surprises have been startlingly painful. I certainly didn’t expect that I would be confronted with the need to unpack so many layers of my own assumptions—many of which I didn’t even realize I had. It has been profoundly threatening at times and (most significant) deeply humbling. In the traditional constructs of liberal and conservative, I’ve been critiqued by those who thought I was too liberal and others who thought I was too conservative. I increasingly found myself drawn to move beyond the restrictions