Eating a Grape

You can enjoy any fresh natural food this way. Even a sip of water can be magic. Jesus did this with bread and wine.

Hold a grape in your hand and look at it carefully. If this grape were placed in a bowl with a hundred other grapes, what would you look for to recognize this one?

Now look even more deeply into the grape. It contains the rain, the clouds, the sky that watered it. It's skin and meat contain the minerals of the earth. Many trees and flowers and animals have died and returned to the loam to form the nutrients in this grape. The fire of the sun sparkles inside this grape, and protons from ancient stars. This grape contains all the elements: earth, water, fire, sky. This grape is full of death and rebirth.

Humanity fills this grape. Many hands have labored to till and water its soil, prune its vine, and bring it to harvest: hands of laborers, packers, shippers, grocery clerks. The juice of this grape runs with human toil and tears. Somehow the tender sweetness of this grape has been preserved for you across a continent of commerce. To notice all this in a grape is prayer, grace unspoken.

Lift the grape up to your nostrils and smell it. Gently roll it in your fingers next to your ear and see if it has a sound. Now hold this grape in your palm and breathe a breath of gratitude. Put the grape in your mouth, crush it in your teeth. Taste its flavor as pure sensation without words, without the label, "grape." Chew it slowly and swallow it.

Sit quietly and observe the lingering sensations in your mouth and tongue, the bouquet fading like sunset on your tongue. Follow these flavors and sensations as they dissolve into pure Presence, into the silence of Being without desire.