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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

Christmas – 2018

Dec 23, 2018

“… the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a...

mm Ted

Fourth Sunday of Advent

Dec 21, 2018

“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Lk. 1:41   Here’s a question for you: Why, out of all the women since the...

mm Tom Carney

Loving, and Hating, Christmas

Dec 20, 2018

Last year, I wrote an opinion piece entitled, “Why Christians Should Hate Christmas.” It was published in the online edition of the National Catholic Reporter and elicited a bit...

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...