God Who Has No Hands

Note: Mario Montessori shared this story, as he remembered his mother telling it, in the December 1958 issue of the AMI publication 'Communications'. He described it as a 'cosmic tale' that she told to the children. This story should be told, in one sitting, within the first week of the children arrival in the elementary classroom.”

“From the very beginning people have been aware of God. They could feel Him though they could not see Him, and they were always asking in their different languages who He was and where He was to be found.

"Who is God?" they asked their wise men.

"He's the most perfect of beings," was the answer.

"But what does He look like? Does He have a body like us?"

"No, He has not got a body. He has no eyes to see with, no hands to work with and no feet to walk with, but He sees everything and knows everything, even our most secret thoughts."

"And where is He?"

He is in heaven and on this earth. He is everywhere."

"What can he do?"

"Whatever he wishes."

"But what has God actually done?"

"What He has done is all that has ever happened. He is the Creator and Master Who has made everything, and all things He has made obey His will. He cares and provides for them all, and keeps the whole of His creation in the most wonderful harmony and order.

In the beginning there was only God. Since He was completely perfect and completely happy, there was nothing He needed. Yet out of His goodness He chose to create and all that He willed came into being; the heavens and the earth, all that is visible, and all that is invisible. One after another He made the light, the stars, the sky, and the earth with its plants and animals. Last of all He made man. Man, like the animals, was made out of particles of the earth, but God made him different from the animals and like Himself, for into his body which would die He breathed a soul which would never die."

Many people thought this was just a tale. How could someone with no eyes and no hands make things? If God is a spirit who cannot be seen or touched or heard, how could He have made the stars that sparkle overhead, the sea which is always astir, the sun, the mountains, and the wind? How could a spirit make the birds and fishes and trees, the flowers and the scent they shed around them? Perhaps He could make invisible things, but how could He make the visible world? It is all very well, they thought, to say that God is everywhere, but who has set their eyes on Him? How can we be sure He is everywhere?

They tell He is the Master whom everybody and everything obeys, but why on earth should we believe that? And it really does seem impossible. We who have hands could not do these things, so how could someone who has no hands do them? And can we imagine animals and plants and rocks obeying God? The animals do not understand when we talk to them, so how could they be obedient? Or the winds and the sea and the mountains? You can shout and scream and wave your arms at them, but they cannot hear you for they are not even alive, and they certainly won't obey you.

Yes, that is how it seems to us. But, as you will see, everything that exists, whether it has life or not, in all that it does and by the very fact of its being there, actually obeys the will of God.

God's creatures do not know that they are obeying. Those that are inanimate just go on existing. Those that have life move and go on living. Yet every time a cool wind brushes your cheek, its voice, if we could hear it, is saying: 'Lord, I obey.' When the sun rises in the morning and colors the glittering sea, the sun and the sunbeams are whispering, 'My Lord, I obey.' And when you see a bird on the wing, or fruit falling from a tree, or a butterfly hovering over a flower, the birds and their flight, the tree and the fruit and its fall to the ground, the butterfly and the flower and its fragrance are all repeating the same words: 'I hear, my Lord, and I obey.'

At first there was chaos and darkness was on the face of the deep. God said: 'Let there be light', and there was light. Before that there was only the deep, an immensity of space with no beginning and no end, indescribably dark and cold. Who can imagine that immensity, that dark and coldness?

When we think of dark, we think of night; but our night would be like brilliant sunshine in comparison with that darkness. When we think of cold, we think of ice. But ice is positively hot if you compare it with the coldness of space, the space that separates the stars: as hot, you might say, as a blazing furnace from which no heat can escape. In this measureless void of cold and darkness light was created. There appeared something like a vast, fiery cloud which included all the stars that are in the sky. The whole universe was in that cloud, and among the tiniest of stars was our own world; but they were not stars then; as yet there was nothing except light and heat. So intense was the heat that all the substances we know - iron, gold, earth, rocks, water - existed as gasses, as insubstantial as the air. All these substances, all the materials of which the earth and the stars are composed, were fused together in one vast, flaming intensity of light and heat - a heat which would make our sun today feel like a piece of ice.

This raging fiery cloud of nothingness, to huge to imagine, moved in the immensity of freezing space, which was also nothingness, but infinitely vaster. The fiery mass was no bigger that a drop of water in the ocean of space, but that drop contained the earth and all the stars.

