Renate Macchirole knew she had to do something. In her job as the director of our local Home Health Respite Care program, she kept meeting young men and women with intellectual disabilities. They were too old to be in school, but they weren’t capable of living on their own. So they lived with their parents, completely isolated from their peers.

Years earlier Renate had worked with similar young people at a facility in New York. You’ve seen some of these folks. They’re the ones that elicit double takes in public, followed by a quick turning of backs. The ones society normally keeps hidden away. But Renate has a special place for them in her heart.

This is not the story I expected to tell you today. 

It’s Christmastime. I have way too much to do. My errands are each assigned a set number of minutes, and I’m trying hard to stay on schedule. It’s a mistake to live this way, I know. It leaves no room for the unexpected—and the unexpected is often where I find life’s most satisfying moments. But this is how I have to operate right now. I’m sure you know what I mean.

So I wasn’t planning to dawdle last week when I stopped by the grocery store for a few things and took a detour past the ultra-cheap Christmas trees to see if there were any I liked.

Is it possible to oppose injustice with an open, loving heart?

 On an autumn morning in 2010, I joined a couple of thousand activists on a march through our nation’s capital to protest the unbelievably destructive coal mining practice known as mountaintop removal. In the past three decades more than 500 mountain peaks have been blown up so mining companies could get at the coal seams just below their surfaces. As we marched that day, people from different parts of Appalachia held up placards listing what has been lost: RIP Mingo Mountain. Destroyed: Workman’s Branch. RIP Pumpkin Knob. Cole Spur. Manns Knob. Looney Ridge Spur. And many more.

On a cool, crisp morning just before breakfast, I pull on a jacket and walk outside to my favorite spot in our yard, a small garden shaded by a dogwood and a live oak. After a few warm-up exercises, I begin swinging my arms and hips in a rhythm I call the Happy Dance.

Swing, pivot, swing, pivot. The exact movements aren’t important. All that matters is that they are driven by something deep inside me, a gratitude that can’t be quashed.

At 9:15 one weekday morning, I pulled up to a voluminous metal building at our little county airport and let myself in through a metal door. Inside, several people looked up from their seats at a long table, clearly startled. A woman got up quickly and came toward me with a protective air. But she recognized me, and her face relaxed into a smile.

I had come to visit the Monarch Beach Club, a program that cares for Outer Banks men and women with intellectual or developmental disabilities like cerebral palsy or autism. Club members are too old to go to school. They’re the people society cruelly hides away, the ones often greeted by stares or, alternately, turned backs. Without the Beach Club, they would have been isolated at home, most likely being cared for by their parents.