At a department meeting not long ago, our department chair wondered whether it might be good for the sake of building department chemistry to have various events in which we share teaching tricks of the trade with each other. \u201cAfter all,\u201d he said, \u201cthree of our faculty have won the Accinno award!\u201d The Accinno award is my college\u2019s \u201cTeacher of the Year\u201d award, which I won eighteen years ago in just the third year of its existence. ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2021\/11\/teacher-of-the-year.jpg\")
I expressed my support for the chair\u2019s idea, but also mentioned that since I\u2019m a very different teacher now than I was eighteen years ago, I\u2019m not sure that I would even be nominated for the award now even if I could be (you can only win the award once).<\/p>\n
Over the years I have evolved from a somewhat traditional conveyor of complex information, who both took pride in my ability to make complex philosophical concepts accessible and also hoped to occasionally inspire my clientele, into a dedicated storyteller who seeks unashamedly to seduce my students into joining me in dedicating themselves to lifetime learning. I agree with Alasdair MacIntyre\u2019s thesis that human beings are \u201cstory telling animals\u201d and that we understand ourselves and each other within narrative frameworks shaped by the stories we tell.<\/p>\n
Jesus understood this, of course, which explains why he delivered his message of love and redemption through parables and stories instead of doctrines and dogmas. As a young person I was force-fed the Bible on a regular basis; what stuck with me then and remains with me now are the stories that weave through the various accounts of how different generations of people understood their relationship to what is greater than us. In her Afterword to Rachel Held Evans\u2019 final book, Wholehearted Faith<\/em>, Nadia Bolz-Weber writes that<\/p>\n We are storytelling creatures because we are fashioned in the image of a storytelling God. May we never neglect that gift. May we never lose our love for telling the story. Amen.<\/strong><\/p>\n The assigned reading from the Hebrew Scriptures is the story of God\u2019s call of the young boy Samuel from First Samuel. Samuel was one of my role models as a child, because as a child he was perceptive enough to be able to hear the voice of the divine calling him when the grownups couldn\u2019t hear a thing. But this is the second half of the story. The first<\/strong> half of the story is a tale with many familiar elements from the narratives in the Jewish scriptures: a powerful and faithful woman surrounded by mansplaining and clueless males who, although in social positions of power, have a lot to learn.<\/p>\n The story is set in the late period of the judges in Israel. Hannah is the favored (and presumably younger) wife of Elkanah, a faithful man of the tribe of Ephraim. Peninnah, Elkanah\u2019s other wife, has several children (we don\u2019t know how many, but there are \u201cmany sons and daughters\u201d), while Hannah has no children because \u201cthe Lord had closed Hannah\u2019s womb.\u201d In a typically human move, Peninnah uses Hannah\u2019s barrenness against her; the text reports that Peninnah \u201ckept provoking [Hannah] in order to irritate her,\u201d to the point that Hannah \u201cwept and would not eat.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019ve seen this story before\u2014think, for instance of Sarah\u2019s jealousy when Hagar gives birth to Abraham\u2019s son Ishmael while the son promised to Abraham and Sarah has noticeably not shown up. Or of Rachel, the beautiful and favored wife of Jacob, who has no reason to be jealous of her less beautiful, older sister Leah\u2014whom Jacob does not love but had to marry in order to marry Rachel\u2014except that Rachel has no children and Leah has ten sons and counting. The stage is set for continuing drama worthy of a \u201cWives of the Ancient Middle East\u201d-style reality show.<\/p>\n In Hannah\u2019s case, well-meaning but totally clueless Elkanah doesn\u2019t help the situation when he mansplains to Hannah why, in truth, she has no reason to be sad. He asks \u201cHannah, why are you weeping? Why don\u2019t you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don\u2019t I mean more to you than ten sons?\u201d I\u2019m sure that Hannah\u2019s unrecorded response was along the lines of \u201cNo, jackass, as a matter fact you don\u2019t<\/strong> mean more than ten sons to me. In this patriarchal iron age world where a woman\u2019s worth is calculated by how many sons she has, you definitely are not worth even one son, let alone ten. You want to know how to help? Get that bitch Peninnah off my back!\u201d Or something like that. Maybe Hannah was nicer than I would have been. One year at Shiloh, the establishment where Elkanah and the family went annually to sacrifice and worship, Hannah went off by herself and, \u201cweeping bitterly,\u201d begged God for a son, promising to dedicate that son to God should her prayer be heard and answered. She prayed silently, but her lips were moving. Enter another well-meaning but clueless male. Eli, the father of the two priests in charge at Shiloh, concluded that this weeping and mumbling woman was drunk. \u201cHow long are you going to stay drunk?\u2019 Eli asked. \u201cGo put away your wine.\u201d<\/p>\n The Hannah of my imagination, sick to death of male obtuseness and mansplaining, thinks \u201cOh for God\u2019s sake, old man, leave me the F alone! The Lord and I are trying to have a conversation here! Get out of my face!\u201d Showing great self-control, Hannah says \u201cI am a woman who is deeply troubled [idiot].\u00a0I have not been drinking wine or beer [moron]; I was pouring\u00a0out my soul to the\u00a0Lord.\u00a0Do not take your servant for a wicked woman; I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief.\u201d Eli, to his credit, realizes his mistake and wishes her well\u2014but wisely doesn\u2019t guarantee anything.<\/p>\n We learn subsequently, of course, that Hannah does become pregnant, her son Samuel is dedicated to the Lord as she promised (which means that Eli ends up being his father figure and unwitting mentor in things concerning the divine), and Samuel becomes a major player in the events that move the Jewish people from a loose tribal confederation to a fledgling nation. Samuel, acting as the representative of God in these events, anoints Saul, then David, as the first two kings of Israel.<\/p>\n Hannah gets center stage one last time in the next chapter with \u201cHannah\u2019s Prayer,\u201d a powerful song of thanksgiving, prophecy, and justice that Mary, the mother of Jesus, clearly had in mind when she sings her similarly powerful Magnificat of thanks centuries later. We would do well to embrace the grace and power of Hannah, this beautiful and apparently insignificant woman who simply wanted to be treated fairly and to be a mother.<\/p>\n The bows of the warriors are broken, <\/strong>but those who stumbled are armed with strength.<\/strong><\/p>\n Those who were full hire themselves out for food, <\/strong>but those who were hungry\u00a0are hungry no more.<\/strong><\/p>\n The\u00a0<\/strong>Lord<\/strong>\u00a0brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up.<\/strong><\/p>\n The\u00a0<\/strong>Lord<\/strong>\u00a0sends poverty and wealth; he humbles and he exalts.<\/strong><\/p>\n He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap;<\/strong><\/p>\n He seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor.<\/strong><\/p>\n Let it be so.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At a department meeting not long ago, our department chair wondered whether it might be good for the sake of building department chemistry to have various events in which we share teaching tricks of the trade with each other. \u201cAfter all,\u201d he said, \u201cthree of our faculty have won the Accinno award!\u201d The Accinno award […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2938,"featured_media":28680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,11,21,35,36,40,41,48,59,76,77],"tags":[221,222,242,369,390,392],"class_list":["post-28671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty","category-bible","category-christianity","category-faith","category-family","category-god","category-grace","category-human-nature","category-justice","category-power","category-prayer","tag-faith","tag-family","tag-god","tag-old-testament","tag-power","tag-prayer"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2021\/11\/eli-mansplaining.jpg\")
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