As this cloud of light and heat moved through empty space little drops fell from it. If you swing the water out of a glass, some of it holds together and the rest breaks up into separate drops. The countless hosts of stars are like these little drops, only instead of falling they are constantly moving round in space, in such a way that they can never meet. They are millions of miles from each other.

Indeed, some stars are so far away from us that it takes millions of years for their light to reach us. Do you know how fast light travels? (the children might answer: 100 mph, 200mph...?) No, much faster. It travels 186,000 - not per hour, but per SECOND. Imagine how fast that is! It means that in one second it can travel 7 times around the whole world. And do you know how big the world is? If we were to drive at 100 mph continuously, all day long and all night long, without stopping, it would take us more than 10 days to cover that distance. And yet the light covers it 7 times in one second! You 'click' with your fingertips, and it has gone around the earth 7 times already!

So, you can imagine how far some of these stars are, that it takes their light 1 million years to reach us?

Then there are so many stars that scientists have calculated that if each of them were a grain of sand, all the stars together would cover up all the states from Virginia to New York up to the height of 200 meters! One of these stars, one of these grains of sand among those thousands of billions of grains of sand, is our sun, and one millionth part of this grain is our earth. An invisible speck of nothingness.

One wouldn't think so. The sun doesn't look so big. But that is because it is so far away. The light from it takes about 8 minutes to reach us and if we were to travel the same distance at 100 mph it would take us a little more than 106 years to reach the sun. In fact, the sun is one million times bigger than the earth. The sun is so big that just one of its flames could contain 22 earths.

(CHART 1A: Earth Compared to the Sun)

When God's will called the stars into being, there was no detail He had not planned. Every scrap of the universe, every speck which we might think too tiny to matter, was given a set of rules to follow. To the little particles which were like smoke, like vapor - which could only be distinguished as light and heat - moving at a fantastic speed he said: 'As you become cold you shall come closer and become smaller.'

And so, as they cooled they moved more and more slowly, clinging closer and closer to each other and occupying less and less space. The particles assumed different states which man called the solid, the liquid, or the gaseous state.

(DEMONSTRATION: Three States of Matter)

Everything we know is either a gas, a liquid, or a solid, and which of the three states it is at the moment depends on how hot or cold it is.

Then God gave some other instructions. Each of the tiny little particles was given a special love for certain particles and a special dislike for certain others. Some were attracted to each other and some were not. Just like human beings, they like some, and refuse to have anything to do with others. So they form themselves into different groups.

(DEMONSTRATION: Forces of Attraction)

In this way, the particles combined and formed themselves into different groups.

In the solid state, God has made the particles cling so closely together that they are almost impossible to separate. They form a body which will not alter its shape unless one applies force. If a piece is broken off, the particles will still cling together. If, for instance, you start chipping a flint, the flint and the chips still remain solid pieces of stone.

When it came to liquids, God said: 'You shall hold together also, but not so very closely, so that you will have no shape of your own and will roll over each other.'

(DEMONSTRATION: Model of a Liquid)

'Thus you shall flow and spread, filling every hollow, every crevice in your path. You will push downward and sideways, but never upwards.' That is why, though we can put our hands in water, we cannot put them inside a rock.

And to the gasses He said: 'Your particles shall not cling together at all. They can move freely in all directions.'

But as the particles were all so different individuals, they did not become solid or liquid or gas all at the same time. At certain temperature some remained solid, others became liquid and still others became gaseous.

(DEMONSTRATION: State of Matter and Heat)

And so, while obeying these laws, the little drop of nothingness that was to become our world, the blazing mass, went on spinning and spinning around itself and around the sun in the tremendous cold of space.

And as time went on, the outer ring of this mass began a dance, the dance of the elements. The particles that were at the outermost edge became cold and shrank. Huddling together they hurried to the earth, but as soon as they approached the hotter part, they became hot and up they went again. Like little angels, they carried a bucket of hot, burning coal into space, and returned with some ice.

(CHART 3A: The Dance of the Elements)

How marvelous it is! And how simple! If you become hot you expand and as you expand, you become lighter and soar upwards, like a bubble of air in the water. But, if you become cold, you shrink and fall as a grain of sand sinks to the bottom of a pond.

