Ordinary heroes: Willie Smits rebuilds a rain forest

Willie Smits started out trying to save a couple of orangutans. In the process he sheltered thousands, halted rampaging grassland fires, regrew a rain forest, changed the climate and, oh yes, provided water, food, livelihood, education and a vastly improved standard of living for thousands of Borneo natives. In his TED talk titled A 20-year tale of hope: How we re-grew a rainforest, Smits tells the story in just eighteen minutes. His speech left me breathless. Take a look.



Whew! I have dozens of questions for Smits, don't you? While he is not the first to reclaim a forest or jungle or green a desert, Smits's work shows us how close we can be to realizing the vision of Ordinary.

Image copyright 2009, L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

For devoting his life to protecting and preserving orangutans and their habitat; for showing us how it can be done while improving the environment; for upgrading the economy and helping people, who like the orangutans get their livelihood from the forest, to achieve a higher standard of living; and for making the vision of a world of peace, harmony and prosperity, much like Ordinary, real; this week's Ordinary Hero is Willie Smits.

Pinning our hopes on youth

They're plugged in, tuned in and turned on to making change. In Washington, D.C., last Tuesday, two thousand mostly young people from all over the country rallied and marched in a Capitol Climate Action to shut down the toxin-spreading coal plant that lights and heats Congress. They're off and running in the next weeks and months to coal-fired electrical facilities all across the country, and they're Twittering about their experiences during the events so the rest of us can follow them live. Their rallying cry: This is what democracy looks like!



That's not all.

On Thursday, Minnesota youth took their concern for clean air, clean cars and clean jobs to their state capitol, where they heard Van Jones, author of The Green Collar Economy:

We don't need your leadership in the future. If we had waited for your leadership these past two years, we wouldn't have the presidential campaign we just had. We wouldn't have green jobs as a main slogan, now, reorganizing the whole economy. We wouldn't have the level of hope that we've got. We don't need your leadership in the future. We need your leadership right now.

Take a look at what the kids had to say for themselves, and how they responded to Jones.



Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy,and NASA scientist Dr. Tom Hansen are two names we recognize because they've been warning us of the perils of global warming for decades. Thousands of others, most without any recognition whatsoever, have worked for an equal time to change laws and improve environmental conditions in their communities, states and globally. Every one of these individuals contribute to the vision of the world of Ordinary, and I give gratitude for them, for their selflessness and for their actions, great and small.

Backed by years of research, debate, political action and civil action, our youth have the collective power to compel at last the change that offers hope for one day realizing Ordinary. May they use it well and wisely.

Ordinary Hero: Jarvenpa

For courage to write the truth as she lives it
For unfailing compassion
For anger in the face of injustice
For love of all beings, great and small
For unstinting generosity to those society rejects
For willingness to sit with another in pain
For persistence in working to right wrong
For resilience
For keeping her heart open when it would be so much easier to close

And for making her piece of the world better, one day at a time, in the most Ordinary of ways,

The first Ordinary Heroes award is extended to Jarvenpa, whose blog Outside the Windows is vibrant, passionate, full of nit and grit, and revealing of a heart so broken, so healed, so big with love that anyone looking in can only be healed in turn. If that weren't enough, Windows is a damn good read.

I discovered Jarvenpa through another blogger's link several years ago. Yes, she writes beautifully, which makes it easy to see her world and almost to believe I feel what she is feeling. But it is her consistency in eating grief again and again--and recovering, in seeing beauty at every turn when she could see ruin, and in helping those who can least help themselves, though they keep on trying--the wounded, scarred people who show up on her doorstep with addictions, mental illnesses, hearts broken beyond coping in a material world--that inspires and motivates me. Her stories are pure life as she experiences it in her Northern California bookstore and garden, on the streets of her town--visceral, real, immediate, heart-jolting.

Give a shout to Jarvenpa, then sit down with a nice hot cup and get to know a woman whose life makes the vision of the Village of Ordinary seem closer and closer today.

The Ordinary Heroes Award

Copyright L. Kathryn Grace, 2009. All rights reserved.

All over the world, people work within their homes, businesses, communities and governments to ease suffering, build harmonious relationships, guide our leaders and compel our corporations to make conscious, socially responsible decisions. They work to heal and protect the earth that future generations might know the beauty and wonder so many of us older generation remember from our youth.

Whether their work is to save a single child from an abusive family member, to teach families how to grow an organic vegetable and flower garden, or to regrow a rain forest, such individuals are heroes. They hold the vision of a just, whole world. They are Ordinary Heroes.

Wanda Tucker celebrates Love Thursdays on her blog What Would Wanda Do? In a bow to Wanda and to love, beginning tomorrow Realizing Ordinary will celebrate and honor a new Ordinary Hero each Thursday.

If you have received the Ordinary Hero award, you may post it, unaltered, on your blog or web site, with a link back to this page explaining its origins.

Recipients may also pass the award along to individuals who have shown through their actions a desire to heal the earth, to reclaim the food that nourishes our bodies, to ease suffering, to improve communications between rival individuals, factions or governments. Again, the badge is not to be altered for any reason and should include a link back to this page.

In case you're wondering, the stylized image in the badge is of my personal hero, who wishes to remain anonymous, and her grandchild. This is one way I honor her and the work she has done for children and their families throughout her adult life.

At last--Alice Walker has a web site--and a blog

It gives me enormous pleasure to discover today Alice Walker's web site and blog. She is now sharing her thoughts, wanderings, experiences and wisdom with the world, free to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. I am lost for hours, gorging on a feast of perfect words, organic, succulent and ripe.

But it is not the words that fill me. They are only ingredients, however fresh, savory or sweet. It is the measure of the words, born of a lifetime of truth telling, that feeds my soul.

Simply to read her most recent blog post, A Letter from Alice Walker to Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Prize winner under house arrest in Burma (Myanmar) since 1989, is to travel from Aung San Suu Kyi's well-guarded prison home to the inauguration of President Barack Obama, to the killing in California of a 19-year-old man by BART police who shot him while he lay face down with his hands behind his back.

On the journey, we absorb the sights, smell the exotic scents of any traveler, but what we learn and feel and understand is so much more. You must read it. Please go there now.

As extraordinary as she is, Alice Walker is one of my Ordinary heroes.