Pastor Craig,
Good afternoon! I was thinking that if we are going to do this, let us introduce ourselves to one another more fully. My full, government name is Elizabeth Mason Moore. I was born in Charlotte North Carolina in 1988 to a woman named Tracey Mason and a man named Holt Moore. They met in college, at Chapel Hill, where my mother attended UNC and my father was an interloping partyer. We moved to Snellville, GA when I was about a year old, once my mother got pregnant with my sister very soon after I was born. I have no other natural siblings besides her, and I grew up in these genteel suburbs until I was about ten, when my grandfather died, my mother married my stepfather, and we all moved to Lake Lanier.
My grandfather was Jimmy Mason, and he served as the representative to the Georgia House of Representatives for Gwinnett County for decades. He and his brother, Wayne Mason, formed something of an empire during his life, developing great swaths of Georgia and Gwinnett, and wielding political power and business acumen wherever they went. My grandfather was a key member of the Georgia Ports Authority and visited all the faraway lands to convince their governments and businesses to bring their goods into America through the port of Savannah. My early childhood is peppered with gifts from these foreign lands and my later life is similarly begifted as well, having received gold and jewels even after Jimmy’s untimely death, that he apparently bought me even in my youth.
I, myself, eventually attended Woodward Academy in south Atlanta for high school (after desiring a better education than Flowery Branch could afford me [and being chased out of Buford by jealous girls when I won the beauty pageant and all the boys hearts]) and made my way to the Midwest for college, where I went on an arts scholarship to Washington University in St. Louis. There I found many new lives and friends and graduated with a BFA in painting, a major in English, and a minor in writing, because this school did not offer any greater educational opportunities in the written arts than this.
My hunger for the divine started in Italy, when I was studying art in Florence one summer and happened to read The DaVinci Code. Though I see this novel now as flawed, it did instill in me a great interest in religion, spirituality, and metaphysics, albeit from a more esoteric perspective than most. I should tell you up front that I see the Magdalene as equal to Christ, an integral part of the Messiah Movement, and Yeshua’s partner in every way. In addition, I strongly identify with Mary Magdalene and seek to be like her, do as she did, and walk as she walked-next to Christ, as the feminine messiah and his other half, and contribute to God’s ministry on earth in any way I can, even to this day.
It is also my belief that Ms. Magdalene was a practitioner of the magical arts as well. It could be said that even the crucifixion was something of a magic trick of hers, though this in no way takes away from its redemptive powers and merely serves as the physical/energetic avenue through which it took place. My own interest in magic stems from symbolism in the arts, where in school, I realized at some point, that what I was producing with my creative endeavors was doing more than “the sum of its parts” and affecting my life and the world with greater power than could be attributed to its mere “powers of representation”. I did not seek out magic: it came to ME, and claimed me, and had its way with me, and I have been dealing with the glory and gory fallout ever since.
My cognitive integration of the magical arts and my own spirituality are not at odds, let me tell you: they are in concert. I work from the perspective of service in both arenas and have hardly ever done a spell or incantation for myself or my own life’s benefit. Not that I won’t or can’t or don’t think this is “ok”, I just hardly see the need. I am so set up by God in my own life that I feel no need to magically enhance much of anything about it at all and indeed, have much with which to spare. And this is one of the reasons I feel so comfortable with, and feel so compelled to, service. If I did not give of myself and my time and my effort, there would be nothing for me to do (after my creative pursuits were fulfilled) but stare out of my window all day at all the bad magic and lament, all the day long, how very sad, and mad, and bad the world is.
This I cannot do, will not do, and am not inclined to do; because if I did not bring everything I have been given in time, energy, and skill to bare on how I positively affect the world, I could not live with myself or look myself, or any person or child, in the eye ever again with any sort of self-respect at all. And so I give; and I work (without worldly pay); and I take the flak and fight the good fight and make myself a target for all manner of demons and secret societies and wayward spirits and evil family members and what-have-you, garden-variety-jerks in the field of energy work as will throw darts at any passing light. And I count myself blessed to simply see, and to know, and to be able to do as God desires of me-though I must say, I walk mostly alone, against the broad way, and in a light so bright as to blind me, and through a darkness so black as to be visible, and alive, and mad as hell that I would dare disturb its unholy slumber.
And so yes, I ask that you parle with me, and speak to me as men do, and provide me guidance and words of comfort and religion and of the men-who-care. And while the world has deemed me “crazy” and a “nuisance” and whatever else they say behind their closed, cossetted, and crossed doors, please recall that Christ was similarly called thusly when he last walked this earth as well; and I would have you remember also, that perhaps being “crazy” is just being “right” a little too early.
Thank you for your time, Pastor Craig.
May God bless you and keep you in the Light
(yet with knowledge of the Shadow)
and may They give you all good things in time, as well.
Blue Skies,
Eli Dancing Free