Because of this law the earth gradually changed from a ball of fire to the earth we know. This was the law that the tiny radiant particles obeyed as they danced their dance; particles to minute to be seen or even imagined, yet numerous enough to have produced the world.

For hundreds, thousands, millions of years this dance went on. Finally, the particles settled down, like tired dancers, and one after the other, they became first liquid and then solid and as they became liquid or solid some of them joined others to which they were attracted, forming new substances.

The heavier ones went nearer to the heart of the earth and the lighter ones floated above them like oil floating on the water.

(DEMONSTRATION: Liquids Settle According to Their Weight)

A thin scum was formed, like the skin which forms on milk when it is boiled and left to cool. It seemed as though the earth had taken some shape. But the elements inside this skin were still very hot. They felt trapped. They wanted to get out. What could they do otherwise? They had to follow the law of God: 'If you are hot, you expand.' There was no place to expand and so they burst out. They broke the skin and it was like a terrible fight.

(DEMONSTRATION: Volcano)

The water that formed on the surface turned immediately into vapor and went up as the hot stuff came out from inside the earth.

(CHART 4A: Volcanoes and Cloud)

There were also ashes. A veil of clouds was drawn to cover the earth so that nobody could see what was going on. The sun was ashamed of them!

Eventually, the fighting ceased. As everybody cooled down, more and more gasses became liquid, more and more liquids became solids. The earth itself shrank and became wrinkled like an old apple that has been left in a cupboard. The wrinkles are mountains and the hollows are the oceans.

For, as the rocks had cooled down, water was able to return to the earth and it rained and rained. And the water, being liquid, filled every hollow and crevice found in its path. Thus the oceans were formed. Above them was the air, the air that we breathe. The cloud had disappeared.

(CHART 5A: Volcanoes and Water)

The veil had withdrawn and the sun could once again smile upon its beautiful daughter, the earth.

Rocks, water, air: solids, liquids, gasses. Today, as it was yesterday and millions of years ago, God's laws are obeyed in the same way. The world spins round itself and round and round the sun. And today, as it was millions of years ago, the earth and all the elements and compounds it is made of, as they fulfill their tasks, whisper with one voice:

'Lord, Thy will be done; we obey.'"

The Story of the Universe

Note: Since the story is just to give an “impression”, there is no immediate follow-up.  Let the impression “sink-in” for a while and make relevant books available in the environment for the children to look through. Appropriate demonstrations/experiments and charts can also be made available for the students work with independently.

From the very beginning people have been aware of an unknown force, a Great Spirit, and they were always asking in their different languages what this was and where this was to be found.  What does it look like?  Has it a body like us? : “ It has no eyes to see with, no hands to work with and no feet to walk with; but it sees everything and knows everything, even our most secret thoughts. It cares and provides for all things, and keeps the whole of this world in the most wonderful harmony and order.

In the beginning there was only this force.  Then all came into being: the heavens and the earth.  One after the other, the light, the stars, the sky and the earth with its plants and animals come into being.  Last of all came man.  Man was different from the animals.  He breathed a soul, which would never die.  And we shall see that everything that exists, whether it has a life or not, in all that it does and by the very fact of being there actually obeys certain laws.

Creatures do not know that they are obeying, yet every time a cool wind brushes your cheek, its voice, if you could hear it, is saying: “ I obey”.  When the sun rises in the morning and colours the glittering sea, the sun and its rays and the water also are whispering: “I obey”.  And when you see birds on the wing, or a fruit falling from a tree, or a butterfly hovering over a flower, the birds and their flight, the tree and the fruit and its fall to the ground, the butterfly and the flower and its fragrance are all repeating the same words: “I hear, and I obey.”

At first there was chaos, and darkness was on the face of the deep.  Then, there was light.  Before that there was only the deep: an immensity of space with no beginning and no end, indescribably dark and cold.  Who can imagine that immensity, that darkness and coldness?

When we think of the dark we think of night, but our night would be like brilliant sunshine in comparison with that darkness.  When we think of cold we think of ice; but ice is positively hot if you compare it with the coldness of space that separates the stars. *

Experiment #1: INTENSITY OF COLD IN SPACE

In this measureless void of cold and darkness light was created.  There appeared something like a vast fiery cloud, which included all the stars that are in the sky.  These countless hosts of stars are like little drops, only instead of falling they are moving around in space in such a way that they can never meet.  They are millions of miles from each other.  Indeed, they are so far away that it takes the light of some of them millions of years to reach us.  Can you imagine how far away some of these stars are if it takes their light a million years to reach us?

