My Experience on YouTube  

I’ve been on YouTube forever. From time to time, over the years, I’d do a video and then post it to my blog. And while I am still doing that I’m beginning to look at my channel as an end in and of itself, too.

This helped me to realize that I needed to develop an overarching theme for my channel. At this point in time that theme has three main focus points: Catholicism, New Age occultism and how these (and related) topics are reflected in the media.

There are other topics that fall under this umbrella, of course. The primary ones that I've been coming across lately are spiritual warfare and traditional Catholicism.

Spiritual warfare was expected, since I’ve been talking about it in the blog for ages, but traditional Catholicism caught me off guard.

Untraditional Me

For me, growing up in the sixties and seventies, the world seemed both mysterious and expansive. The New Age and occult was central to this world view but there were a lot of other things that went along with it, like feminism and leftwing politics and Vatican 2, that I didn’t really question – until recently.

Having originally converted to Catholicism in the 1990s (then left and finally returned two years ago) I have always felt like the Novos Ordo (lit. new order) Mass WAS traditional. And I probably would have gone on thinking that way, if not for my experience during the Latin portion of a webinar deliverance prayer session performed by Catholic exorcist Monsignor Stephen Rossetti.

That webinar helped me realize that Latin is unusually effective in spiritual warfare. Which got me thinking.

I began to wonder why Latin and the Traditional Latin Mass are becoming more and more restricted. I began to look into Traditional Latin Masses (TLM) in my area. I was encouraged when one of my YouTube subscribers shared her experience with TLM and praying in Latin.

Providentially, I learned that there are two TLM churches in my area. One of which I can walk to.

Where I’m at Now

In some ways, I’m still straddling the line between traditionalism and the contemporary worldview. I do not necessarily agree with the traditionalists in every instance. And I’m not completely comfortable with the idea of going to a TLM during the COVID spike that’s plaguing our county.

But I do have a strong interest in tradition. For now I'm studying Latin and learning the Mass and just beginning to consider that I have been more wrong, in more ways, then I expected.  

My prayer for the last several weeks has been to be better conformed to God’s will. And so, with that in mind, I’m not formally committing to anything. But when COVID lets up a bit, I’m going to walk down the street and attend our local TLM and see where that takes me.

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Check out my YouTube channel at youtube,.com/BarbaraGraver (and - if inclined- please subscribe!)

You can see the video I talk about here on YouTube 

Visit my author website at BarbaraGraver.com

About My Grandmother

My paternal grandmother was a widow before I was born.  And while I didn't realize it when I was a child, I don't think she had a lot of extra money.  I guess that's why instead of visiting often or even calling on the phone she sent me things. Like letters and clippings and eventually a binder.

The binder came with only a couple pages but then she started sending me more pages to fill it.  And so several times a year I'd receive a package of 2 or 3 or 4 photo album pages filled with brightly colored pictures.

Those pictures weren't anything special by ordinary standards.  Most were simply cut from magazines and carefully arranged under the plastic film that covered each page in the album.  But somehow those pages impressed me so much that I still remember the pictures.  A pile of leaves raked up by group of kids.  A little dog in a bright red coat.  A school bus in the rain.

My grandmother came to visit us once or twice a year and when she did she slept in the spare room next to mine.  And I remember how one Christmas Eve we sat together on the bed in that room while she told me the story of the nativity. I will never forget the chills that ran up and down my spine when she told me about the glory of the angels heralding the miracle that was the birth of Jesus.

And I have long thought that the presence that was there with us in the room that night was angelic in nature.

My Grandmother's Gift

The next day, on Christmas, my grandmother gave me a little white Bible.  I don't remember getting it and I suspect it didn't impress me as much as the other presents I received.  But I did read it -  off and on, all through my childhood.

I would like to say that I kept reading that Bible or that it was one of my prized possessions but that would not be accurate. What is accurate is that my life veered off the rails and I returned to the Bible my grandmother had infrequently. and that it spent most of the years between now and then in a succession of dresser drawers and boxes.

And yet, somehow, out of the things that mattered more and all things that have come and gone, that little Bible is one of the few things I've hung on to.

In 2012 I moved into a new (old) house. I was still deeply involved in New Age spirituality.  But when I was unpacking I decided to put the Bible my grandmother gave me into my china cabinet alongside my tarot cards and crystals.

And, in 2017, when I began to make my way back to the Faith those things went the way of other mistakes, great and small, and the little white Bible stayed.

And there were in the same country shepherds watching, and keeping the night watches over their flock.  And behold an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the brightness of God shone round about them; and they feared with a great fear.  And the angel said to them: Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy... -  St. Luke 2:8-10