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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

Easter Sunday

Apr 01, 2018

“Christ is risen! Alleluia!” These are the victorious words we shout out with gusto on this greatest of all feast days. And yet, curiously, the gospel reading we heard...

mm Ted

Good Friday

Mar 30, 2018

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin.”...

mm Tom Carney

A Peace That Is Attainable

Mar 29, 2018

First, Happy Easter! It’s hard for a Christian believer to ignore Easter, arguably the most important feast day for Christians. But I know that for many people who are...

mm Ted

Holy Thursday

Mar 29, 2018

“Do you realize what I have done for you? …. If I, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have...

mm Tom Carney

The Ultimate Unifying View of Life

Mar 22, 2018

A recent article on the web page of National Public Radio contained these sentences: “We now know that all extant living creatures derive from a single common ancestor, called...

mm Ted

Palm Sunday

Mar 22, 2018

“ though he was in the form of God … he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave … he humbled himself.” Phil. 7-8 A German mystic many...

mm Ted

Fifth Sunday in Lent

Mar 16, 2018

“… unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but, if it dies, it produces much fruit.” Jn. 12:22...

mm Tom Carney

Does Faith Breed Mediocrity?

Mar 15, 2018

Among the interesting people I covered as medical/science writer for The Des Moines Register was Patricia Clare Sullivan, alias “Attila the Nun.” Her obituary was in the newspaper recently....