Demonstration: Explain to the children that each grain of sand on fingertip represents a star, another sun. 

There are as many stars as there are grains of sand on all our beaches.  One of these stars – one of the grains of sand among those thousands of billions of grains of sand is our Sun, and one-millionth part of this grain is our Earth.  An invisible speck of nothingness! 

Chart #1a:  RELATIVE SIZE OF THE SUN AND THE EARTH

Demonstration: Illustrate that the unit is a million times smaller than the million cube; you need one million units to make a large cube.  The Earth is the size of the unit and the sun is the size of the large million cube.

The sun doesn’t look a million times larger that Earth, but only one of its flames can contain twenty-two Earths.  It doesn’t look so big because it is so far away.  The light from it takes about eight minutes to reach us and yet it is traveling 300,000 km per second!

When the stars came into being there was no detail not planned. Every scrap of the universe, every speck which we might think too tiny to matter, was given a set of rules to follow.  To the little particles, which are like smoke, like vapour – which could only be distinguished as light and heat- moving at a fantastic speed, was said: “As you become cold you shall come closer and become smaller.”  And so as they cooled they moved more and more slowly, clinging closer and closer to each other, occupying less and less space.

The particles assumed different states which man called the states of matter.

Experiment #2: STATES OF MATTER: SOLIDS, LIQUIDS, GASES

The ice is solid.  Its particles are tightly holding together.  Because the bonds are so tight, they are able to hold their shape.  They have very little energy and do not move around.

The water is liquid.  The particles are holding together but not as tightly as the ice.  They cannot hold their shape and take the shape of the container filling all spaces and crevices.  The particles store less energy and move around more freely.

The air is a gas.  The particles are very loosely holding together.  The bonds are so loose that they float away from each other.  These particles have most energy.  They fill all spaces and crevices.

Everything we know is either a gas or a liquid or a solid, and which of these three states it is at the moment depends on how hot or how cold it is.

Then each of the tiny little particles was given a special love for certain other particles and a special dislike for certain others.  Some were attracted to each other and some were not. *

Experiment #3: ATTRACTION OF PARTICLES

Just like human beings, they like some and refused to have anything to do with others.  In this way they combined and formed themselves into different groups.

In the solid state, particles cling so closely together that they are almost impossible to separate.  They form a body which will not alter its shape unless one applies force.*

Experiment #4: MOLECULAR BONDING OF SOLIDS

Ask the child to snap the piece of wood or twig.  Point out that this may take some effort, but eventually, it will snap into two pieces and make a sound.  Once broken the twig cannot be returned to its original state.

If a piece is broken off, the particles still cling together.  If, for instance, you break a piece of wood, the pieces still remain solid pieces of wood. The twig cannot be returned to its original state.

When it comes to liquids, they hold together also, but not so very closely.  So, they have no shape of their own and will roll over each other.*

Experiment #5: THE NATURE OF MOLECULAR BONDING IN LIQUIDS

Move the container around to illustrate how the molecules roll and slide over each other. They flow and spread, filling every hollow, every crevice in their path.  They push downwards and sideways, but never upwards.  Ask the children to plunge a finger or pencil into the contents.  That is why, though we can put our hand in water, we cannot plunge it into a rock! 

Experiment #6: MOLECULAR STRUCTURE OF A LIQUID VERSUS A SOLID 

Ask the child to plunge a pencil or hand into the water, then into the rock.  The child is able to insert hand or pencil into the water but not the rock.  The molecules in the rock push up, down and sideways but the molecules in the water only push downwards and sideways.

Then to the gases, “Your particles shall not cling together at all.  They can move freely in all directions.” *

Experiment #7: GASES TRAVEL IN ALL DIRECTIONS  

Light the incense and watch the smoke as it dissipates into the air. How is it moving? In what direction is the smoke moving?  The smoke or spray is moving in all directions. 

