This year's musical will be based upon the Montessori Great Lesson: God With No Hands. Please review the great lesson so that you can share you ideas for how it should be presented in the musical. Our class will be responsible for the grand finale where the cloud of dust and smoke is lifted and the sun can shine upon the earth once more!
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 students arrival in the elementary classroom.
God Who Has No Hands
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 the 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.
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.
Everything
we know is 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.
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.'
'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
soild, others became liquid and still others became gaseous.
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.
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.
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.
The
water that formed on the surface turned immediately into vapor and went up as
the hot stuff came out from inside the earth.
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.
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 lements and compounds it is made of, as they fulfill their
tasks, whisper with one voice:
'Lord,
Thy will be done; we obey.”
Taken from: http://www.moteaco.com/albums/greatlessons/story1.html