In 1989, I stood on a pee-wee football field, my skin the color of a fresh beet and close to blistering. Done so by the beams of a luminous ball of gas floating in space, some 93 million miles away. I know this fact as gospel because my first-grade teacher was Mrs. Derby.
My legs are itchy. I’m equal parts freckles and bug bites. Chiggers and mosquitoes feast on me the way the poor, blind and lame do in Jesus’ parable of the Great Banquet.
The few and far warm breezes carry the aroma of concentrated sugar. I can smell funnel cakes, cotton candy and caramel corn on the wind. This causes my blood glucose to increase a few milligrams through osmosis.
Justin Cox
My senses are heightened. The air is charged to the point of crackling.
Around me, lawn chairs are unfolded. Blankets are spread out. Folks and families are laying claim to several square feet.
Soon, they’ll strain their necks to watch the heavens fill with shades of green, red and purple. Blasts of blazing white bursts will disrupt the lunar occultation of Antares for fifteen minutes or more.
They want the best view when the magic starts exploding in the sky.
I wait with anticipation, just like I do for Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, for the sound that signals the arrival of wonder and a freedom that only schoolchildren out on summer break truly understand.
Throom.
Throom.
Throom.
Fireworks.
And as a child, I can’t remember any better than the ones offered up during the Fourth of July.
Growing up, this holiday of independence marked another reason for my family to descend on my grandparents’ small farmhouse. Cousins would come. Some I could barely keep up with, and others I couldn’t do anything but hold. Aunt Pat came, and the world stopped the way it always did when she entered a room. Aunt Sue’s van would pull up, and I’d sprint along with my sister to use the metal toggle switch that would lower her van’s wheelchair lift and bring her closer to us.
“It was wild, loud and chaotic, like fireworks, except with people.”
My father and other men stood beside a simple Weber grill. Flipping burgers more than they should. Smashing them down to hear the grease sizzle and watch the flames jump a little higher. Hot dogs were grilled and burned to varying degrees.
In the house, my grandmother, “Dood,” worked alone even though bodies came and went around her. She preferred just two hands in her kitchen until it came time to wash dishes. The space too small, too confining, since it already was filled with plates, bowls and expectations.
We’d spend the entire day together. Eating lunch, playing games, taking naps and working off enough food so we could eat supper again a few hours later.
It was wild, loud and chaotic, like fireworks, except with people.
It was a time filled with the images of honored eagles, stovepipe hats and Lady Liberty. All draped in the red, white and blue of the United States of America flag.
It was a time, a blend of innocence and ignorance, in which I found meaning and goodness.
I’d go as far as to say I felt a sense of pride every Fourth of July.
I haven’t felt that way in quite some time.
I got older. I listened and learned. North Carolina musicians, the Avett Brothers, and their song “We Americans” hit the nail on the head. Their melodic words acknowledge what I’ve discovered to be true:
But the story’s complicated and hard to read
Pages of the book obscured or torn out completely
I am a son of Uncle Sam
And I struggle to understand
The good and evil
But I’m doing the best I can
In a place built on stolen land
With stolen people
I read history that wasn’t taught to me — I had to go looking for it. A history, I’m now told, that is “woke” and pushing an agenda.
Horrific history about the Atlantic Slave Trade and the Trail of Tears.
History about Jim Crow, the Great Migration, Juneteenth, and the Southern Tenant Farmers Union.
A history filled with power and oppression, with war and empire, with poverty and Manifest Destiny. A history detailing the kingdom of King Cotton and King Coal.
“All of it made the pill of American exceptionalism tough to swallow, so I stopped taking it.”
All of it made the pill of American exceptionalism tough to swallow, so I stopped taking it.
Any notion of pride evaporated. An angsty disappointment moved in.
This emotion, one of gyrating, squirming and shifting around, leaves me with the same feeling I get when I sleep in a strange bed: uncomfortable.
It does this when I read and watch the news, when I scan headlines and when I stare open-mouthed, day in and day out, at American historian Heather Cox Richardson’s social media posts.
I take all this information in, and I don’t know where to start trying to fix it. I’m unsure if it ever can be fixed, but I want to try.
My spouse and I march the way John Lewis told us to. We show up for rallies to ignite change. We wear minister robes and stoles. We challenge the phantom of Christian nationalism that is becoming more embodied and emboldened by the day. We protest, we dissent, we resist all things reeking of fascism.
Currently, this is as patriotic as I believe I can be.
And yet, I find myself pining for something more.
I’m looking around for people who are made in the image of MLK, Hoffman, Campbell and Rustin. Those who can organize and unify — who can build and sustain a movement that won’t be resolved over the course of a weekend. Souls that can draw attention and leave others with a sensation that there is some hope left in the dark night of our nation’s soul.
I’m looking for a sign — a spark.
I got one late last week. A text message from another minister.
“She is the kind of firework I’m looking for in 2025.”
It read, “Interested in going to DC on Monday? There’s a bus leaving from Taylorsville, N.C., if you want to join me. It’s with Repairers of the Breach. You can be an observer or you can risk arrest.”
I checked my schedule. An upcoming funeral made it tight. I reluctantly passed, feeling a level of shame I know I should ignore.
I thought of her, her spouse and their kids all weekend.
Late Monday night, I saw her picture. In the same frame as William Barber II and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, wearing a collar and sunglasses. She and 37 others were arrested for morally objecting to the Big, Ugly, Bill.
She is the kind of firework I’m looking for in 2025.
I don’t think she’s alone. There are others like her.
More than the number of sparklers I lit as a child.
More than the number of booms during a grandiose firework finale.
More than the number of stars I consistently fail at counting at night.
And for now, this gives me back a sense of pride I thought I’d lost.
I’ll need that in the days ahead. We all will.
Justin Cox received his theological education from Campbell University and Wake Forest University School of Divinity and McAfee School of Theology, where he received his doctor of ministry. He is an ordained minister holding standing in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and American Baptist Churches USA. When not spending time with his spouse and daughters, he can be found writing and baking late into the night. His thoughts and reflections are his own.