But as the particles were also different individuals, they did not become solid or liquid or gas all at the same time.  At a certain temperature some remained solid, others became liquid and still others became gas. *

EXPERIMENT #8: MELTING POINTS OF DIFFERENT MATERIALS 

On the hot plate, place a dish containing the 3 metals.  Observe which one melts or changes first.  Conclude that different metals melt at different rates.  Repeat with chocolate, marshmallows, jelly bean and candy.  Observe that different sweets melt at different rates.

And so, while obeying these laws the little drop of nothingness that was to become our world – the blazing mass – went on spinning and spinning around itself and around the sun in the tremendous cold of space.  As time went on, the outer ring of this mass began to dance, a dance of the elements. *

Chart #3a: DANCE OF THE ELEMENTS 

The particles that were at the outermost edge became cold and shrank.  Huddling together, they hurried to the Earth. *

Experiment #9: EVAPORATION

Heat up the kettle until the water boils and steam begins to rise.  Pour the boiling water into a jar or beaker. Place ice into a tray, bowl or plate.  Place the ice container over the jar opening.  The rising steam will hit the bottom of the plate and condense.  It will form water droplets that will fall back into the jar.

 But as soon as they approached the hotter part they became hot and up they went again.  How marvelous it is and how simple!  If you become hot you expand, and as you expand, you become lighter and shrink and soar upwards, like a bubble of air in the water.  But if you become cold, you shrink and fall, as a grain of sand sinks to the bottom of a pond.  Because of this law, the Earth gradually changed from a ball of fire to the Earth we know.  This was the law that the tiny radiant particles obeyed as they danced their dance.

For hundreds, thousands, millions of years this dance went on.  Finally the particles settled down like tired dancers and one after another they became the first liquid and then solid and as they became solid or liquid some of them joined others to which they were attracted forming new substances. *

Experiment #10: SETTLING OF MATTER ACCORDING TO DENSITY

Pour the liquids in random order into the flask.  The liquids will begin to settle into the flask according to density. 

The heavier ones went nearer to the heart of the Earth and the lighter ones floated above them like oil floating on water.  A thin crust was formed like the skin which forms on milk when it is boiled and left to cool.  It seemed as if the Earth had taken some shape.  But the elements inside this crust were still very hot and they felt trapped.  They wanted to get out. What could they do otherwise?  They had to follow laws: if you are hot you expand.  There was no place to expand and so they burst out.  They broke the crust and it was like a terrible eruption! *

Experiment #10a: FORMING OF EARTH’S CRUST

Heat up the milk and let cool.  The milk will form a skin like the earth formed a crust when it cooled down.

Experiment #11: EXPANSION OF HEATED MATTER/GASES

Bring the volcano to the centre. Ask a child to pour the baking soda into the crater.  The ‘eruption’ will foam and spill over the sides to illustrate how a volcano erupts.
Note: Ammonium dichromate and sulphur in a 4:1 ratio may also be used in an outdoor, well ventilated area.

The water on the surface turned immediately to vapour and rose up as the lava came out from inside the Earth.  Eventually the erupting ceased.  As everything cooled down, more and more gases became liquid, more and more liquids became solids.  The Earth itself shrank and became wrinkled like and old apple that has been left in a cupboard.* 

Experiment #`12: WRINKLING OF THE EARTH’S CRUST

Mix flour and water together to make a runny paste. Paint the balloon with the fluid and let it dry.  As it dries, the mixture will lose moisture and the flour will stick together.  On the surface of the balloon will appear valleys and crevices.

The wrinkles are the mountains and the hollows are the oceans.  For as soon as the rocks had cooled down, water was able to return to the earth and it rained and rained and rained. *

Chart #4a: VOLCANIC CLOUDS SURROUNDING THE EARTH 

The water, being liquid, filled every hollow and crevice it found in its path.  Thus the oceans were formed.  Above them was air - the air that we breathe.  The cloud had disappeared. * 

Chart #5a: THE EARTH – THE VOLCANIC CLOUDS HAVE DISAPPEARED

The veil was withdrawn and the sun could once again smile upon its beautiful, little daughter, the Earth!

Rocks, water, air: solids, liquids and gases.  Today, as it was yesterday and millions of years ago, laws are obeyed in the same way.  The world spins around itself and around and around the Sun.  And today, as it was millions of years ago, the Earth and all the elements and compounds it is made of, fulfill their tasks.