Ruby slippers

“Where does your amazing strength come from to defeat the enemy?”
Samson replies, “Alright, alright. You keep nagging me and I keep telling little lies about myself, but here is the real truth.  My strength lies in my hair.”


    NO! WRONG! Samson’ strength was a gift from God.  The hair was a gift—a symbol—gifted; given—but still just a material thing. Anything that is given comes from a source.  Where the gift comes from—who the gift comes from—the “relationship” to the source—is what infuses it with power.  And the source is what replenishes the gift with the power to defeat the enemy—as long as you remain mindful of—have a relationship with— the source.  It is just the same with any relationship.  The “gift of strength” does not reside in the thing itself. It is a terrible mistake to confuse symbols for the actual treasures—abstractions for the actual gifts, for power. To confuse this, is to disconnect, to shear, to “let a hand touch your head.”  And when this disastrous mistake occurs; the symbol is gone, and with it, the gift.  Delilah did not trick Samson.  Samson was the one playing tricks. And like all tricksters, he relied on distraction, confusion, and lack of attention.  Samson tricked himself.  Samson betrayed God, and in doing so, betrayed himself. He became blind. Only when he grew the strength of character to talk to the Lord again and ask one last chance to change—to make things right—did he reveal his understanding of  who his real enemy was. Samson is the one who had to go—to die. It is the last place anyone wants to look—it is dark, deep, lonely.  It was in the filth, in the dust, in the dirt, at the bottom, in the belly of the beast, that he found what he needed most. When Samson finally discovered who was the true enemy, the true betrayer, he knew what to do.  “And in his death he defeated more enemies than when ‘he’ was alive.”
    I remember feeling like Dorothy waking up at the end of Oz, in her bed with her family surrounding her, for the first time with joy in her heart.  The great lesson of “The Wizard of Oz” is not that the source of power resides in the ruby slippers (Dorothy had those on right from the start).  The great lesson is that the power to get home springs from one’s deep understanding and admission after defeating the enemies within, that “there’s no place like home.”