Flicker: A Memoir That Creates Its Own Music (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781644676868)

From birth, one is infused with a bright glowing spiritual light of the breath of life from the Creator that moves and pulsates quickly to create a life that empowers one to experience and anticipate all its mysteries, its joys, its hopes for finding happiness in life. For those of Christian persuasion, everything in God's creation is centered in the traditional nuclear family-- the structure of the first family, Adam and Eve--for the management and development of children. From 1880-1960, Daniel Patrick Moynihan's "The Negro Family, the Case for National Action, 1965," indicates that there were two distinct features of African-American family structure; Blacks were more likely than whites to become single parents, and to reside in "extended families". However, other theorist argued that Moynihan got it backwards. The disadvantaged position of Blacks is not the consequence of single-parent families, but rather the cause of them. When an African-American man that desires to become one that can be the head of and primary provider for a traditional nuclear family, especially during the 1900s, is thwarted by the beliefs of those who would undermine this goal by actions generated from beliefs of superiority of a certain racial group, defined by Wikipedia as "scientific racism", it causes devastating economic and educational deprivation, and psychological malfunction in the Black family.

I, being a product of the strength, creativity and resilience of a strong Black extended male dominated communal family have persevered, primarily alone, and benefited from the strong survival skills that were taught, learned, and internalized by many in the Black family community. Because of my early acceptance of faith in Jesus Christ, I was, later in life, enlightened by God's Word that He had a predestined plan of equality and free will for every man, including Black Families. At the height of Jim Crow Laws and race riots of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, many Black families because of the God-given innate drive to survive, and in the face of the many morally unjust attacks against them, lived in constant and inconsolable fear. Yet many Black families continued to persevere and carved new avenues for achieving their life's goals of finding greater economic security, freedom and protection by living in "extended family" communal environments, especially in the South. Communal wisdom covered a widespread lack of education among Blacks, whose primary source of instruction post slavery was the Bible. Christian ideology provided the basic design for post slavery black family living structure, much like the ideology of the early Jewish Kibbutz of a sharing agricultural community.

I, Mary Rose, the second child, was born into a thriving and growing communal extended family environment of Childresses, Harpers, and Cooks, not realizing how the Number 14 and 7, 14 being a double digit of 7, with Biblical inference of a double measure (2x7) of spiritual perfection, would continue to impact my life's journey. As a God creation, I believe we remain under "numerical construction" by our Creator until all "free will" effort on our behalf here on earth is complete, and then our Creator completes His plan of "spiritual construction" in eternity. God had designed His plan to bring children into this world and back to himself.

Throughout God's plan of creation, it is as if God used numbers as a slide rule for calculating conclusion, salvation, perfection, and deliverance. God stressed numbers in much of His creation plan as He strives to "Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom," Psalms 90:12. until the light of life "flicker" out.