Brace yourself. I wrote another story:

The Problem of Hannah and Other Uppity People

“Here’s to the old days and the old ways,” he said, hoisting his glass.

“To the old days and the old ways,” the others said, clicking their glasses and then taking a generous gulp, followed by wiping their mouths on their sleeves and laughter.

This was how it always began. He was the unofficial leader and, ever since those days in ancient Israel, he had always started their meetings off with that same toast: “To the old days and the old ways.” And then the beer flowed, and the old men reminisced.

“Whatever happened to Elkanah?” he asked. “Has anyone seen him?”

“I haven’t seen or heard of him in centuries,” one of the others said.

The others shook their heads. No one knew.

“Well, he was a nice enough guy, I suppose,” he said, pouring another beer, “but he was screwed up about one of his wives. Didn’t know how to handle his women.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s coming back to me now,” one of the others said. “Wasn’t he that guy with that woman who couldn’t have children?”

“Yep,” he said, “and he was nice to her just the same, favored her, even. Gave her extra food and all because he said he “loved” her. He was a nice enough guy, but he definitely had no sense of how things are supposed to be, and if you start coddling women that way when they aren’t producing, you’re opening the door to all sorts of trouble.”

There was general agreement around the table. “Yep, all sorts.”

“He had a couple of wives, didn’t he?” another one said. “Didn’t one of them have a bunch of kids and she used to really get on the other one about not having kids.”

“Yeah, well, she should have,” he said. “What good is a woman who can’t give sons?”

They all nodded. He had a point.

“What was that woman’s name, the barren one?” he asked.

“Wa’dn’ it Hanna?” one said.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s it,” he said. “Hannah. Didn’t she go to the temple drunk one day?”

“No,” one of the others said. “Old Eli said that first he thought she was drunk, but it turned out she was just praying about getting a kid.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I remember now. The old priest told her that her prayer would be answered, and later she got pregnant. You know, I think that was probably when she started to get in trouble. I don’t blame it all on her, though. When she got her prayer answered, she thought she knew something about God, and then she had the gall to make up a song about God. If Old Elkanah had been teaching her her place, she’d have known that talking about God is men’s work. Women got no place in it.”

“I’d forgotten about that song,” one of the others said. “I just remember it being laughable.”

“Laughable, nothing,” someone else said. “That song was screwy.”

“It was dangerous,” he said. “Just goes to show what happens when the wrong people don’t know their place, start thinking they can understand God, that God is on their side, even.”

“Well,” said somebody at the far end of the table, “I don’t remember that song. What was so screwy and dangerous and all about it?”

He hesitated. He looked at the men around the table. They were all hesitating, looking at him. They were all unsure about how wise it was to bring this thing up.

Finally, he spoke. “It said things like, ‘The bows of the mighty are broken, and the feeble gird on strength.’ Have you ever heard such hogwash?”

The ice having been broken, others chimed in: “And it said that those who were full have had to hire themselves out for bread and those who were hungry are fat with spoil.”

Another said, “She said the barren would be rewarded and women with lots of children would be forlorn.”

They were warming up now. “I remember,” another said, “her singing that the Lord makes the poor as well as the rich.”

“And I remember,” still another said (anxious to get on the bandwagon), “her singing about God raising the poor from the dust and lifting the needy from the ash heap to make them — listen to this! — sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. Can you believe that?”

“And she said that you don’t prevail by might. How could that make sense?” another chimed in.

“Well,” he said, “it’s not surprising. We all know this. You let the wrong kind of people think that they can know something about God, and the next thing you know, the rules are all shot, everything’s changing, and you’ve got anarchy on your hands. The moral fabric of society will come apart. You wouldn’t even be able to count on the temple being here. That’s why you have to be careful about what groups you let think they can understand anything about God. It’s up to people like us, the right people, the favored people, to tell them.”

“Hey,” one of the others said, “did anything ever come of that song? I mean, a subversive thing like that, it should have been hushed up.”

“It was, for a long time,” he said. “But dangerous thinking like that is hard to get rid of. You know, it’ll go underground for a long time, and you think all’s right with the world and you don’t have to worry about it, and then — bam! — it’ll just pop up somewhere. I heard that some years ago there was a peasant girl in Nazareth singing a song that was very clearly, no question, based on that Hannah’s song.”

“All these centuries later?” one asked.

“You know women,” he said. “They’ll talk about this stuff forever, and their husbands will have no clue.”

“Yeah, I guess,” the other one said. “Who was it, the peasant girl in Nazareth?”

“I think her name was Mary,” he said.

“Mary?!” one of them said, shocked. “Isn’t she that slut that had that bastard boy?”

“Yep,” he said. “Not surprising, is it? They tried to cover it up, but . . . .”

“Well,” another said, “that’s gotta be one messed up kid, growing up with a mama who’s telling him that God loves all the wrong people and the world is all turned upside down. I bet you our bar tab that kid’s in trouble.”

“You’re probably right,” he said, “but I don’t rightly know. Anybody know what happened to that boy?”

Do we know what happened to that boy?

Did he get in trouble?

Shouldn’t we be in more trouble?