Looking at the berries on the holly bush outside the building where I taught this morning, this cold, grey, November morning , I saw it very clearly. It was next to impossible to see those beautiful berries last week; this week, however, many of the leaves have fallen away, and those that remain are brown and shriveled. It is not a cheery process from an aesthetic viewpoint, this browning and withering. When it is done, it peels back to what is at the core, what is real, wha