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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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Past Posts

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The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Mar 09, 2024

“… the parents of Jesus took him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.” Lk. 2:22 Sacred Scripture is a story book …  a manuscript revealing to...

mm Ted

The Fourth Sunday of Advent

Mar 09, 2024

“May it be done to me according to your word.” Lk. 1:38 It’s that most special of all times again – that time of wonder and joy and miracles....

mm Tom Carney

Should People of Faith Speak Out?

Mar 07, 2024

Many people who worry about people of faith speaking out on political and social issues say things like, “They’re trying to cram their religious beliefs down our throats.” I’ve...

mm Tom Carney

Are We Failing God’s Tests?

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When I was in the seminary studying theology, our Scripture professor, Fr. Ignatius Hunt, on Mondays would choose a student in class – I presume arbitrarily – to answer...

mm Tom Carney

Where God Happens

Feb 15, 2024

There is an old film, made in 1960, that caused me to be a secret admirer of Hayley Mills, the British child actress whom I thought was about the...

mm Tom Carney

Trying to Define Love

Feb 08, 2024

Years ago in Ireland, the daughter of a cousin of my grandmother had a child out-of-wedlock. I heard this from my brother, a priest, who said the girl’s family...

mm Tom Carney

How We View “Church”

Feb 01, 2024

An itinerant preacher is in a small house, packed with people who are transfixed listening to his experience of God as loving Father. It contradicts much of what the...

mm Tom Carney

What Love Requires

Jan 25, 2024

Since my college days, I’ve been a fan of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For those of you not familiar with him, Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian who resisted...