Southwest, shadowboxing and the spiritual life
Let embracing our failures be this New Year's resolution
When my husband got the text at 4:35 AM the day before we were supposed to fly out, he lay awake in bed and graciously waited for the sun to rise. He told me the news upon waking and my anxiety, like a double shot of espresso, kicked me into high gear. Panic, problem-solving, discussion, and sadness over the loss of a well-planned trip for Christmas were buzzing around my head. How on earth were we going to get home?! We did. We cut our time short, rented a car, and decided to take the 20-hour drive from Pheonix to Portland. At the time, I wasn’t totally aware of the severity of the situation. When I was finally packed and nestled into our new rental car with snacks I begin to read the headlines: “Why did Southwest Airlines Cancel Thousands of Flights?” “Southwest’s Debacle, Which Stranded Thousands, To Be Felt for Days” “How Southwest Failed the Holidays”.
The news cycle around this story lasted for more than a week. Researchers and analysts began to expose Southwest’s archaic tech systems which scheduled pilots, and staff as well as booking flights. It exposed their lack of investment in updating their systems in order to pay their investors. Southwest is known for having the cheapest flights which is why they are so popular. Yet, with their cheap systems and prioritization of the rich over their customers, Southwest paid a great price: a loss of trust and loyalty.
There’s a lesson here that goes deeper than just what airline I’ll choose the next time I travel: We are all guilty of hanging onto old systems. Some of these systems we’ve created ourselves through unhelpful habits. Others we’ve actively participated in or turned a blind eye to. I find it interesting this situation happened so close to the New Year when people are focused on making resolutions. Yet our attempts to change and improve ourselves can never fully transpire if we don’t expose the unhelpful ways we’ve been functioning.
Southwest airline’s failure was public and greatly humiliating for the 20.42 billion dollar company. When our old systems fail us, it is often secret and hidden, enabling us to keep them. Exposure is undesirable, and yet, it created enough pain for Southwest to change. For us, we can easily keep ourselves from feeling the pain of our old systems when we focus on a shiny new goal. Resolutions can be the perfect distraction from what is lurking in the shadows. Why shadowbox with your dark side when you can take up kickboxing at your local 24 Hour Fitness?
Over the long drive back to Portland, my husband and I listened to a few Unlocking Us podcasts by Brene Brown. Brene had Father Richard Rohr as a guest for a 2-part series. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan priest, ecumenical teacher, and author of numerous books such as the Universal Christ, Just This (my current devotional), and The Naked Now.
In the two-part series, Brene Brown pulled some of her favorite quotes from Rohr’s books to discuss further. Here is one of the quotes that struck me deeply:
One of the great surprises is that humans come to full consciousness precisely by shadowboxing, facing their own contradictions and making friends with their own mistakes and failures. People who have had no inner struggles are invariably both superficial and uninteresting. We tend to endure them more than communicate with them because they have little to communicate.
Richard Rohr
Shadowboxing for Rohr is facing the dark side of ourselves, the things we don’t like. When we intentionally face our old systems and learn how to jab-cross-jab, we enter into a deeper understanding of ourselves. Rohr assures us that our dark side is not necessarily our bad self but simply what we do not want to see. Our weaknesses, failures, that extra friggin 10 lbs I just cannot seem to lose, my barrenness, selfishness, and quick to anger self. Sure we can ignore them, but I would rather shadowbox in the safety of God’s love than feel the humiliation of exposure because ultimately, our shadow selves will be revealed.
Let me take this a step further.
The American church has refused to shadowbox with itself. Instead, we do what we’ve always done: point the finger at culture or politics or other faith traditions or the gays. We love sermonizing the things we don’t like about others and how they are morally corrupt. This is a convenient distraction from having to come to grips with our own failures. The church has a dark side *gasp*, it has a dark past littered with failures, bad theology, and lynchings. While some of the church is learning to shadowbox, others are still enjoying a blissful self-righteousness that is, well, superficial and uninteresting. American’s simply endure the presence of the church these days but they won’t dare listen to it because the church doesn’t have much to communicate. The Gospel has become overshadowed by extreme division and is no longer attractive. And here’s the thing: it’s public! We aren’t doing a great job hiding our dark side. It’s out there and people can see it. We may not have canceled thousands of flights but we have certainly left thousands of people stranded, wandering where the God who became flesh, who emptied himself for the sake of others is!
We rented an Airbnb a few hours north of LA for our first day of driving. We entered the little apartment at the back of a garage around 8:30 PM exhausted but thankful to be not on the road. As we settled into the full-size bed (I was trying to keep things cheap), the mattress was so springy, even an inch of movement would send shockwaves through the whole bed. After an hour of attempting to sleep, I realized the owners of the Airbnb didn’t use a boxspring, they just put an old mattress under a new mattress! Around 10 PM, I made my husband pull the new mattress onto the floor to see if that would help. It did and I was finally able to fall asleep.
We want to believe we can cover up our old systems with new ones. We desire to appear whole and functional and put-together but we aren’t, and we hate that about ourselves. I think about the Apostle Paul shadowboxing himself in Romans 7:
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
When Paul talks about “sinful” nature, he is referring to the contradictions that live within himself. Later in the passage, Paul praises God, through Jesus Christ, that he has been freed from a condemnation that wants to keep him stuck beating the air. This is the beauty of the Gospel, it gives us the confidence to face our darkness and freedom from being stuck in it. We are free to shadowbox with ourselves and be able to win! Though this will be a lifetime of practice, we will get better at facing our shadows. Learning to recognize our selfishness and failures more quickly leads to a wholeheartedness that doesn’t point fingers but is able to extend a loving hand.
There is no other way to gain a deeper sense of self or of God than to crawl through our shadows, embrace our weakest parts, and relinquish our death grip on our old systems. Author Anne Lamott says it most perfectly:
For all the things that we are finally able to give away, they all have claw marks on them.
So, perhaps the most helpful New Year’s resolution we can hold ourselves to this year is to face our shadows and just start swinging.
Love this and needed this today.
I liked this one it made me stop and think about my past failures and my current situation and if I had been compromising on a lot of personal things.