carney

Is Thanksgiving for Unbelievers?

Nov 23, 2018

(This blog was originally published in 2014. I did some updating for 2018, but it’s mostly the same. That includes the wish that readers will have a thankful Thanksgiving.)...

mm Ted

Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

Nov 21, 2018

“Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.” Mt. 25: 40   The least of these. Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to this...