The Great Sea Change

Harriet Cooke

Ariel sat on the edge of the bed after tucking Micah in for the night. His face was still radiant and his energy bursting from the day. She wondered if he would ever settle into sleep! 

“There were four of them, Sheema! Four baby horses in the spring grass!”

Micah went on again to describe in great detail the newborn foals he and his father Tarak had spotted in the valley. 

Tarak and Ariel had been taking their son on the spring counting rides since Micah was an infant. At the age of four he was riding with his father. At the age of five, Tarak taught his son how to ride. That spring Micah had turned six, and Tarak allowed his son to accompany him on his own horse for the counting. 

Their family lived on the edge of what was once named Disappointment Valley. Micah’s great-great-great grandfather had been a warrior in those beautiful hills in the days of the great wars and sorrow.

Their family had managed to survive, from valley to reservation to city, eventually back to their land. Micah’s Great-grandfather had become an acclaimed filmmaker who captured the slaughter of the magnificent wild horses, uncovering and exposing the corruption of the government BLM agency that was in charge of managing the valley. Great-grandfather Anaquad had risked his life to be a warrior of law and capture the great extractive story- the time of greatest destruction before the Great Sea Change. 

Tarak’s father had then been part of the restoration of the land. His generation brought in wild horses from the few untouched wild places where horses still ran free. Tarak told Micah of those happy times when he would go with Micah’s grandfather out on scouting rides to meet the wild horses and ask their permission to relocate and help restore wild horses to Disappointment Valley. But first they changed the valley’s name. Grandmother Rachael understood the power of the word and knew the land needed to be blessed with a name change.  That year Disappointment Valley became Valley of Life.

Now it was Micah’s time to learn the way of the horse, the life of the wild, and the way to listen deep to the voice beyond all things. 

“Shema, Micah,” his mother gently whispered to him. Listen.

Slowly, as Micah’s story emptied out of him, his eyelids grew heavy and his mind settled into listening.

“Follow your belly and your breath,” she guided him as she laid her hand gently on his belly, becoming one with the ebb and flow of her son’s breath. Emptying and filling. The great rhythm of the universe, she thought again to herself.

Watching her son gently settling, she invited him to shift from story to thoughts of appreciation. “It is time to send blessings to the Great Oneness behind all things.”   

“YahWei, thank you for all of those healthy baby horses!” Micah piped up in an effort to revive himself from the sleep that was drawing him behind the day’s curtain.

“YaHaVaH,” his mother responded, “Thank you for giving my family the opportunity to see the miracle of life! and for the rejuvenation of the Valley and restoration of the wild horses.”

Micah’s turn. “YahWei, thank you for the warm sunshine after all those cold, rainy days!” 

“YaHaVaH, and thank you for the rain in its season and the end of the corruption times.”

“YahWei, thank you for my father and my mother, and my almost baby sister, and my grandfather and my grandmother, and my uncles and my aunts and my friends and my school and my computer games!”

“YaHaVaH, thank you for Tarak and Micah and my daughter soon to be. And thank you for teaching us the ways of holiness that have brought the renewal of life back to our valley and to all of the earth.”

Micah’s eyelids grew heavier and heavier as he settled into sleep.

Ariel kissed her sleeping son, arose and walked into the den where Tarak was sitting at their computer.

She walked up behind him, bent down and wrapped her arms and swollen belly around him, kissing him lightly on his ear and cheek, breathing in his sweet fragrance.

She thought he would be working on the herd reports that were due, but he was busy balancing the family budgets. There were separate accounts for the National currency and the Colorado currency. 

“It would be so much simpler to just have one kind of money,” Tarak mumbled.

“Yeah... and we’d probably be dead,” Ariel reminded him.

Tarak laughed at his wife’s directness. She was right. And though he was tired after a long day with more work to complete before they could curl up together, the reminder of how the People’s currency had helped restore their world gave him the energy he needed to plod through the two sets of accounting.

Ariel’s great grand-mother had had a dream as a child of everything it would take to heal the world. When she awoke, she knew it had something to do with economics, and it would work! but she remembered none of the details. She became a doctor, but when severe fatigue from chemical contamination put an end to her career, she began studying the deeper roots of healing, spiritual healing, the nature of money, and the economic systems that were driving the world’s destruction.

She learned how complementary currency systems could represent and value the work of caring, restoration, health, and education. They could help facilitate meaningful work for all people and the end of the need to work for corporate profits in order to survive. So she prayed and promoted and advocated and educated until the end of her days.

They still teetered on the edge of catastrophe, and the fight to retain their People’s currency seemed like an endless legal battle, but they were winning. Life was returning as the world had exploded in simultaneous local currencies empowering local communities for the work that needed to be done to heal each other and every corner of the earth.

The People’s currency, a humble tool at its beginning, was no small change. It was a great sea change that literally changed the seas.

Now it was Ariel’s eyelids that were drooping. As she slipped into bed, it was her turn to listen deeply to the waves of her own sweet gratitude- for a world that was recovering, a place where everyone and all of life was valued and belonged. 

Want to contribute a Story of the Month? Find out criteria and submit via our JotForm.